Exodus 19:2-8a; Psalm 100; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
Between the years of 1830 and 1850, an estimated 60,000 Native Americans along with a few white sympathizers were removed from the Southeast and forced to relocate in the mid-West. We know that as the Trail of Tears—a five-thousand-mile trek. Most of the Indians forcibly relocated where of five nations, that had conformed to US policies begun in George Washington’s presidency to acclimate to the more “civilized” ways of the white man. They farmed, lived in houses, raised cattle, sent their children to school, wore pants, and became Christian. Members of the Cherokee Nation even helped Andrew Jackson win the Battle of Horseshoe Bend that would advance his career and help him achieve the presidency. But the demons of greed and privilege would soon overcome our better instincts and Jackson would sign the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that led to two decades of relocation for the Indians.
The Native Americans lost everything on the Trail of Tears. They were forced from their homes without notice or warning, allowed to take only that which they could carry. They left property and possession, their lands, and their burial grounds—sacred ground where loved ones were buried. The circumstances of this exodus were forced upon them. Even those who left before the violence began, felt their only choice was to go now and gain a little or go later and gain nothing.
The trail itself left only sorrow and suffering, loss and pain in its wake. Those who were to old or weak, could ride, but most had to walk. They were crowded into stockades which bred disease and had no medicine in which to treat the sick. The food quickly ran out and many died through starvation, dysentery, cholera, pneumonia, exposure, and exhaustion. Some were killed by the troops—mostly for rebellion, though some because they were an inconvenience. The dead were hastily buried in shallow, roadside graves, if they were buried at all. It is estimated that 20,000 died in the relocation process.
Those who did survive, established homes and began the work of building a new life. Steven Charleston, an indigenous elder of the Choctaw nation and a retired Episcopal bishop, claims that their survival was because they understood their exodus as not being set apart from humanity—excluded by the white man—but through their suffering embodying the vulnerable condition of humanity. Their experience was the experience of human beings throughout history. The act of exclusivity became an inclusivity that aligned them with all those who had suffered the struggles of life, the pain of oppression, the fear of the unknown. Humanity has walked across the timeline of history in places of suffering from the exodus in scripture to the war in Ukraine and so much tragedy in between. Humans know suffering.
E. F. Vann, a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, recounts the story of his ancestors and the forced migration in the University of Arkansas papers related to the Trail of Tears. He says that though there were some, like his grandparents, who could not reconcile themselves to their losses, the next generations found a period of peace and prosperity. Their communities thrived. The long walk had been the walk of every person who knows what it is to be alone and afraid. But they kept going because they knew they were not alone. They saw the others walking beside them, they saw hope. As Bishop Charleston puts it, “To step over the threshold of our own fears, we must be willing to do what the survivors of the Trail of Tears did: embody hope.”
On one of the wagon trains headed westward, the men of the tribe would circle around the train during the day and the camp at night carrying reeds with eagle feathers affixed to the ends. The feathers had been treated by medicine men and they were to encourage the Indians to not be heavy hearted or think of the homes they had left. A bit like Moses offering hope to the Israelites, “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself.”
The older women sang songs about going to their homes and their lands and that “there is One who is above and ever watches over us; He will care for us.” The Native Americans embodied hope in the midst of their pain and suffering. They endured because they could look to a future; they could look past the darkness of the storm clouds and trust that the light would shine again. Bishop Charleston writes in his book, Ladder To the Light, “Don’t let the dark clouds fool you. They pretend to own the heavens…a permanent shadow over our lives. But I know the secret: there is a world of sunlight behind them…”
When we are in the midst of suffering, when the trail ahead is shrouded in shadow, our endurance is not about pressing ahead with adversity, it is a willingness to stay put with our dismay. It is about cultivating a patience and perseverance that moves us through our adversity because we can trust that the light is just beyond the darkness. Our patience is not a virtue, it is that out of which grows our character. And if our character is that which is not defined by false optimism or distracted by settled fatalism, then we can find our hope. We can sing the songs of one who watches over us. We can be born up on eagle’s wings. We can follow the eagle feathers to our new home.
Paul tells us that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint us. When we understand our hope in the shared experiences of our common humanity—knowing that we all suffer, we all struggle, and are afraid—we can find compassion for that same common humanity—all wish to be free from suffering, all wish to be free from fear, all of us desire peace and joy. It is when we understand this about each other that we recognize suffering is not exclusion, but inclusion. That inclusion, the ability to connect to one another –no matter how different we might be—cultivates our hope.
Hope makes room for love. It liberates us, freeing us from our fears. It unites us, breaking down the barriers that isolate us from one another. Hope is about casting vision. The more we share in hope, the brighter the light will shine. Hope knows the shadow of darkness, but it does not linger there.
In the lyrics of the song, Hope and Tears, Keith Sanford offers a glimpse into the Native American experience on the Trail of Tears and what it means to embody hope,
On the trail I hear them weeping.
On the frozen ground they sleep.
From the stockades to Oklahoma,
Wind is cold and snow is deep.
Heavy bags upon her shoulders.
There’re no shoes upon her feet.
There is a dying baby in her arms.
Nothing more for them to eat.
Like a glimmer in the darkness,
Like a whisper in the night,
It’s not too late to hear the calling,
Not too late to make it right.
And, I hope in the song that was sung by a savior, who said
When the shadows fall, a light shines out a call for compassion and sorrow.
Maybe we can be the people with hope for tomorrow.
Hope knows compassion and sorrow. It favors nor fears either of them. It does not diminish our suffering, but it makes it bearable. It helps us to hold on knowing that this terrible thing we are in the midst of is not the end. Hope is our horizon. It is also our home.
Those upon the Trail of Tears eventually found their way to Oklahoma. The name Oklahoma literally means people of red—okla meaning people and homma meaning red. But the name is not meant to simply lay claim to a territory by a particular group of people. In Native American culture, to speak of people broadly is to speak of the tribe of all humanity and the color red symbolizes the eternal fire of the spirit. The name Oklahoma symbolizes the land of the Spirit People—the land of the faithful. The home of the hopeful.
The Good News is that we are not alone in our sufferings and in that we can live in the kingdom of hope.