Читать книгу Trail of Broken Promises - Caleb Pirtle III - Страница 3

THE FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES – the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole – rose to power on the land of their fathers, atop great smoky mountains, deep within vast timbered forests, lost among the mangroves, palmettos, and rivers of grass.

They were strong and proud, hunters who had become farmers. Many fine plantations were firmly planted on the land they called home, and slaves picked their cotton in the fields.

They walked in the pathway of aristocracy.

Self-government guided their footsteps.

The ways of the savage had been pushed behind them, buried in the graves of their ancestors.

They prospered, but they became troubled, watching as the wagons of civilization rolled selfishly into the country that, they believed, God had given them. It was rich land. It gave forth gold, and the Indians listened as men fought and schemed, even killed, to take that priceless land – their birthright – from them.

White men had once offered the hand of friendship.

It became the hand of greed.

Treaties were passed and signed and ignored.

Promises were made and broken, sometimes just forgotten.

The white men took what they wanted, passing a law in 1830 that, they hoped, would drive the Five Civilized Tribes westward and out of their way.

The Indians were stunned. They were rooted deep in the soil that held the ashes of their fathers, the dreams of their children, the seeds of their harvest.

Yet a president was pointing them west toward a land that was foreign to them, out amongst the unknown, out where no one had a home or a hope – just simply a hate. The president had expected the Indians to hear and obey. He was wrong.

The road west may be leading them to a land of promise and prosperity, but the Indians – at least most of them – refused to go.

They would die first.

So many died along the way.