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TRAIL OF TEARS – 2004
by Lola Null

Forty of us trekked off on our Trail of Tears tour led by Br. John Giesler on September 9, 2004 from Winston-Salem. We boarded the bus for an eleven day trip of Moravian missionary work among the Cherokee Indians, through eight states going 2763 miles to Oklahoma and back. Many of us read books such as Faith and Tears – The Moravian Mission Among the Cherokees by Daniel Crews, History of the Moravian Missions Among Southern Tribes in the United States by Edmund Schwarze, Trail of Tears, the Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Indians by John Ehle. Many museums about the Cherokee Indians were seen. At the Oconaluftee Indian Village in Cherokee, NC, a replica of an authentic Cherokee village town of 1750, we observed arts as weaving of belts and beads, hickory bark baskets, carving of spears, bows and arrows, masks, rattles, boats and molding pottery.  It was interesting to learn that the Indians had lived in log homes, not in tepees. There were logs hollowed out for water. The Cherokee were a matrilineal society (the man when married went to live with the woman’s clan) until the European influence affected the Cherokees during the 1700-1800’s. At the capitol of the Cherokees New Echota State Park museum we saw Moravian marterials. We next went to Springplace Mission and God’s Acre, the burial place of Moravian missionaries such as Sr. Anna Rosina Kliest Gambold and Christian Indians. We learned that the Cherokee language has no profane words. Also there is no word for good by – just “we shall see each other again” (in this or next life). Thanks to the efforts of Sequoyah, the Cherokee were inabled to read and write. We saw a printing press used to print the newspaper in Cherokee and English. 

            The saddest part of the tour was seeing how the Cherokee Indians were treated by many of the American people and government. The US government soldiers made them leave their homes farms and hunting grounds in the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee and went by foot or boat to Oklahoma. Around 4,000 of them died on the way due to the sever winter of 1838-1839. The Moravian Cherokees, however, did not lose any one on the trip, due to the Moravian tradition of community and caring for one another.

The highlight of the tour was at Oaks Indian Center, site of the former Moravian Mission church and school. We went to nearby God’s Acre and saw many missionary graves. We observed a Cherokee dance – they use a single drum tone, service singing in Cherokee. We enjoyed a cookout meal of fried hog, baked beans, fried bread and fried potatoes among other treats.

            We worshiped the first Sunday at the Nashville Cowboy Church and the second Sunday at Morning Star Moravian Church in Asheville. We had lunch and enjoyed fellowship with the latter community of Christians. We enjoyed eating Goo-goo candy and the biggest biscuits I’ve ever seen, We attended a live radio/TV show at the Grand Old Opry, Branson, and a pow-wow dance. We exchanged jokes, watched videos on Moravian and Cherokee history, and found out most carpets are dyed in NW Georgia. We visited the Will Rogers Museum (he was a Cherokee) and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s  The Little House on the Prairie Museum