The Trail of Tears

More than 150 years ago, in 1839, the United States forced the Cherokee Nation West of the Mississippi River into what later would become the state of Oklahoma. The weather was unusually harsh that winter and the cold, the disease and the hunger cost the Cherokee Nation the lives of “at least four thousand of the fifteen thousand people who traveled the thousand miles West” (Perdue 93). Not only was the journey a very cruel and dangerous one …

…children and the elderly. These Cherokee women were forced into new roles in their society. They were no longer at the forefront of decision making, they were now nomadic, desperate people. Cherokee women have long been noted for their strength, their cultural attachments, and their will-power and the ordeals that they faced in the 19th century were very devastating, but they came out of their nightmare alive and fighting. They are great and powerful women.