Author's Note: I decided that it was time for me to write a story with a little bit of dialog which is something I usually have trouble with so I'm trying it this one time.
Part 1
My name is Aruna, which stands for dawn or the sunrise. I was named that because I was born during the sunrise. I live in the Cherokee tribe in a place that is called Tennessee by the white men. I’m fourteen years-old and because my papa died with some other soldiers trying to protect our land, I had to learn how to hunt, skin, fish, cook, clean, do any chores all in one day. Luckily I have two younger sisters, seven and eight year-olds, Anusha and Laila, who helps our mom with the cooking and cleaning and getting things done. I have to say that Anusha has these beautiful colored eyes with green and possibly yellow in there, it is very unusual for my people to get this so she is very unique to everyone, including me. Before my papa died he taught me how to hunt for deer and fish for my family, and even tried took me to watch him try to kill a bear and it was a bad experience. Only the best hunters are able to kill a black bear and so far that was only one hunter. Black Coat, the leader of our tribe was the strongest of all. He had the strength of a bear and a spirit like an untamed horse. Pretty easy to guess how he got his name. Black Coat is my role model, I want to be just like him and someday kill my own black bear. He said that he knew when the time was right that the bear spirit was telling him to take a step up and become a leader and by doing that, he had to kill the famous black bear. Yes we are aware that there are other bears, but the black bear is the most common bear near us and the most strongest we have encountered. Other tribes laugh at us since we have no grizzly bears and they are the most ferocious, but for us the black bears are more wild against our tribe. Whereas I believe the spirit of the black bear is mad at us so they make them more intimidated to kill us.
My parents knew from the beginning that I was less feminine than most girls since for my eighth birthday all I wanted was my own bow, carved with the most dangerous animals. You see every boy or girl's bow will have carvings showing how high ranked of a hunter you are. You’re papa is supposed to take their child hunting for the first time after they get their bow and climb to the top of a mountain not too far from our village and jump off the edge into a hay stack safely to earn the carving of the eagle to represent the skill of climbing and soaring like the eagle. Most girls are too scared to even look at the mountain and so I was the first girl after ten years to do so. After this there are many other challenges for instance the antler carving for getting your first deer, a feather for getting your first bird which is a pretty hard one but I got it in time. The second to last one is carving a claw from killing a cougar which are extremely dangerous. You have to be at least fifteen to be able to do so and you have to be supervised by two other hunters to be safe, and to have witnesses, and last but not least is of course the carving of the bear print from killing a black bear. Of course you have the ability to carve whatever else you want like the sun or moon or some plant but not any animals you didn’t kill. Since my papa died I have not been able to do any more challenges and after the fight the white men took all of the soldiers away for about three weeks now, so I couldn’t have one of my papa’s friends help me. Just so you know they don’t really help their kids they just give them advice and tell them what they might be doing wrong, the fathers are not allowed to actually help kill the animals otherwise that is cheating and is not a true kill. I’ve been hunting small animals like rabbits, and beavers and only deer if we run out of food completely or the deer is not as big and close to the village s it doesn’t get wrecked from being dragged on rocks and dirt. Lucky for me I have my dad’s horse, Adahy, to help me carry my game. He has a black coat that shines when the sunlight is beaming down, he is known to be the strongest, fastest horse of the whole Cherokee tribe. You can feel the Earth beneath your feet tremble each time he takes a step, he scares any animal that crosses his path with a loud roar that sounds like thunder and vibrates throughout the forest.
One day I woke up in my family tipi hearing a lot of screaming coming from outside. It wasn’t sad or scared screaming but, happy, tear flowing screaming. I figured that the men had finally returned. I wasn’t as excited as I wish I was but most of those screaming was little kids happy to see their father. My sisters and I with some other families who had lost their fathers are not the happy cheering people. Of course we were happy that they had returned but it’s not the same because our fathers will never return. When I came outside I saw that the men were happy to see their families but they also had a very sad and worried expression spread across their face. Black Coat didn’t even look at anybody but instead told everyone to come into the meeting house for some bad news. It’s not usually when we ever go into the meeting house so this means that something big is going to happen, I bet something to do with the white men. The whole tribe fits in and Black Coat begins to explain.
“Ever since the white men came they wanted to take our land, we fought them off many times and lost too much for too little. It is clear now that the white men are not going to stop until they get all of our land. As we know many tribes such as Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes have gave up their land to move down to Indian territory. I am sorry to say that we are now amongst those tribes. The white men are coming tomorrow at dawn and will walk us down to Indian territory”.
Everyone was extremely shocked. Mothers and kids started crying and a few of the woman started yelling, “Why don’t we just fight them off? We are supposed to guard this land with our lives”.
Hearing this, the man next to her said,” There were way too many of them, their numbers increased tremendously so we wouldn’t have the slightest chance. We are lucky they are giving us a home rather than just disposing us”.
I have to say I was with the woman at first but what the man said was also true, that we have a chance of at least living another day. Everyone stepped out but Black Coat who just took a seat on the ground and looked deeply into the fire. He glanced at me and for the first time I looked straight in his eyes and I could have sworn I saw that he was scared. Back in my tipi I started to pack my things which wasn’t much, all I had was three sets of clothes and a blanket. I wanted my bow and hunting knife because I wanted my last time here to be in the woods and hunt.
The day passes and now it was the time for the white men to come. Everything was packed, our homes, our remainders of food, everything had to b carried either horseback, or on our backs. Adahy carried pretty much the blankets, clothes, and the food I gathered the day before with some vegetables. Seeing the white men was a horrid sight for most of the tribe, but for some odd reason when finally got to see them up close they looked very strong, proud, and ready for an attack that might happen any moment. I wasn’t scared of them until the leader of the soldier comes up to us on his horse and tells us where we are headed. He takes a low breath staring at us and begins talking.
“Today we are here to escort you to Indian territory. To do this we will have to travel through Tennessee, to Kentucky, to Illinois, to Missouri, to finally reach our destination to Indian territory. 100,00 American Indians are also on their way and we might bump into them since the roads will soon connect. I would just like to thank you all for selling us your beautiful land, it will work well with growing cotton and tobacco along with farmland for the settlers that they are just dying for. The road will be very hard to travel and many of you will die from sickness, starvation, possibly suicide, or trying to kill our soldiers then you will have to pay a death sentence. Since Indian territory is a long ways away it will take possibly a year to travel there, 1838 through 1839. By 1840 you should be settled nicely in you new homeland and will be able to go back to your normal lives,” he says with a smirk.
Even though he said that, I don’t think that our lives will ever be normal again. Most people in the tribe knew that they are going to try and teach us to live civilized, to make the children go to school and wear their clothing. One thing that drives me nuts is that the ladies can’t show off their legs but their dress at the top going so low and shows a little too much, and they yell at us for barely wearing any clothes! Just another thing that makes them very different to us. They said that we are allowed to have weapons on us as long as we don’t try to kill them or they will tell us that we can hunt when they tell us to and we have to be supervised. Once they were done telling us the rules it was finally the time to start making our way down to our new home. Many will die, so I am going to try my best to make sure that I keep my family safe as would my father.
End Of Part One
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