And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Markers recall Indians' brutal eviction from state
Descendents of the Trail of Death dedicate memorial
to tribe's 1838 march to Kansas.
By Eric B. Schoch Indianapolis Star/News
http://www.starnews.com/news/citystate/99/aug/0802st_trail.html
JOHNSONVILLE, Ind. (Aug. 2, 1999) -- As butterflies flitted in the warm breeze, George
Godfrey performed a sacred Potawatomi blessing Sunday to remember another warm day,
nearly 161 years ago, that was filled with misery and death.
On Sept. 15, 1838, 860 members of the Potawatomi tribe camped one night in western
Warren County during their forced removal from Indiana to Kansas, a journey now called
the Trail of Death.
Two children died that day, as the Indians walked from Williamsport, and they were
buried somewhere in the area.
Staff Photo / Cara VanLeuven DEATH MARCH REMEMBERED: George Godfrey prays to the four
winds then sprinkles tobacco on the Trail of Death marker in Gopher Hill Cemetery near
Johnsonville, Ind.
On Sunday, about 40 people gathered at Gopher Hill Cemetery to dedicate the final
Trail of Death marker in Indiana with words and ceremony.
"This is a small way of symbolizing, of giving voice to what can be done to overcome
the differences that used to exist, and still exist," said Godfrey, who had ancestors
driven from Indiana and Illinois.
"I just pray in my heart people will live in harmony with other people, and respect
other people for what they are," he said.
Godfrey was "recruited" in the 1980s into the effort to create the system of markers
along the trail. He was asked by Shirley Willard, president of the Fulton County
(Ind.) Historical Society in Rochester and coordinator of the marker program.
Godfrey learned of his great-great-grandmother, Watchakee, as he searched through
records. The strong-willed woman was removed from Illinois three times from 1832 to
1844. One of her married daughters walked the Trail of Death in 1838.
Willard said she and most others who grew up in Rochester learned of the day in 1838
when the Potawatomi Indians were marched at gunpoint through the main street of town,
early in their trek to Kansas.
The route has been designated a Regional Historical Trail by the legislatures of
Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas.
It took two months to complete the trip. They struggled first with heat and drought,
then fought their way through an October snowstorm. During a portion of the trip, the
tribe's chiefs were kept in a cage, hauled on a wagon. Fifty people died on the way,
most of them children.
Fifty-three markers now are in place, and 11 more are needed in Illinois and Missouri
to mark each campsite every 15 to 20 miles.
All the markers have been privately donated by individuals, Scout troops and other
organizations.
Kenneth and Ilene Smith of West Lebanon arranged for the Gopher Hill Cemetery marker
and were among those who gathered in a circle to observe Godfrey's blessing.
Godfrey, 59, an entomologist by training and acting dean of instruction at Haskell
Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., wore traditional Potawatomi garb: red
shirt with arm bands, cloth turban wrapped around his head and tan cloth leggings. He
carried a dance rattle fashioned from a deer antler and hooves.
Godfrey gave a silent prayer as he faced each of the four compass points, sprinkling
bits of tobacco on and around the marker as he went. Tobacco, he explained, was
considered a sacred herb by the Potawatomi, who also used to it repel insect pests and
smoked it only occasionally.
Among those joining Godfrey's silent prayers were Tom Hamilton of Warsaw and George
Wesselhoft of Lowell, cousins who grew up in Oklahoma and returned years later to the
state their great-great-grandfather, Abram Burnett, was forced to leave.
Hamilton, who worked at International Harvester Co. and then at advertising agencies
in Chicago and Indiana, said he didn't really begin to learn about the history of the
trail, his people and his family until he moved to Indiana in 1979.
"It's a part of our history that had been lost, forgotten. Actually, covered up,"
Hamilton said.
In fact, he said, the entire Potawatomi culture was expunged, with the language, even
dances, forbidden.
When he was a child in Oklahoma he would visit his grandmother, and she taught him
what she knew.
"But she didn't know a lot. The cultural damage had already been done."
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine
of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
UPDATES: CAMP JUSTICE
http://shell.webbernet.net/~ishgooda/oglala/
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