Thanks for posting this, Nana. I’m glad to see the memorial. I do hope the taxpayers aren’t paying for it, I was afraid to look. This hits on what I’m doing when I’m not around. Much of the Trail of tears is covered in the book I’m STILL working on....
Many of the Cherokees didn’t leave primative homes. Let me give you one instance.
Elias Boudinot, son of OOWatee and brother of Stand Watie , had been educated at a school established by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at Cornwall, Connecticut. Here he took the name of a rich colonial benefactor, a citizen of New Jersey and a friend of George Washington who had served as the tenth president of the Continental Congress.
Elias married a white woman, Harriet Gold from Connecticut, much to the dismay of her cultured neighbors and family of New England. They settled along the Coo-sa-wa-tee River near New Echota, the Capitol of the Cherokee Nation, among other Deer Clan families such as Bell, Adair, Lynch, Vann, Starr, Ridge.
After some time had passed, Benjamin Gold, Harriet’s father traveled to the ‘wilderness’ to look in on his daughter living among the savages. On the 8th of December, 1829, he wrote from New Echota to his brother in New England describing his daughter’s home.
“She has a large and convenient framed house, two story, 60 by 40 ft. on the ground, well done off and well furnished with comforts of life. They get their supplies of clothes and groceries—they have their year’s store of teas, clothes, paper, ink, etc.,—from Boston, and their sugars, molasses, etc., from Augusta; they have two or three barrels of flour on hand at once.
This neighborhood is truly an interesting and pleasant place; the ground is smooth and level as a floor—the centre of the Nation—a new place laid out in city form, —one hundred lots, one acre each—a spring called the public spring, about twice as large as our saw-mill brook, near the centre, with other springs on the plat; six framed houses in sight, besides a Council House, Court House, printing office, and four stores all in sight of Boudinot’s house.”
Elias was the brother of Confederate Brigadere General Stand Watie.
A photo of his home (& others) in New Echota, before removal to Indian Territory West is here:
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v011/v011p0927.html
Boudinot, the Ridges went ahead to Indian Territory West in 1837 and established trade centers at Honey Springs to meet the arriving 13,000 Cherokee refugees from the Trail of Tears.
I have Cherokee grandchildren...
Thanks and bookmarked for more reading later tonight.