Justice. Talk about a broad topic. I considered which piece of the spectrum to tackle and finally opted for a historical story. A topic I was familiar with from my childhood in Oklahoma, but hadn’t studied as an adult…the Trail of Tears. A prompt of “Justice” actually ended up as the story of a terrible injustice.

The soldiers told us we would reach our destination within the week. I didn’t believe them. My life had been reduced to an endless trail of misery. I would walk until I died, just as my mother and sister had. My father hadn’t even begun the journey, dying of dysentery while still penned within that horrible removal fort.

The sun shone in a cloudless blue sky, but it shed no warmth. The snow had finally gone and this piece of road was packed and dry, but my blistered feet found no relief. The leather boots I’d worn on the day of removal had long since fallen to pieces. Now my only shoes were blood-stained rags.

I closed my eyes and plodded on, following my uncles and the mothers of my clan. I couldn’t smell the sweetness of the day, only my own foul stink and the fetid odors of my people. I’d forgotten what it was to be clean and well-fed and content.

All of life’s goodness had been stripped from us along with our homes and land. No joy remained in the world. Only tears and despair and this endless trail.

Once I was a daughter of the Tsalagi, Cherokee in the white man’s tongue. A maiden on the verge of womanhood. Now I was nothing. A starving stick-figure without family or home or hope.

Sometimes at night, as I lay huddled on the ground with only one thin blanket and the warmth of my clan mothers’ bodies to protect me from the cold, I dreamed of home; of what was no more. Of the father and mother and little sister who had loved me. Of our village, deep in the ancestral lands of the Tsalagi Nation. Of our fields of sweet corn, plentiful beans, and plump, healthy squash.

The Great Spirit gave those lands into our care and we loved them. The mountains and valleys carved by the wings of the Great Buzzard, the rocks marked by the frightful claws of Uktena, the horned serpent. The Creator set the first man and first woman of the Tsalagi in that land, and we had remained.

We were an ancient people, wise in the ways of the world. In times of ease and plenty, the white chief, our peace chief, led us with wisdom and compassion. When hard times caused other nearby nations to raid, the council of mothers called for war and our red chief, the war chief, led our men in battle to defend our homes and fields.

We were not a war-like people, but when the mothers decided the time had come, we were not afraid to fight.

This was the way of the Tsalagi. This was how it had always been.

Until the white Americans saw that our land was good and determined to take it for their own.