Trail Of Tears

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

How I Love New York

Author's Note: For my creative piece I decided to just do a little story about when I went to New York and kind of describe what it looked like during Christmas and what I did there.

I'm not a person that goes on vacation a lot and the only places I have been to are Las Vegas and New York. It is kind of what you call a family tradition for us to go to Wisconsin Dells yet nothing interesting really ever happens there. New York has a much better story. When I was in New York, it was during Christmas which made New York was the most extravagant site I have ever seen. Everything was perfect, there was maybe two inches of snow which gave the city a wonderful coat of white and at night when all the Christmas lights were on, it was like the whole city was flooded with colors of yellow, green, red, and blue. There were huge lit up snowflake decorations that put a wonderful shade of blue light that bounced off each building window surrounding them. The best part was the biggest tree that was decorated so beautifully it stung my eyes it was so well lit up. I have never been in such a magical place, and I got to do and see some pretty neat things.

Even though seeing the city was a great experience there was a few things we didn’t get to do, for instance we were going to go to the top of the Empire State Building, but we didn’t have enough time and it was really busy. One thing that really got me upset was that there was a birthday dinner for my mom that I was never told about. We were just sitting in a restaurant and then POP! The workers just do a little surprise celebration with confetti and singing happy birthday and I was literally even more surprised than my mother. I held a grudge for the remaining time we were there and I still am.

The rest of it was nice, we got to get a ride in a carriage with a big, white, stinky clydesdale that smelled as if it hasn’t been washed for over a month. This kind of reminds me of that Seinfeld show when the guy gives his horse some bread and it gets all gasey. After circling Central Park I never hated a horse ride before in my life and I love horses. We walked on the Brooklyn Bridge and I saw the magnificent statue of Liberty in the distance. With the sun gazing down upon her making the water beneath her sparkle, I thought to myself that that was the biggest, proudest looking statue I have ever seen, even though it is the first and only statue I have ever seen. I also remember seeing the remains of the twin towers. The places that they were in were cut off by huge plastic covered fences. It made it look unbelievably depressing. One thing that I will never forget is the amazing pizza they have there; it was the most delicious pizza I have ever encountered and I would definitely go there again just for one more slice. Hopefully I get the honor to go there again to have some more fresh memories and fresh pizza.

Patriot or Loyalist

Author's Note: This book was a hard choice to figure out the point of view but I pretty much explain how the story would be told from other people in the book and explain what Tim's point of view is on the Revolutionary War.

In the book My Brother Sam Is Dead by Christopher Collier ,Tim is a young boy who lives in Redding, Connecticut and his family are loyalists. His father is a man who think’s the war is just a stupid, pointless act against the king, while Sam,Tim’s older brother, is in college, but snuck away with some other men to join the Continental Army. So Tim’s father is not happy with Sam because he thinks that it’s God’s rule that men are supposed to be loyal to their king. Their mother is a loyalist but doesn’t care much of what Sam is doing she doesn’t want any part of it. The author is showing that Tim is not the bad guy here that he is just trying to get a good perspective of things, while Tim is pretty much in the middle of it all because he wants to obey his father but when he looks at same he thinks that he is the most intelligent and proud man especially when he came home with his Continental Army suit. Sam steals the family musket and takes off to join the cause while Tim is forced to become a man and help out with their farm and tavern. The father gets kidnapped and killed on a British ship so Tim was the man. Sam comes home because his team is resting in Redding and Sam gets executed by being accused of stealing his own cattle.

Tim doesn’t really pick a side of either loyalist or patriot because of how he was grown up with loyalists and seeing British troops do something horrible to the patriots. If Tim was just a loyalist then the story would have been how horrible the patriot’s are and if he was a patriot it would be the other way around. Having being able to see both sides was a good experience for him not just listening to Sam or their father. Therefore Tim’s point of view is that the war is just something that should have never happened or that there should be another way for the patriots to get their freedom.

