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Short Stories - Issue 3

Nu Na Da Ul Tsun Yi (The Place Where They Cried)

December 1838

We arrived in this strange land two nights ago. There is a full moon tonight. Its 
reflection shimmers on the waters of the Tennessee River below us, glittering like 
silver fish in a stream.

We are cold and famished. My father and some other men have taken their bows 
and rifles to hunt for small game while my mother has made a camp for us. The 
fire is warm, but it cannot touch the chill in our hearts. We move about trying to 
keep warm, gathering kindling and chopping wood, collecting dried leaves to 
put beneath our bedding, and bringing water up to Mama from the edge of the 
frigid river.

My brother Hoyt is angry. He did not get to go with Papa and the others to hunt.
Papa told him to look after his clan. I know he is not angry with Papa. Hoyt is 
angry because his heart is heavy. Sorrow envelopes all of us like the icy wind
around our heads and hands and feet.

In late November some white men came to our village in Tennessee with papers 
in their hands and told us we had to leave. Our clan lived on a small ridge 
between two high mountains, the only home any of us had ever known. My 
people fought with the white men so we could stay on our land, keep speaking 
our language, and teach our children The Way. In the end, after so many broken
promises, we are told we have a new home in a new land out west, in a place 
called Indian Territory. We are not convinced this new home will be a peaceful 
place. We are skeptical of the white man’s promises. He does not know how to 
keep his word.

My little brother Jesse died on the journey several days ago. He was a baby and 
had just learned to walk. He caught a fever and soon he was unable to breathe. 
We buried him next to a large oak on a bluff overlooking another part of the 
Tennessee River, the same river we have traveled to this strange place.

Mama has hardly spoken since that day. Grief had already stolen most of her
words because she left her mother and aunt and my oldest sister behind. 
Grandma and Aunt Neva refused to leave their home. They and many other 
Cherokee who had also refused to leave were forced to abandon their villages 
and homes to go to a camp deemed appropriate by the white men.

My sister, she is called Sara, she also stayed in Tennessee. Her husband William is
half white. His Cherokee mother married an Irish man called Robert, who came 
from North Carolina. William is a coal miner. They have a small parcel of land 
and a house, with a barn and some livestock. Sara wept quietly as we all packed 
our things and began our journey west. She did not want to go, but she did not 
want to stay. Now her spirit is wandering between two places.

My best friend Lucy fell and broke her leg the first day we started our journey. We 
had climbed a tall, hollowed out tree while our families waited for the soldiers to 
tell us where to go next, and her foot slipped on the high branch. I heard her leg 
bone crack when she landed on the hard ground. She became feverish and 
began to speak about terrifying things, such as the killing of women and children 
and the death of the Cherokee and The Way. She cursed at unseen men who 
came to do unjust things to her. She died two days later. Her mother refused to 
leave her gravesite. Instead, she lay beside the grave and began to wail and 
moan, pulling her hair and pounding her stomach with her fists. During the night,
Lucy’s father took his hunting knife and cut her throat. He said his wife was no 
good anymore, that her spirit was with their dead daughter, and her heart could 
not be unbroken.

As I gather more water for Mama, I look out over the river in the bright moonlight. 
My heart is heavy. I turned sixteen last turn of the moon, and now I am in a place 
unfamiliar to me for the first time, trying to help my family, and not able to make 
sense of anything. I can hear moans and cries coming from the many hundreds 
of my people behind me above the edge of the riverbank. Every hour or so, I 
hear a scream or a shriek, and I know that another spirit has left yet another body 
of one of our own. The sorrow lingers like thick, black smoke.

I shiver as I carry the deerskin containers of water back to camp. I begin to 
cough, and Mama calls me over to sit in front of the fire. She wraps me in a 
blanket she wove on her loom. It has many meaningful colors and symbols upon 
it. It tells a story of our people. We are part of the a ni tsi s qua, the Bird clan. The 
blanket tells the story of how our people, The Cherokee, Tsa la gi, were born. There 
are pictures of the Little People and the Four Points of the Earth. I hold tightly to 
this blanket and accept the warmth.

As I watch the flames flicker in the cold night, I think about what will become of 
us. We were told the land we are travelling toward is much like our home in the 
mountains. They said there are good places to hunt and fish, to grow food, and 
space to build another village. I cannot imagine it. All I can see in my mind’s eye 
is our thatched roof home in the tiny village we were forced to leave. Hot tears 
run from my eyes and form tracks on my face through layers of dust. The farther 
west we go the more dust seems to collect on our clothes and skin, hovering in 
the air in tiny clouds formed out of nowhere. I wipe my face with the back of my 
sleeve and lay down on the bearskins Mama has laid out for me.

My mother is calling out to me, “Ellie. Ellie! Wake up!”

It is morning, and the sun is peeking above the trees on the other side of the river. 
Papa is smoking his pipe and Hoyt is whittling. Mama begins to sing an old 
Cherokee song as she moves about the camp, preparing our breakfast. We have 
some fresh squirrel meat and corn, but not enough. Papa’s dark eyes see far
beyond us to the future. I can tell that his vision makes him sad.

Mama’s voice is soothing. “Wen de ya ho, wen de ya ho...” She sings the old
Cherokee morning song, which is sung at weddings. It translates as, “I am of the 
Great Spirit!” I listen and rock back and forth, holding my knees, weeping softly.

There are several fresh graves on the outskirts of our camp. 

So much sorrow in this place, where we wait for the boat to come and take us to 
another place where there is sure to be more sorrow.

The small town nearby is called Waterloo. My people call it The Place Where They 
Cried. Some of the people here have been kind, some have not. Many white 
people stood along the trail and watched us trudge onward, with tears in their 
eyes. We kept putting one foot in front of the other, when we could, and refused 
to let them see our own tears.

Papa begins to move about the camp and Mama stops singing. We will soon
pack our camp and wait. The boat should be arriving soon.

I look in the direction from which we came. My heart is back there, at my home. 
The farther we move away from it, the larger the hole becomes inside my belly 
and heart.

Looking down at my feet, I spy my baby brother’s rattle beside me in the dirt.
Hoyt made it for him out of some deer hide, a stick and some dried corn. I pick it 
up and brush off the dirt, revealing a picture of a black bear. Hoyt painted the 
picture onto the hide after it had dried good and hard. I shake it a bit, and the 
dried corn makes the rattling sound that had stopped the day my baby brother 
became so sick.

I stand up to walk over to Mama, and hand the rattle to her. Her deep brown 
eyes brush past me in a caress. She nods as she takes it and puts it in her pocket 
and she begins to sing again as she trudges over to the cook fire and pours water 
on the hot coals. Steam follows a hiss and rises up in the air above her.

I take Mama’s deerskin containers down to the river to fetch more water. My legs 
are tired but my back is strong as I scoop the water.

Before I head back to our camp, I watch as the sun begins to show the way of 
the river before me. The waters are moving swiftly as the morning light dances 
across the rivulets of water in reds, oranges and deep yellows.

Soon it will carry us to the new place we cannot yet see.

As I turn to carry the water back to Mama, I know in my heart we will continue to 
carry the tears from this place where our spirits cry out for the old ways and our 
people, as we continue to lose them one by one, along this treacherous journey.

Kim Bailey Deal is a writer, poet, amateur guitarist and avid reader. She is editing two novels and blogs weekly at  wordjunkie1966kimbaileydeal.wordpress.com. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

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