MYSTERIOUS AMERICA

Morton’s BMW Motorcycles presents Dr. Seymour O’Life’s MYSTERIOUS AMERICA

THE ETERNAL FLAMEOFTHE CHEROKEE

RED CLAY STATE PARK, CLEVELAND, TN

They took the whole Cherokee nation

Put us on this reservation

Took away our ways of life

The tomahawk and the bow and knife

Took away our native tongue

And taught their English to our young The Raiders

Many of us have heard the sad story of the Trail of Tears, but, for those who have not, let me tell you the story.

In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which required the various Indian tribes in today’s southeastern United States to give up their lands in exchange for federal territory which was located west of the Mississippi River. Most Indians ercely resisted this policy, but as the 1830s wore on, most of the major tribes – the Choctaws, Muscogee Creeks, Seminoles, and Chickasaws – agreed to be relocated to Indian Territory (in present-day Oklahoma). The Cherokee were forced to move because a small, rump faction of the tribe signed the Treaty of New Echota in late 1835, a treaty that the U.S. Senate rati ed in May 1836. This action – the treaty signing and its subsequent Senate approval – tore the Cherokee into two implacable factions: a minority of those who were allied with the “treaty party,” and the vast majority that bitterly opposed the treaty signing. In May 1838, the Cherokee removal process began. U.S. Army troops, along with various state militia, moved into the tribe’s homelands and forcibly evicted more than 16,000

Cherokee Indian people from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama,

North Carolina, and Georgia. They were rst sent to so-called “roundup camps,” and soon afterward to one of three emigration camps. Once there, the U.S. Army gave orders to move the Cherokee west. In June 1838, three detachments left southeastern Tennessee and were sent to Indian Territory by water. Dif culties with those moves, however, led to negotiations between Principal Chief John Ross and U.S. Army General Win eld Scott, and later that summer, Scott issued an order stating that Ross would be in charge of all future detachment movements. Ross, honoring that pledge, orchestrated the migration of fourteen detachments, most of which traveled over existing roads, between August and December 1838. The impact of the resulting Cherokee “Trail of Tears” was devastating. More than a thousand Cherokee – particularly the old, the young, and the in rm – died during their trip west, hundreds more deserted from the detachments, and an unknown number – perhaps several thousand – perished from the consequences of the forced migration. The tragic relocation was completed by the end of March 1839, and resettlement of tribal members in Oklahoma began soon afterward. The Cherokee, in the years that followed, struggled to reassert themselves in the new,

unfamiliar land. Today, they are a proud, independent tribe, and its members recognize that despite the adversity they have endured, they are resilient and invest in their future.

Today you will nd a small hillside park in southeastern Tennessee called Red Clay and in it something strange and a bit wonderous.

“Red Clay was called Ela-wodi-yi, which translates into Red Earth Place,” says Erin Medley, park manager. “Many general council meetings were held here over the years with 3,000 to 4,000 Cherokee in attendance. This location had become the new capital in exile for the Cherokee people.”

Red Clay served as the last eastern council grounds of the Cherokee Nation from 1832-1837. Before 1832, the Cherokee capital was located at New Echota until the state of Georgia removed the Cherokee Nation’s political sovereignty and ceased Cherokee meetings. At the Red Clay Council Grounds (NR listed 1972), a proposed treaty with the United States in October 1835 was unanimously rejected by the Cherokee. Chief John Ross led the movement for the Cherokee to remain in the eastern lands and refused their removal to Oklahoma. Red Clay State Historical Park is a certi ed interpretive site on the Trail of Tears. The park features replicas of a Cherokee farmhouse, cabins, and council house as well as an interpretive center with exhibits and artifacts. Blue Hole Spring, a sapphire-blue spring, produces over 400,000 gallons of water each day. But, most importantly, you will nd the Eternal Flame of the Cherokee Nation. The sacred re was a ame that was kept continuously burning in the council house of each village, and was used to light all household re. On October 1, 1838, minus the few hundred members of the Ridge-Watie Treaty party that had already departed for Indian Territory, the Cherokee council met at Red Clay for one nal time before the Trail of Tears begun.

While most of the Cherokee Nation was forcibly removed to what is now Oklahoma, a few hundred Cherokee managed to avoid the dragnets of the federal and state forces and ee into the wilderness, eventually forming the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. In 1951, members of the Eastern Band decided to retrace the Trail of Tears, eventually returning from Oklahoma with a ame (in a bucket lled with charcoal) taken from the new Sacred Flame. In 1984, the rst joint secession of the Oklahoma and Eastern bands of the Cherokee in 146 years was held at Red Clay, where this eternal ame was created, using the same re as the 1951 ame.

It still burns today and while it does the Cherokee Nation still stands tall and proud and the ame surely is a part of Mysterious American history. O’Life Out! ,