Tonight, I published a new short story, A Cherokee Dying. Or, to read this and other stories and poems, you can go to my website, Citizen Poet, and click the short story link.

  The Cherokee Indian Reservation in the Great Smoky Mountains between Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, which today is home to the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, has been part of a Cherokee heritage for thousands of years, a heritage that can be traced back to a beautiful valley on the banks of the Tuckaseigee River know as Kitawah. The first Cherokee settled in Kitawah more than 2,000 years ago and prior to its discovery by DeSoto in the 1500s, grew into a mighty nation of seven major clan villages, hundreds of settlements, and perhaps as many as 100,000 natives covering 40,000 square miles from roughly 40 miles north of present day Atlanta to just north of the Kiokee River in Ohio.

  With the coming of the white man, the Revolutionary War, and the discovery of gold, thousands of Cherokee died from slaughter, warfare, and biological warfare in the form of smallpox. With the gold rush and the national greed for Cherokee lands, Andrew Jackson defied a ruling of the Supreme Court in favor of the Cherokee Nation to forcibly remove the Cherokee to Oklahoma, resulting in a death march in the dead of winter in which more than 4,000 Cherokee died, a march that became known as the Trail of Tears.

  Some Cherokee hid from Jackson’s soldiers and others were spared when the US Army agreed to withdraw if several young Cherokee warriors who had killed American soldiers while resisting the removal surrendered and submitted to a firing squad. The young Cherokee became heroes to their fellows when they volunteered to surrender and end the round up of innocent natives. And yes, they were executed.

  It didn’t end the Trail of Tears, but it did end the roundup of Cherokee people, and those who remained behind pooled their money and their resources and over a period of time bought their land back from the government and the carpet baggers who had been given their land. Thus, the Cherokee Indian Reservation, officially known as the Qualla Boundary, became the new home of the Cherokee in the East, the only Indian reservation in the country that was bought back from the white man by the Indians themselves.

  The majority of my family, the Speers and the Minors, are tied to the western Cherokee lands, the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma (If you want to read some fairly interesting stories about my family, try typing in “Sheriff Eli Spears in Tahlequah, Ok” in Google) but for one reason or another, my grandfather and father were more tied to Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina which is where I became aware of me and my heritage.

  The story that I have posted tonight is a reflection of many of the legends and sensibilities I experienced while living, working . going to school and raising my own family on the Cherokee Indian Reservation. The characters in the story speak in Cherokee, which of course I speak as well, although not as well as I would like, but I have woven the Cherokee words into the story in such a way that English speakers will easily understand what they are saying.

  If you like the story, please let me know. Send me an email. And if you have any questions about Cherokee, please feel free to ask. If I am not overwhelmed and happen to know the answer, I’ll try to respond. Read the story here.