Source:Ehle, John. Trail of Tears

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Source	Trail of Tears
	The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation
Author	Ehle, John

Coverage

Place	Virginia, United States Mississippi, United States Kentucky, United States Missouri, United States South Carolina, United States West Virginia, United States Arkansas, United States Texas, United States Florida, United States Alabama, United States Georgia, United States Louisiana, United States North Carolina, United States Tennessee, United States
Year range	1838 - 1838
Subject	Ethnic/Cultural
Ethnicity / Culture	Native American

Publication information

Type	Book
Publisher	Doubleday
Date issued	1988, c1988
Place issued	New York, New York

Citation

Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. (New York, New York: Doubleday, 1988, c1988).

Repositories

Family History Center	http://www.familysearch.org/eng/library/fhlcatal..	Family history center
John L. Throckmorton Library (Fort Bragg, NC)	http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/oclc/17480066?page=..	Other

1 Overview
2 Reviews
3 Usage Tips
4 References

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Overview

The fascinating portrayal of the Cherokee nation, filled with Indian legend, lore, and religion--a gripping American drama of power, politics, betrayal, and ambition.^[1] Recounts the many broken U.S. treaties with the Cherokees, describes how they were forced to leave their lands in Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina, and looks at the hardships they faced on the trail west.^[2]

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Reviews

"One of the many ironies of U.S. government policy toward Indians in the early 1800s is that it persisted in removing to the West those who had most successfully adapted to European values. As whites encroached on Cherokee land, many Native leaders responded by educating their children, learning English, and developing plantations. Such a leader was Ridge, who had fought with Andrew Jackson against the British. As he and other Cherokee leaders grappled with the issue of moving, the land-hungry Georgia legislatiors, with the aid of Jackson, succeeded in ousting the Cherokee from their land, forcing them to make the arduous journey West on the infamous 'Trail of Tears.' Popular history for public libraries." --Mary B. Davis, Museum of American Indian Lib., New York^[3]

"A meticulously researched but not wholly satisfactory history of the Cherokees from 1770 to 1838, when 12,000 Indians were forced to move to Oklahoma in a march known as The Trail of Tears. Novelist Ehle (The Winter People, 1982; Last One Home, 1984; etc.) grew up in North Carolina on what was once Cherokee land, and the bond he feels with the area's past informs his work with passion--if not seamless coherence. That passion drove Ehle to amass an astounding amount of primary material--letters, documents, folklore, etc.--and to wield it with sociological assessments and odd bits of fictionalization into this account. Nonetheless, there's an unfinished feel here: most striking is Ehle's failure to provide an overview of the Cherokee nation before the whites' arrival--the first significant character introduced is Ridge, a Cherokee with Scottish blood. Moreover, further characters and incidents are often mentioned with no explanation, a problem sometimes remedied in later pages and sometimes not. Even so, though, the gallery of little-known, historical figures--mixed bloods who tried to improve the Cherokee fate: the noble Major Ridge, the brilliant Elias Boudinet, the hardheaded John Ross; Sequoyah, the first to create a written Indian language--glows, and some rarities (e.g., the letters of a young US soldier assigned to the removal of the Indians) impart a poignant intimacy. Although Ehle never quite weaves a tight tapestry from his multithreaded skein of raw information, his is certainly the most thorough Cherokee history to date--and it makes up in emotional impact what it lacks in narrative rigor." -- Kirkus Reviews, VNU Business Media, Inc.^[4]

"In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, the author of the highly acclaimed The Winter People tells the moving, searing story of the betrayal and brutal dispossession of the Cherokee Nation. "(A) beautifully written and emotionally mature book . . . a must."--New York Newsday.^[5]

"This is a gripping account of one of the most unpleasant episodes in our history after slavery and Japanese internment--that of the Trail of Tears. The irony of moving this tribe is that the Cherokees were the most sophisticated and 'civilized' of the tribes that the whites encountered, as well as being monotheistic before missionaries arrived. They had incredible leadership, but it was very divided, as it is to this day in Cherokee factionalism. It is a result of the terrible event known as the Trail of Tears." --Anonymous Barnes & Noble Contributor^[6]

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