Running on the trail of tears
This morning I ventured out to Pea Ridge National Military Park in Garfield Arkansas for my 7 mile jog, one of the first long runs for this season’s marathon training. The one-way Telegraph Road loop winds through historic grounds where Cherokee indians migrated to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears during the winter of 1838-39, and Confederate and Union soldiers clashed during the Pea Ridge Campaign in March of 1862.
For a land that witnessed so much human misery, it was quite peaceful and beautiful on this overcast and cool morning. Graceful tree limbs arced overhead as I jogged the gradual uphill climb to the East Overlook where exhibits explained the fighting that took place in the battlefield below over a hundred years ago.
As I read the exhibit at the first stop and saw that the Trail of Tears passed through this land, I wondered if my ancestors could sense the presence of kindred blood. My maternal grandfather was born to a full blooded Cherokee woman and the European man who fell in love with her. She died shortly after his birth, and family history was rewritten with a new caucasian mother who enabled a smoother integration with polite society. As a genealogist, my mother has searched and searched for the identity of my great grandmother to no avail…she has all but disappeared into history.
I jogged along this road where my ancestors walked over a hundred years ago, and thought they would be comforted to know that they are remembered, and that their progeny walk the earth freely and happily.
