Showing posts with label Trail of Tears. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trail of Tears. Show all posts
This is a site where the Cherokees camped on the Trail of Tears. The house, of course, was not there in 1838. It's a place called Rattlesnake Springs, located along the border of Tennessee and North Carolina.
(photo credit: James F. Corn for the National Park Service)
This is part of the Trail of Tears in Tennessee. The mood of the picture is so melancholy you can almost see the march enacted before your eyes.
(Photo credit: Benjamin Nance for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation)
I just finished Chapter 14. A real feeling of accomplishment, because I was stalled for awhile. Why? Who can say. I allowed other things to get in the way of my writing -- like, anything! Also, I listened to those evil little voices in my head that told me I really didn't know what I was doing. I mean, who did I think I was, writing about another century, a far off place, an unfamiliar culture. Surely it would come off as false, and never see the light of day once it was finished -- that is, if I could even finish it! After all, did I really have a good story here? Would anybody really want to read it?
That's the great thing about a writer's group. They don't let you listen to those evil little voices that get you down. Thanks to those women, I didn't get away with laying off my story for long. They didn't even let me get away with changing my story in the hopes of making it more "contemporary"! They soooo weren't buying it. And I'm so glad. I got to hear them tell me the things they loved about my story, the things they couldn't live without if I changed it. It really gave me a boost in self-confidence. And boy did I need it. Scoot over, evil voices!
I'm always looking for pictures of stockades that were used with the Cherokees in the 1830's, and often I find nothing. There aren't many remnants of those stockades left, since they were temporary forts and holding pens. Still, I came across a few cool images that I wanted to share here. Enjoy.
Call me obsessive compulsive. That's what I look like some days, writing this story like my life depends on it while the groceries, once again, aren't purchased, the bathtub isn't scrubbed, and those appointments that should have been made, haven't.
So what's the big deal about this story?
It's Angeline. She won't leave me alone.
Okay, that's really weird, considering she's been dead a whole century now. I'm not into hauntings or ghosts, I'm really not. But when I visited the Cherokee museum where her father, the famous William Holland Thomas, was on exhibit for his many accomplishments, most notably saving the Cherokees from total removal from North Carolina, I began to wonder about his daughter, Angeline. She's the one from whom my husband is descended. The more I found out -- she's illegitimate, and half-Cherokee, half white (through Will, of course) -- the more I found that I didn't know. Mystery shrouds this woman. Because she is the illegitimate offspring, the legitimate family refers to her politely as "adopted". The timing of her "adoption" happens to coincide with the Cherokee Removal. Hmmm. Interesting that this white man, who himself had been adopted into the Cherokee tribe as an honorary member and was working almost around the clock to see that they were not removed from their rightful home, chose this time to bring his illegitimate daughter into his own home that he shared with his very virtuous mother. Was he fearful that she would be forced to go on the trail? And by the way, where was her own mother in all this?
All these questions swirled in my mind a couple of years ago when we visited North Carolina. I felt such a sense of . . . well, her . . . I felt an urgency to do something. I needed to tell her story.
The only thing was, I didn't know her story.
After months of frustrating research on a woman who was simply a name on a page, it occurred to me . . . why did I need her story? My questions provided a good framework for a story of my own invention. The skeleton of facts, with muscle, tissue, blood and breath born of fiction.
Thus, Green Corn and Porch Music was born.
So what's the big deal about this story?
It's Angeline. She won't leave me alone.
Okay, that's really weird, considering she's been dead a whole century now. I'm not into hauntings or ghosts, I'm really not. But when I visited the Cherokee museum where her father, the famous William Holland Thomas, was on exhibit for his many accomplishments, most notably saving the Cherokees from total removal from North Carolina, I began to wonder about his daughter, Angeline. She's the one from whom my husband is descended. The more I found out -- she's illegitimate, and half-Cherokee, half white (through Will, of course) -- the more I found that I didn't know. Mystery shrouds this woman. Because she is the illegitimate offspring, the legitimate family refers to her politely as "adopted". The timing of her "adoption" happens to coincide with the Cherokee Removal. Hmmm. Interesting that this white man, who himself had been adopted into the Cherokee tribe as an honorary member and was working almost around the clock to see that they were not removed from their rightful home, chose this time to bring his illegitimate daughter into his own home that he shared with his very virtuous mother. Was he fearful that she would be forced to go on the trail? And by the way, where was her own mother in all this?
All these questions swirled in my mind a couple of years ago when we visited North Carolina. I felt such a sense of . . . well, her . . . I felt an urgency to do something. I needed to tell her story.
The only thing was, I didn't know her story.
After months of frustrating research on a woman who was simply a name on a page, it occurred to me . . . why did I need her story? My questions provided a good framework for a story of my own invention. The skeleton of facts, with muscle, tissue, blood and breath born of fiction.
Thus, Green Corn and Porch Music was born.
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