Odes to Roswell · Track 3 · middle
The Cherokee Removal of 1838
The 1838 Cherokee Removal — the year before Roswell King arrived, the federal Trail of Tears displacement of the Cherokee from their north-Georgia homeland. UPBEAT-LEANING, REVERENT — the song acknowledges what was here before and what was lost, but turns to the survival and continuance of Cherokee culture today. Dr.Pope with mythic weight.
Lyrics
The year is 1838.One year before the survey crew.One year before the water wheel.The creeks ran by different names.The air held a different quiet.Then came the order from Winfield Scott.The ink was still wet in May.They raised the stockades at New Echota,the smell of green pine in the eighty-five degree heat.Chief John Ross wrote the letters.Elias Boudinot had already printed the words.The clock was running down on Georgia soil.And the long walk began on the Federal Road.Four thousand names carved away by the winter.For the women who fished in Vickery Creek, we have no ledger.But the story is not the leaving.The story is the carrying.The story is the fire they kept alive in a brass kettle.October came. The leaves turned.The sound of the wagon wheels at dawn, north of the Etowah.They were issued tin cups for the journey.A cup for water, a cup for a thousand miles.A small, cold fact you can hold in your hand.A fact they keep today in Park Hill, Oklahoma.And the long walk began on the Federal Road.Four thousand names carved away by the winter.For the children who played on the Chattahoochee bluffs, we have no marker.But the story is not the leaving.The story is the carrying.The story is the fire they kept alive in a brass kettle.The Cherokee Phoenix still rises.The syllabary is still taught.The Nation is still a nation.This isn't a ghost story I'm telling you.It's a lesson in breathing.A lesson in how a people refuse to become a memory.The path didn't end. It just went west.The path didn't end.The fire burns.The fire still burns.