Of course if the author didn’t tell the story from Tim’s point of view then the whole story would have changed. Take Sam for instance, if the story was told from his point of view then the story would just be about him in the war and actually that sounds pretty good. If the author did another book that takes place as Sam in the war, his point of view would all just be him in the war and how he thinks fighting for independence is worth dying for, which it is. Now it would be the same for author if he chose someone else's point of view. For most of the people who lived in Redding they were loyalists so the point of view from anyone in the town would be all about how great of a king king George is and how Sam is such a good almost grown up man and how smart and strong he is but that he is a traitor of the king and he should be banished from Redding or executed.

It is important that a great author has a well understood point of view and that the reader can find and understand it. The point of view for Tim is that he is in the middle of war and he is just trying to keep his mother safe, keep out of trouble, and to keep the tavern running to stay in business. His point of view will change a bit throughout the book but in the end his point of view is pretty clear that Tim was a  more of a pacifist.

Mockingjay

Author's Note: Probably most people love this book, I know I do and we all know Katniss, the one who will protect her sister and her friends at any cost and that she has some very great qualities and it was hard to pick one for my theme.

The Mockingjay series is about a girl named Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark were chosen to be a tribute and fight in the seventy-fourth annual Hunger Games to become a victor for district twelve. Peeta falls in love with Katniss but she’s not sure if she feels the same way. In the end they both win but the Hunger Games is just starting in their lives. Katniss and Peeta survive the seventy-fith Hunger Games but Peeta gets captured by the Capital while Katniss is reunited with her family, joined the rebels in district thirteen and is helping to show the capital that the Mockingjay (Katniss) is ready to fight for everyone's freedom. There really isn’t just one thing that is good about Katniss because as she is growing up she has to take on a lot more responsibility especially when her dad died and she had to take care of her mother and sister.

For Katniss she goes through a ton of tough things that takes a lot to accept what has all just happened to her. One thing is when Katniss is in the middle of the capital she finds her sister and out of nowhere the whole area just starts on fire and Katniss watched her sister burn to death and become a human torch. Now if I knew Katniss I think that there is no doubt that she is very brave. Katniss had to have her arm ripped open to get a tracker out of her so she could get to district thirteen.

Sacrificing herself  for thirteen districs something that sure takes some strength. She doesn’t fight just for her family, no she also fights for anyone who is on their side which is most of the other districts. I’m sure Rue is also one of the people she fights for and Katniss will go to extremes doing so. During the story Katniss would go to the burning remains of  district twelve and the camera crew would take tapes of her to show the capital and anybody who wants to be free of the capitol that Katniss Everdeen is now the Mockingjay and is going to do anything to destroy the capital and stop the Hunger Games forever. One time she was in district four and the rebels were fighting against the capital that remains in the district and they flew Katniss in and videotaped her using her bow against some airships to show just how much strength she still had.

We all know that in the beginning Katniss was not a trusting person at all. Katniss didn’t want anything to do with anybody at all. Only she would let Gale get close to her by hunting with her but it took a long time for her to get used to it. It’s the same for Peeta because he got hijacked and any memory of Katniss was turned into a nightmare. For Katniss she can’t trust being around Peeta without him being watched or handcuffed because given the chance Peeta would strike and try to kill Katniss. Trusting has gotten Katniss so far with trusting Cinna to help her by making the most amazing life threatening costumes and then getting executed. Putting her life in other peoples hands is the only way for her to survive and keep her family safe.

I think that Katniss is like a role model for me and for other people who will do whatever it takes for freedom. In a way she is like George Washington because they both fought for people’s rights and freedom. They are also both very good leaders and love their family. I hope I can be just like Katniss one day.

Family In War

Author's Note: My Brother Sam is Dead was the perfect choice for a retelling since not many things happened in the story so it was easy to retell it.

In the book My Brother Sam Is Dead, there is a boy named Tim who has a mother, father, and a brother Sam. He goes off into war to fight with the patriots, his father is not happy with it at all. Tim’s father takes him to go collect cattle when his father gets kidnapped by cowboys and later dies on a British ship. After his fathers death Tim learns to take responsibility and after a few months Sam comes back because his leader is taking a rest with his soldiers including Sam in Redding, his home and Sam gets accused of stealing his own cattle when he was trying to save his cattle but gets caught by the thief's and they turned him in. After a few weeks Sam gets sentenced to death and gets shot with Tim watching him fall to the ground never seeing him again, wishing there was some other way for this war to turn out.

