Corn beads - Trail of Tears

As the Cherokee were forced west, they cried. Along the route that they traveled can be found a plant that bears these corn beads. The Cherokee believe these corn beads to be their tears. If you are an Eastern Cherokee you simply call these corn beads, but if you are Western Cherokee then they are Trail of Tears Beads.

To prep these corn beads for me to string in pieces of jewelry, I have to pull the silk out of the middle of it. This is painstakingly slow and just plain tedious! I then take an upholstery pin to ensure I do in fact have a clear passage down the center of the bead.

Today when Kent got home from work, we went into town and just getting there was interesting. It is move in weekend for the University students and so with the already heavy traffic with it still being beach weather, a saturday and people out doing their shopping, you add to that all the traffic coming in off I40 to the campus. To get from my house to the bulk of town shopping means coming off I40 and heading towards campus. Ugh! To think about doing a left turn was insane and I told my hubby I don't remember the last time I drove in so many circles!!

We got our errands done though and had lunch while we were out. When we got home, I settled down to prep more of the corn beads and have done that while watching the telly. It's going to take about 8 more hours of prep before I have enough done to make what I am wanting to work on next.


Trail of Tears

Resentment of the Cherokee had been building and reached a pinnacle following the discovery of gold in northern Georgia. Possessed by "gold fever" and a thirst for expansion, many white communities turned on their Cherokee neighbors. The U.S. government ultimately decided it was time for the Cherokees to be "removed"; leaving behind their farms, their land and their homes.

The displacement of native people was not wanting for eloquent opposition. Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay spoke out against removal. The Reverend Samuel Worcester, missionary to the Cherokees, challenged Georgia’s attempt to estinguish Indian title to land in the state, actually winning his case before the Supreme Court.

The U.S. government used the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 to justify the removal. The treaty, signed by about 100 Cherokees known as the Treaty Party, relinquished all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Indian Territory and the promise of money, livestock, various provisions, tools and other benefits.

When these pro-removal Cherokee leaders signed the Treaty of New Echota, they also signed their own death warrants, since the Cherokee Naiton Council had earlier passed a law calling for the death of anyone agreeing to give up tribal land. The signing and the removal led to bitter factionalism and ultimately to the deaths of most of the Treaty Party leaders once the Cherokee arrived in Indian Territory.

Opposition to the removal was led by Chief John Ross, a mixed-blood of Scottish and one-eighth Cherokee descent. The Ross party and most Cherokees opposed the New Echota Treaty, but Georgia and the U.S. government prevailed and used it as justification to force almost all of the 17,000 Cherokees from their southeastern homeland.

Under orders from President Jackson the U.S. Army began enforcement of the Removal Act. The Cherokee were rounded up in the summer of 1838 and loaded onto boats that traveled the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers into Indian Territory. Many were held in prison camps awaiting their fate.

An estimated 4,000 died from hunger, exposure and disease. The journey became a cultural memory as the "trail where they cried" for the Cherokees and other removed tribes. Today it is widely remembered by the general public as the "Trail of Tears".