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.
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.
