Since I knew little English, I could not understand many of their words. But I understood their gestures very well. One soldier prodded me with his bayonet and motioned for me to go out the door. I snatched my baby up and made signs asking for time to get a few clothes. We were scantily clad that hot July day. The other man struck me a stunning blow with the butt of his musket. I prayed desperately to Yowa (our word for God) for strength to keep from fainting from the terrible pain and leaving my baby to the mercy of those pale-faced savages. I stumbled out the door of the home my husband and l had built and loved so much leaving pots of food, our dinner, bubbling on the fire. Our old dog Waya (wolf) came up wagging his tail. I patted his head and told him to stay. My little one struggled to get down to play with his pet.

The soldiers laughed loudly at the sport of prodding me with muskets and bayonets and yelling "Soooie" as to hogs they were driving to market as they drove us from our home forever. I looked back to see if my husband might be following. I saw some men who had followed the soldiers to claim whatever the evicted people left behind. They were loaded down with our possessions. I quickly turned the head of my baby before he saw his dog that lay bleeding. The merciless scavengers had crushed his head.

I was driven to a huge log stockade that had no roof. It was crowded to overflowing with homeless Cherokee. Homeless in their own homeland. Every time the heavy door was opened, I prayed my husband would walk in. He never did. I do not know if he made the transition to the Spirit World in one of the 28 stockades in which the Cherokee were imprisoned or on the forced march. We had little food and slept on the hard packed ground with no covering. The odor was overpowering. We had few sanitary facilities and no clothes into which to change. We had no shelter from the blazing sun in the hottest summer anyone could remember. All around me people lay moaning. Gasping. Dying. Some sat feebly singing their death song. My tiny warrior played with the rattle he had clung to through it all. Sometimes he asked, "Adadoda?" (Father?) How to tell that sad-faced child I knew not where his father was?

In late October we were herded out of the stockade on the 1,200 mile walk we call Nunadautsuny, The Trail Where They Cried. Our conquerors call it The Trail of Tears. We stopped one Sunday about four miles out of Nashville to hold Christian services. It was led by the Reverend Jesse Bushyhead, Cherokee and Baptist Minister. The owner of the property on which we stopped ordered us off. We trudged on while Christians went to the churches. In Hopkinsville, Kentucky some people took up a collection for us. Bless those compassionate people.