Odes to Alpharetta · Track 2 · middle

Cherokee Paths Through the Etowah Watershed

Pre-colonial Cherokee presence in the Etowah River watershed that runs through north Fulton. The trade paths that became roads, the seasonal hunting routes, the river-bottom corn fields, the way the land was ALREADY mapped before the surveyors arrived. Celebratory, not mournful — the geography itself remembers. Dr.Pope reads the land as scripture.

Lyrics

Before the book, there was the creek.
Before the word, there was the water.
This is the first scripture.
This is the Etowah testament.

The path was not a line drawn straight.
It was a memory in the soil, following the deer.
Following the high ground.
A mark blazed on a poplar was a chapter heading.
A bend in the creek, a verse remembered.
This was the map before the chain was pulled, before the lots were numbered.

And the land remembers.
The red clay holds the footprint.
The Big Creek whispers the hunting season.
The Etowah watershed reads its own name, in a language older than letters.

The women knelt in the black soil of the floodplain.
Their hands knew the season for gourdseed corn.
The alkaline spring seep, a tool for cleaning the hide.
A quiet industry by the water's edge.
A life lived between the sycamores and the water oaks.

And the land remembers.
The red clay holds the footprint.
The Big Creek whispers the hunting season.
The Etowah watershed reads its own name, in a language older than letters.

Then came the paper.
Then came the ink.
1817.
1819.
The Treaty of New Echota, 1935.
A new map laid over the old scripture.
But you can't erase a river.
You can't un-write a watershed.
The new roads still follow the old paths.

Listen.
Can you hear it?
Underneath the sound of the tires on Georgia 400.
It's still there.
The first scripture.
The water over the stones.
The land remembers.
It always remembers.