The Trail Where They Cried Poem by Osceola Waters

Nu-na-hi-dv-na-tlo-hi-lv-i.

They say that there were approximately ten million American Indians,
When white man first set his foot on our land,
That’s what the scholars say,
We are not stupid,
The pale faced one’s carved their way through millions more,
They came from the old world and stepped onto the new world,
Our world,
Known to us as Turtle Island,
Over the next four hundred years over ninety percent of all the Indians,
Would not survive,
Along with the whites came darkness,
A silent enemy,
An invisible enemy,
Killed more of us than the whites did,
Small Pox, all forms of sickness followed the white man like a shadow,
Bringing death to our people,
Disease was imported,
Exploited,
Dispatched,
Hatred hatched,
Whole nations exterminated,
The whites used Indian against Indian in warfare,
Whites fought whites over our land,
Over a country that was not there’s,
President Jefferson had a policy,
Civilize,
Christianize,
Indians resisted,
The churches persisted,
Assimilation was the proclamation,
The policy of removal adopted in 1825,
Carried out with callousness,
Carried out extensively,
With no exceptions,
With brutality and indifference,
By Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren,
Out numbered and over whelmed,
All Indians were force marched,
Cherokee,
Muskogee Creek,
Seminoles,
Many many nations driven hundreds of grueling miles,
Cold, starving and exhausted,
Many were ill and old,
The trail became the trail of tears,
The trail of death,
The trail of ghosts,
The death song was sung often,
The Indians suffered unimaginable hardships,
This exodus was deliberately schemed to eliminate as many as possible,
Now today in Oklahoma the government is trying to make English only a law,
Has any thing really changed?
Osceola Birdman Waters.
Assi-Yaholo.
Copy righted.
Draft finished


(3/21/2007)