Soft Rain: A Story Of The Cherokee Trail Of Tears By Cornelia Cornelissen

     In this book, Soft Rain's teacher moves west, and Soft Rain has no school. Some Tsalagi (Cherokee) sign a treaty that forces the Tsalagi to move west. Soft Rain tells her family: Mother, Father, Grandmother, and Hawk Boy.
     Green Fern, Soft Rain's cousin, says that the west is where the souls of people go, and that they are never happy because they can never go back to North Carolina, which is the Tsalagis' first starting place.
     One day, some white men kidnap Mother and Soft Rain. They are forced to walk to a stockade, where lots of  the Tsalagi are crowded in. The white man gives some white powder and water that Mother makes into into a bread, different from the cornbread she ate at home.
     In some months, the white people moved the Tsalagi to Rattlesnake Springs, where the New Moon Festival would never take place again. When they left again, they took refuge in a barn. They let the group they were in leave, and they waited for the next group to come. In the next group, miraculously, they find Father and Hawk Boy!
     When they travel again, they reach the Mississippi River, and they cross into their new home.
     This is a true story, and, I am part Tsalagi, Cherokee. Of the 
18, 000 who left 4,000 died on the way to the relocation area.  I think it is unfair that they had to be forced to leave their land. I recommend that you read this book.

Photo by The Kidlet