RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY
A Long Hard Road Part I
This is a story about how things go together
Told in the language of the common folk
A language meant for talking
For telling stories in a crowded barroom
For speaking out loud in a circle of friends
It’s the language of Faulkner, McCarthy,
Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie
(but that’s another story)
This story begins in the green valleys,
endless forests, rugged mountains and
winding rivers of rural Tennessee
It
may be the story rightly begins long
before
Tennessee was even a name on a map
when
the seven tribes of the Natchez Trace
lived
and prospered on the mother of all rivers
before
the great white invasion
But
this story begins with the Cherokee
Known
by the whites as the civilized tribe
(Tecumseh
and Crazy Horse might disagree
but
that too is another story)
The
Cherokee invented their own syllabary
so
they could write and read in their own language
They
wrote their own constitution
They
formed their own democracy
They
elected their own representatives
The
Supreme Court of the United States of
America
(an audacious name but there it is)
recognized
their lawful sovereignty but at that
time
a man from Tennessee who grew up with
the
Cherokee and led many of them into the Battle
of
New Orleans was elected president of the
white
man’s nation
His
name was Andrew Jackson and he didn’t
think
much of the Supreme Court’s decision
In
fact he tossed it out with the daily trash
He
ordered the Cherokee, Choctaw, the Creek
and
Chickasaw herded up like cattle and
moved
a thousand miles away to a desolate
land
no white man wanted (until they did
but
that is another story)
It
came to be known as the Trail of Tears
but
it was not just Indian tears on the path
to
the setting sun where all things go to die
The
poor white folk and black folk and other
folk
lined up along the trail to watch a proud
people
humbled by hardship and pushed to
the
edge of their limits
They
watched and their tears became a river
flowing,
a path of sorrow, and a tribute to
the
human spirit
Thousands
of folks native to the land packed
what
belongings they could and marched the
long
hard road to Indian Territory
Some
died, some escaped and many endured
It
would come to be called Oklahoma
(but
that is another story)
