Happy Trails to You

Out Mid-West and West there is the Trail of Tears.  Those of you who know your American history know that over 125,000 American Indians were driven from their land in the South Eastern U.S. across thousands of miles until they reached the mid-western U.S. on the other side of the Mississippi River.  The Choctaw were the first to go.  The Cherokee took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court which surprisingly supported their argument.  But that "great" President Andrew Jackson refused to uphold the court ruling and enforced the Indian Removal Act and Cherokee were then driven across the land from their homes with many dying along the way.  The America Indian was a refugee in his/her own land.  This movement was called the Trail of Tears because so many died.  ( A few Cherokee were allowed to stay behind because their tribes had signed treaties.)  Sadly this removal continued in the wild West as that land became important to the interloping Europeans.

You cannot see the blood in the sand if you walked various trails, but you can hear the cries of the mothers and babies in the winds that blow across the sage brush when you reach the desert just before an oncoming storm.  There were ancient Indians that already had homelands in this space around 500 BC and they left their art work almost everywhere to share with the newcomers.  They left stories of hunting, families, ornamentation, and perhaps, tears.