Keeping a Fire

Photo by Cullan Smith from Unsplash

I was born Cherokee and I knew it, but I had to discover I am Indian, descendant of those who survived waves of death that depopulated the western hemisphere.

Many if not most of the casualties perished without ever seeing a European. Hernando de Soto started out in Florida,1539, with 620 men. While only about half of the Spaniards survived the futile search for gold because of continuing military clashes, the diseases they brought killed natives in the tens of thousands, wiped out whole villages, and crippled several cultures. It is sometimes written that de Soto’s men were the first Europeans to encounter the Mississippian cultures that left extensive ruins in what became the southeastern U.S….and also the last.

De Soto criss-crossed lands that would still be populated by indigenous peoples — mostly different tribes than those who greeted de Soto — when Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States after a major campaign promise to remove them. Most of the people thought to be in the way of civilization in the early 19th century were the so-called Five “Civilized” Tribes: Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole.

By application of a little military force and a lot of fraud, Jackson moved four and a half of the Five Tribes to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Some of…