Walking the Cherokee Train of Tears
After hearing the New Dimensions interview with David Peat Jerry Elli wrote to Gentle Actions with the following story:-
“In 1985 I moved to LA to try to get produced a film about the Cherokee Trail of Tears, where in 1838 the entire Cherokee Nation of 16,000 people, living in a sovereign nation, were imprisoned in 31 concentration camps by 7,000 armed US soldiers and marched 900 miles to Oklahoma. 4,000 Indians, mostly children and the elderly, died along the way and were buried in shallow unmarked graves. This route became known as the Trail of Tears.
Those in LA didn’t think that Americans cared enough about this history and inhumanity to see a film about it. (Recall this is before the movie, DANCES WITH WOLVES.)
I was heart-broken, feeling total despair, and lost at what I could do to tell the world about the story of the Cherokee Nation. I decided to take a leap of faith and trust in my fellow man: I sold everything I owned (which was little) and took a bus to Oklahoma. There I began to walk in reverse the Trail of Tears, talking to all I met and recording their stories of modern day America and how they felt about the Trail of Tears and what it said about mankind. Many of these strangers feed me and some gave me a place to sleep for the night. Most of the time I simple slept in a small tent setup in the woods or meadows along the way.
It was a spiritual journey for me and I returned home, Fort Payne, Alabama, site of one of the 31 concentration camps, feeling grace, power and beauty from the gentle and loving people I met along the way. I was again in touch with God.
I wrote a book about my journey and the manuscript instantly aroused a bidding war among publishers in New York. First published in 1991 by Delacorte Press, the book, WALKING THE TRAIL, ONE MAN’S JOURNEY ALONG THE CHEROKEE TRAIL OF TEARS, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It is still in print today and is required reading in some schools across America. I have given presentations about the gentle act of walking, listening, believing and writing in Asia, Europe, Africa and throughout the USA.
I can hardly imagine where my life would be today if I had not taken that first step down the Trail. Those footsteps, however, have been heard around the world as even 18 years after the book’s release I still get letters and emails embracing the story’s gentle but life-altering action. Others, in their own ways, have gained the courage to walk their own trails.
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By Christine Egger, July 21, 2009 @ 2:13 pm
Powerful story of listening, faith, commitment… *Thank you* David for sharing this… So many lessons here…
By F. David Peat, July 21, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
Do people also know about Satish Kumar’s walk in the early 1960s from India to the capital cities of the world’s three nuclear powers?