Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Books

On “Thirteen Moons” and Selective History

by Jimmy Hopper

The Riverwood Book Group recently completed Charles Frazier’s second novel, Thirteen Moons; his first novel, Cold Mountain, having been an extraordinary effort. As always, we had some great conversations about the book and the ideas generated both by the book and by the conversations.

Thirteen Moons essentially concerns the Southern Cherokee tribes and their interaction with the United States, the new nation formed on lands that they, and other tribes had considered their own. The group enjoyed the novel but it was, in my opinion, a mixed bag with a driving narrative through the first third and the “Trail of Tears” section, but meandering otherwise. It seemed to me that Frazier tried to both realistically portray certain of his characters but to also use them as symbols for such ideals as youth, a way of life, etc. In some cases, particularly the the part Indian girl Claire, he ended with neither.However, this post isn’t a book review, but a look at selective history.

The term, “Trail of Tears,” has been known to me since my youth, but as a fact of American history; and I’m an aficionado of American history, I knew nothing except that it concerned the removal of Southern Indians to Oklahoma. I knew no details, no human history, no politics; nothing except the fact that the removal had to do with the land being overrun with settlers and there was no place for the Indians. I guess I should have figured something, if only because of the word “tears” in the description. Walking from North Carolina to Oklahoma is with your possessions is enough to make one cry, I supposed. I also should have figured out how it was done from the simple fact that Andrew Jackson was president at that time. There was simply no way there was any consideration for humanity toward them from a man who didn’t consider them human.

The truth of it is that the entire episode was a disgrace; one in a long series of disgraces culminating in the Wounded Knee massacre that now exemplifies the taking of this country from its original inhabitants. I remember reading Thomas Jefferson’s comments to Meriweather Lewis regarding the tribes he would find “beyond the wide Missouri” and realizing that the the Manifest Destiny was there from the beginning as a matter of right. The tragedy of the Trail of Tears is well described in Thirteen Moons, in fact, the capture and execution of “Charley” (Tasli in history) and his men is unforgettable. There is a sense in which the Cherokees and Creeks were lucky, however. There was still an Oklahoma to which they could be sent. As the movement neared the Pacific Ocean, limited genocide became more in vogue. The ganeral aspect of untaught, sanitized American history probably served the country well when an astonishingly patriotic nation was called on to save the world from Fascism in the 20th Centrury.

Recently I found and read a historical marker on the street to the west of the new Tuscaloosa News building and near Capitol Park. It commorates a speech given by Chief Eufaula of the Alabama Creek Indians to the state legislature immediately before they embarked on the “Trail of Tears.” In it, he speaks of how he believed that the “men who built the great houses” had sought to destroy his people.” Now, he says that he feels that the “white Father doesn’t want harm to come to his “red children” but has their best interest at heart. He gets his shots in, though. They are being moved from the land of their ancestors, where “their fathers’ bones are buried.” They are forced to obey “laws they don’t understand.” He closes, poignantly, with the statement that “the Indian fires are going out in Alabama” and that, hopefully they will be re-lit in the west. He concludes with “This is all I have to say.” The sum of it is heartbreaking.

The question raised with the Book Group had to do with where the Christians were during all this. Christians were conspicious by their absence. There was not even one Bonhoeffer speaking out against injustice and evil, made official by an impersonal bureaucracy but still evil.