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The Legend of the Cherokee Rose
My Passion
Series is one book away from taking place during the Trail of Tears. The story
started in the mid 1700s with New Moon, a female Cherokee warrior, and James
Fitzgerald, an English agent. I enjoyed every aspect of research on that
project. Same with Raven’s Passion and Passion’s Price.
I am now
looking at a story taking place in one of our nation’s saddest and most unjust
times, The Trail of Tears. In my research I rediscovered facts I had not
thought about for a long time. I don’t think it is well understood today that
in the early 1800s in Georgia, Cherokee
families owned homes on farms and even plantations. They built roads, and sawmills,
and blacksmith shops. They farmed their land and encouraged missionaries to set
up schools to educate their children in the English language. They used a
syllabary, characters representing syllables, developed by a Cherokee man named
Sequoyah to encourage literacy while encouraging the retention of their own
rich culture.
The struggle
was hard to maintain their freedom and their land. In 1830 gold was found on
Cherokee land and the Indian removal act was passed. In 1832, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor
of the Cherokee. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Cherokee Nation was
sovereign, making the removal laws invalid. The Cherokee would have to agree to
removal in a treaty for such a thing to ever happen. The treaty then would have
to be ratified by the Senate. Even so, 1832 saw the encroachment into Cherokee
land with the land lottery. I can’t
think of words that could accurately describe the pain and sorrow suffered by
the brave and noble People that called this home for ages beyond memory.
In 1835 a
minority, 500 out of 17,000 not truly representing the Cherokee Nation, signed
The Treaty of New Echota. This act alone gave Jackson the legal document he
needed to remove the Cherokee. Ratification of the treaty by the United States
Senate sealed the fate of the Cherokee. General Winfield Scott, arrived at New
Echota on May 17, 1838 with 7000 men. Early that summer General Scott and the
United States Army began the invasion of the Cherokee Nation.
The forced
removal and the bitter journey was brutal. About 4000 Cherokee died as a result
of the removal. The rout they took became known as "The Trail of
Tears" or, as a direct translation from Cherokee, "The Trail Where
They Cried" ("Nunna daul Tsuny").
The Legend
of the Cherokee Rose was born on this Trail of Tears...
The
mothers of the Cherokee grieved so much that the chiefs prayed for a sign to
lift the mother's spirits and give them strength to care for their children.
From that day forward, a beautiful new flower, a rose, grew wherever a mother's
tear fell to the ground. The rose is white, for the mother's tears. It has a
gold center, for the gold taken from the Cherokee lands, and seven leaves on
each stem that represent the seven Cherokee clans that made the journey. To
this day, the Cherokee Rose prospers along the route of the "Trail of
Tears".
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