Congress May Expand Trail of Tears

Painting by Robert Lindneux (Woolaroc Museum)

The Trail of Tears National Historic Trail commemorates the removal of the Cherokee and the paths that 17 Cherokee detachments followed westward. Today the trail encompasses about 2,200 miles of land and water routes, and traverses portions of nine states.

The National Park Service Thursday endorsed a proposed study of adding perhaps 2,000 miles of land and water routes to the current Trail of Tears National Historic Trail through nine states.

The agency already works to preserve 2,200 miles of federally designated trails to educate the country about the tragic relocation of 16,000 Cherokee Indians from homes mostly in Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia. They were forced in the winter of 1838-39 to march about 800 miles to newly designated Indian Territory in what became Oklahoma, and more than 4,000 reportedly died.

"The Department (of the Interior) recognizes the importance of telling the complete story of the Trail of Tears," John Parsons, associate regional director of the Park Service, told the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks.

You can read the rest of the story here.

The Legend of the Cherokee Rose

No better symbol exists of the pain and suffering of the Trail Where They Cried than the Cherokee Rose. 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".

"I would sooner be honestly damned than hypocritically immortalized"
--Davy Crockett

His political career destroyed because he supported the Cherokee, he left Washington D. C. and headed west to Texas.


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