Chapter 16. Atlantic to Pacific (Cherokee Trail of Tears)

A connecting way between the Appalachian Trail and the start of the Oregon Trail was provided for me as soon as I heard of the Trail of Tears, the route of forced migration of the Cherokee Indians from their ancestral southern homes to Oklahoma. This civilized agricultural people had been promised by President Washington that they would be an educational example for all other Indian tribes; their remarkable adaptation to our civilization was capped by Sequoyah's invention of a native system of writing so well suited to its purpose that almost all of them were literate in a generation, an achievement unique in human history.

Thus the Cherokees hoped to form a State in our Union or at least to coexist with their white neighbors, but it was not to be. A Georgia state law depriving them even of the right to testify in their own behalf was contested all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Indians won. But then President Jackson uttered his infamous, "Justice Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." And the president whose life had been saved by a Cherokee chieftain signed the dreaded Removal Act, which concentrated red men in Oklahoma. On the resulting march, the "trail where they cried", it is said that not a mile is without its Cherokee grave.

On the bus to Tennessee before Christmas I had stopped at the town of Cherokee in North Carolina to ask a blessing for my journey over their sorrowful path. Vice-Chief LeRoy Waneta graciously gave it and chatted about the time twenty years before when they had retraced the route in cars, through Tennessee, parts of Kentucky and Illinois, and through Missouri to Tallequah in Oklahoma. Now, in early February after a long rest, I went directly by bus and car back to Fontana Village to resume the long walk.

Through a maze of back country roads I reached Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, a stand of never-cut timber set aside in honor of the poet of trees. On a footpath across it I was glad of the wasted logs, glad there were a few acres somewhere not making money for anybody. And I thought the Greeks where right to put their temples in sacred groves.

On the dirt road to Tellico Plains, camped under pines, there came a curious dream. In it was a roadrunner, not cartoon-silly but calm with sad eyes. He gazed at me, then flew into an autumn sky of the kind called mackerel. Now each scale of the mackerel became a roadrunner, beating majestic wings into a glory of sunset. This sky, patterned with my exemplars who had found an archaic mode like mine to be really a flight of power, spelled for me a deep rightness, a near-divine approval of my venture. The roadrunner became my medicine, a totem connecting me to earth and air.

At Rattlesnake Springs the Cherokees had gathered to start their trek. Many had been forced from their homes at gunpoint, but given that they had to go, the most heartrending thing for them seems to have been the graverobbing which sometimes began even before they were well off their land. Starting their trail, I almost fell to crying myself. But the sun shines on Indian and white alike, and I cheered up as a rhythmic pace pumped life into me.

Tennessee proposes to build an east-west State Scenic Trail to roughly follow the Trail of Tears; none of it was yet done however, and I followed the same dirt roads (now often improved to busy highways) used by Cherokee wagons. The weather stayed mild for that time of year with only rain to keep me grateful for east Tennessee hospitality.

In Etowah the Lions Club invited me to have lunch and discuss the walk with them. At a timber company asking for maps, I was warmly received; one of the employees who lived on the route put me up for a night, sending me on next morning to friends at about a day's walk away. Their friends had friends, and so on. This unusual hospitality chain extended almost to the Tennessee River.

One of my hosts ran an egg factory, a huge laying operation. When I offered to make the rounds with him, he smiled. Inside the long building, the stench hit me like a hammer. He was right, I chickened out.

Another day, stopping at a crossroad store to get out of the rain, I was struck by the oddly familiar face of the storekeeper. Fumbling amongst the historical pamphlets I carried, there it was: a picture of Revolutionary War hero Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs, who later became an agent to the Cherokee Indians.

The man before me looked just like him. He chuckled, "Yes, that's Great-grandfather." And we recalled the romantic story of the long-ago Meigs who courted a fine lady to no avail. But it seems that as the rejected turned finally to take his leave, the Quaker lady said, "Return, Jonathan." So that is how they named their first son.

After the Tennessee River I walked through the town of Dayton, site of the famous Monkey Trial in which a high school teacher was prosecuted by William Jennings Bryan for teaching evolution, Clarence Darrow defending. Towns have memory, don't they? The building bricks know that was a victory God didn't need to win, a fame unnecessary to any living, that repression has a way of ending up more expensive than freedom.

Then Walden Ridge marked the beginning of a huge geological fault, like no other on earth but the Great Rift Valley in Africa. Here it's not so obvious, really, except for a steep drop and rise in the road coming into and out of the valley. At Pikeville I stayed in the bargain rooming house of this or any other trip. Charlie Weaver charged one dollar; when I asked him if he made any money he said, "Naw, but some of these people got no other place to go."

Across Falls Creek Park there were footpaths and an old shack on its edge where I camped. At McMinnville I met a chief of non-reservation eastern tribes, Lone White Eagle, whose white name was Bill Ashley. Saying my trip would be blessed because I lived partly off the land, he showed me a leather history of the Trail of Tears given him by his Cherokee grandmother.

In Murfreesboro there was an interview by Nashville television in which it was claimed I'd found a way to beat the energy crisis. (I never been to Araby, pipe to me sandpiper. The cottonwood is a mighty fine wood, and aspenwood burns blue.) Reaching the suburb of Franklin, I had another Christmas with my sister and her family.

Moving on, I walked to Ruskin where a communal experiment named for the reformer flourished long ago. Their large dining hall still stood; I imagined the members gravely passing the salt.

In Erin I was hailed on the street by a descendant of Daniel Boone who also claimed to be a colonel in the CIA. He followed me to a motel, but I shied away from him. The motel owner said in an aside that he'd been known to knife drinking buddies, which brought to my mind an earlier incident in middle Tennessee. Then a younger man of glazed eye had knocked on my motel door begging to talk for ten minutes because "they" had killed his wife.

