Post by J85K on Oct 18, 2016 7:34:01 GMT -4
www.bbc.com/travel/story/20161004-a-600-mile-walk-to-a-singing-river
In 1830, US president Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the forced exodus of tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands and their resettlement in parts of the country that were unknown to them.
One of these Native Americans was a teenage girl from the Euchee tribe who lived alongside Alabama's Tennessee River, which was revered as Nunnuhsae, the Singing River. Her name was Te-lah-nay, and she was sent with her sister and the rest of their tribe to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma, a walk of almost 600 miles due west along what became known as the Trail of Tears.
Te-lah-nay was unable to settle in Indian Territory as none of the rivers or streams there could sing to her like the river she knew, so the young girl decided to walk back alone, guided only by the location of the rising sun each morning. The journey took her five years. The tag Te-lah-nay wore on the forced walk, had the number, 59, printed on it. Tags both identified and dehumanised the group.
In the Oklahoma archives, Hendrix’s great-great-grandmother is listed as “Alabama Female, 18 years old, Number 59, Deceased”. Because she simply disappeared, the authorities assumed she had died. In fact, after walking the 600 miles back to her beloved Singing River, she found love and happiness with Jonathan Levi Hipp – though the two couldn't get a marriage licence because Native American Te-lah-nay was told she was not an American citizen.
Hendrix’s wall, now about 1.25 miles long and as high as 6ft, snakes around the woodland outside his home, curling like some giant serpent then disappearing into the trees. It is the largest un-mortared rock wall in the United States, and the largest memorial anywhere to a Native American woman.
In 1830, US president Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the forced exodus of tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands and their resettlement in parts of the country that were unknown to them.
One of these Native Americans was a teenage girl from the Euchee tribe who lived alongside Alabama's Tennessee River, which was revered as Nunnuhsae, the Singing River. Her name was Te-lah-nay, and she was sent with her sister and the rest of their tribe to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma, a walk of almost 600 miles due west along what became known as the Trail of Tears.
Te-lah-nay was unable to settle in Indian Territory as none of the rivers or streams there could sing to her like the river she knew, so the young girl decided to walk back alone, guided only by the location of the rising sun each morning. The journey took her five years. The tag Te-lah-nay wore on the forced walk, had the number, 59, printed on it. Tags both identified and dehumanised the group.
In the Oklahoma archives, Hendrix’s great-great-grandmother is listed as “Alabama Female, 18 years old, Number 59, Deceased”. Because she simply disappeared, the authorities assumed she had died. In fact, after walking the 600 miles back to her beloved Singing River, she found love and happiness with Jonathan Levi Hipp – though the two couldn't get a marriage licence because Native American Te-lah-nay was told she was not an American citizen.
Hendrix’s wall, now about 1.25 miles long and as high as 6ft, snakes around the woodland outside his home, curling like some giant serpent then disappearing into the trees. It is the largest un-mortared rock wall in the United States, and the largest memorial anywhere to a Native American woman.