The tens of thousands of Native Americans who crossed the Trail of Tears in the 1800s were honored during a memorial walk in White Creeks on Tuesday. The trail’s northern route passed through present-day Nashville — as part of an ethnic cleansing of Indigenous tribal members by the U.S. government.
The short walk on The Whites Creek Greenway at Fontanel attracted about two dozen Tennessee residents, including Melba Checote-Eads, a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma. It was organized by Friends of Whites Creek and the Whites Creek Historical Society.
Checote-Eads says her ancestors were among the Five Civilized Tribes — Muscogee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Cherokee nations — that were forced to leave their homeland in the southeast U.S.
Damon Mitchell WPLN NewsResidents and community members walk The Whites Creek Greenway at Fontanel as part of the Trail of Tears commemoration.
“Andrew Jackson went down with his volunteer army into Alabama, into the heart of the Muscogee Nation, and he killed, and murdered, and burned everything from Tennessee down to lower Alabama,” she says.
Checote-Eads has been organizing her own memorial walks to honor her ancestors in Woodbury and Mt. Juliet for more than 15 years.
While no one can change history, she says, the commemorative walks serve as an opportunity to keep the legacy of her late tribal members alive.
“We remember that the people left over the river, and that was the last time to look back to their homeland,” says Checote-Eads. “The Muscogee people have always been told ‘never come back and never look back.’ Today I’m happy to say we’ve been coming back.”
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