Trail of Tears

On Display May Topic

What is most disappointing about where you live?

Today is the national observation of Memorial Day, the day citizens of the United States remember those who served and died for the nation. All weekend there have been parades and flags galore. Perhaps in reaction to these displays of patriotism, I have decided that today is an appropriate day to tackle this month's On Display topic.

I was twelve when I became disillusioned with my country. It happened in Mrs. Watro's seventh grade American history class. I still remember the smell of chalk dust and the way the early afternoon light filtered through the window blinds.

It was the school year 1973-74 and Mrs. Watro was a young woman in her third or fourth year of teaching. Looking back now, I realize she must have attended college during a time of social upheaval. Perhaps she marched in antiwar protests. Given her sympathies, I wouldn't have been a bit surprised.

But now she was a middle school history teacher in a middle class suburb where radical displays would not have been welcome. Instead, she made it her mission to open the eyes of her students, presenting them with a new and disturbing picture of American history. She was young and pretty, an enthusiastic teacher who captured the attention and the imagination of her young students. We believed her unreservedly, which made the disquieting truths she taught all the more disturbing.

One of the units we covered during the school year focused on the forced removal of the Cherokee people from the southeastern U.S. to "Indian Territory" in what later became the state of Oklahoma. Acting in defiance of the Supreme Court, the federal government upheld Georgia's seizure of tribal lands and began forcibly evicting the Cherokees, marching them more than 300 miles westward. Four thousand people, nearly a quarter of their numbers, died along the way. The march became known as the Trail of Tears.

Up until Mrs. Watro's class, I had only the haziest idea about settler/Indian relations. Years of hearing about the first Thanksgiving gave me the rosy picture of Pilgrims and Indians in fellowship over turkey and pumpkin pie. I never bothered to ask myself what happened to those Indians and why they weren't still attending Thanksgiving dinners at our houses.

Mrs. Watro read aloud to us from the memoirs of a woman who had been a child on the Trail of Tears march. The writer recalled losing her mother and grandparents to cholera. Some of us girls cried. Even the boys looked unusually somber. The sad tale was made horribly worse by the knowledge that government--our government--was responsible for it.

I have learned a lot of disappointing things about my country in the years since: the enslavement of millions of Africans, racial discrimination, intolerance. Not to mention lies, corruptions, and coverups. I still believe the U.S. is a great nation, despite its many flaws. But I've never forgotten that first disillusionment.

<<previous : email me : index : next>>