We talked, but in ten minutes he was accusing me of having killed his wife. He also swore I was a hippie bankrobber from Alabama, as he whistled over his shoulder for the other deputies to help subdue me. I saw no other deputies and wished I'd never seen him. Out I shoved him, wedging my foot against the door while he threatened to cut me up. Not wanting any more of such excitement, I stayed well clear of Colonel Boone.

Another town I reached late, expecting a motel room. But they were full and the only rooming house closed. Very tired, I trudged up to the jail and told my plight. "Fools should have sent you here first," said the sheriff, "you're welcome, but we don't feed so good."

Across TVA's beautiful Between the Lakes Wild Area one could camp. I had hoped to see some of their herd of spotted European fallow deer, but rain discouraged me from walking off the route to find them.

There is no more ferry over the Ohio at Golconda where the Cherokees crossed. I used a bridge at Paducah, walking dirt levee roads to Cairo where the talk was of racial trouble. My trouble was incendiary; in a grassy field by the Mississippi I lit a noon fire that got away. While I desperately fought to contain it, stomping and branching, a breeze circled it back to destroy half my gear.

I got it finally dead-out, and counted the cost: foam pad and parka gone, one strap left on pack, and sleeping bag badly damaged. Disaster, to one proud of never having caused a fire. Gear in hand and heart in dust I walked the last eight miles to a highway bridge at Cape Girardeau. It was narrow; once I hugged the girders to avoid a truck. Midway I gave a charred dogwood staff to the Mississippi river.

From the Cape I went by bus to Madison, Wisconsin to visit friends and re-equip. There my old Bergan's rucksack came by mail to replace the burned one, a new poncho and foam pad were bought, and the Scottish sleeping bag was meticulously rebuilt by a girl who worked for a small outdoor-equipment company. I would do without a parka until fall. After some farewells, including a last chat with the horseman I'd first met in Mexico (now a happily remarried scholar planning to emigrate to New Zealand), I returned to Cape Girardeau.

Early April: spring Missouri is colder than winter Tennessee. I walked out a levee road along the Castor River diversion channel. A standing fire-killed oak sapling seemed the right size. Tough, it took a while to whittle down; then again I had a sturdy walking stick.

Often in Missouri I camped; sometimes a farmer or construction worker invited me into his home. (One of these hosts had squealing pigs to harvest for market at dawn. In the dew so strong and elusive, grease him for the fair and I give up.) In Mingo Wildlife Refuge I saw a big cottonmouth moccasin and had supper with the Youth Conservation Corps, where talk turned to the New Madrid earthquake (biggest in our history; it created the Mingo Swamp while altering the Mississippi River's course).

At Doniphan I changed direction, heading straight for Independence, start of the Oregon Trail. Summer would be on me too quick for finishing the Trail of Tears to Tallequah, Oklahoma. But I heard of the Cherokees throughout Missouri; they had ranged north looking for wild country with game.

In the Irish Wilderness I saw my first wild turkey; it ran on the ground before it flew, just as I'd been told. Before Mark Twain National Forest, rangers gave me a cool canvas-covered quart canteen. They'd have fires to fight before fall, many of them set locally by those resentful of government policy. I thought that was too mad to get, against the bird and beast.

On a dirt road in the Mark Twain as I asked loggers to have my mail held at Winona, an old gentleman chugged by in a Model T Ford. "Twice a week to town for forty years," they told me, "been offered a brand-new Ford pickup, but claims it'd be too hard to learn new gears."

Limestone country has big springs. Back at the university a girl had once asked what was my favorite physical phenomenon? Perhaps the right answer was a kiss but I had said a spring: God's gift to the weary, cool example of not justice but mercy. Nonetheless, a few miles before Alley Springs on a Sunday I was tired. The little town had a cheap hotel; instead of going on I put up early and listened to the beginning rain hammer against my window.

At dawn the grim news was Alley Springs (or the ravine behind it) had had a flashflood; four handicapped persons trying to get their trailer over a small bridge out of the campground had been swept away, lost. When I got there the waters were still angry, and the curious out for their ration of numbness.

Many roads on, there was an attack by a German shepherd. As the great dog charged I swung my oak staff in an arc, just trying to keep him off. It bounced on thick fur as his mistress yelled at him to leave me alone. Scared, I was ready to really clobber him next time if possible, but the young woman got her arms around him before the second lunge. She said it was the stick had enraged him. But what if it thrown away the next one hated my eyebrows?

Later I spoke of this to a farmer after he'd called off his own German shepherd. He said he wouldn't face one without a 44-caliber pistol, telling in awed tones of the ewe that had rebelled against his shepherd. She'd simply had enough and three times butted the big dog in defiance. Three times its powerful jaws threw her to earth like a doll. Then Raggedy Ann rose no more.

After Lake of the Ozarks I was told of a grand castle built and abandoned by a water baron (he meant to supply Kansas City) that must be visited. Out of the way I went to see it and wasn't disappointed. But the pack was stolen while I climbed down a steep place for water.

In a panic at losing my house and security blanket, I hurried out to call a sheriff. We drove about looking for it in vain until returning to the very spot. There it was back again, with a note calling me a dumb-ass for leaving it unguarded. Only a knife, and compass case with hidden traveller's checks were missing. It could have been much worse.

At the edge of Kansas City I round-tripped by bus to see Independence where the Oregon Trail began. There had also been daydreams of a concert and major league baseball, but having no wheels in a car-town beat me; I returned to my line of footsteps, vivace .

Somewhere in Missouri I had wondered how far west the fireflies range:

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