Buried Treasure 3:15

Author's Note: This piece is based on the story 3:15 and what I did was I wrote what I thought the ending was going to be. I decided not to do a horror ending but it does have some scariness in it.

Cody Miller was just about to melt the gold when he saw a shadow right in the corner of his eye. Cody turns, but sees nothing nor no one. Once again he hears the voice of the old man saying "You better not take my gold treasure boy". Cody was starting to feel a little guilty about taking the old mans treasure but decided to do so anyway. He picks up the hook and he sees there is words on it spelling do what is right boy. Feeling a little creeped out Cody gets some water and washes his face, hoping that he is not going crazy because he does not believe in ghosts. Then he starts to think about how he would hate it if someone took his treasure when he passed. Cody looks at the golden ring, admiring it's beauty and decides that maybe he can keep the ring and give back the hook.

Thinking of a way to give back the hook he decides if he can find a family member of the old man he could give it to them and possibly get a reward. As he is walking into town he heard some fella's talking about the old man. "Can you believe that the guy with the golden hook finally died"? says a man. "Yeah, if I was young and crazy again I would probably steal it since he sadly has no family member to look after it and he was probably buried with it". Cody felt stupid that it was obvious that any man would rather have a family member look after it than the ground. Feeling doubtful Cody decides that maybe he should just sell the hook and go on with his life, then the voice trails off in his mind for what the old man said to him. He sees a shadow once again but it looks like an old man and is trying to gesture him to follow. Cody decides to not get the spirit angry and follow him. After about ten minutes Cody realizes that he is back where the old man was buried. The shadow then walks on top of the grave and disappears. Then Cody realizes that the ghost will not leave him alone unless he puts the hook back with it's rightful owner. An hour past and he dug all the way down back to the wooden coffin. He uses the back of the hammer to get the nails off and finally put the hook back on the old man. When he reburied the hook he started walking home when he sees the shadow but now its look exactly like the old man and he said "I knew you would do the right thing boy". He never again saw the spirit.

I choose this ending because I don't think that the old man is a bad guy so he didn't exactly haunt him. In the story the old man wasn't too much of a push over so I that is why I thought he was a nice guy. Of course I was wrong and in the real ending the old man Kills Cody so the he wasn't as nice of a guy as i thought.

Katniss Everdeen

Author’s Note: This short story is for my character analyzation piece. It is about how Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games changes throughout the book because she is doesn’t let anyone get personal with her and she just wants to do things on her own the way she does it, but then she starts to realize that is not true.

In the beginning of the story Katniss doesn’t want anyone to try and help her because she has always been the boss of her family, catching game and trading it to peacekeepers. The only one who she hunts with is Gale and they work together to try and feed their family. Other people want to help Katniss but she refuses to let them because she thinks that she can do everything on her own and not show that she is weak and needs help. Gale is pretty much the only person she talks to personally. This started when her father died in a mining accident and before that he took her out in the woods and taught her to hunt by using a bow and arrows, and taught her to make traps. Same thing happened to Gale’s father so he has to hunt to feed his family. After Katniss got chosen to be a tribute everything started to change.

Halfway into the story Katniss is starting to learn that everything she knew about growing up was a not what she thought, and what she thought was that she doesn’t need anybody’s help. When Katniss was training she still didn’t partner up with anyone or work with anyone but she started to realize that maybe some other tributes needed her help or that some tributes could be of some worth to work with as an ally in the arena. With the help of Haymitch her mentor, she realized that she needed sponsors to help her survive. During the games when she did stuff that Haymitch wanted her to do she got rewarded with gifts like food or medicine. For instance, Katniss did not want to partner up with Peeta but she had to do so that she would get presents to help her survive. There was one thing that Katniss didn’t like almost at all which was kissing Peeta so that people will root for their love and have a higher chance for their survival. Katniss realized by now that helping people and working with them is not such a bad thing. In the beginning she was very personal, and shy with strangers but now she is more comfortable with having to work with others that having people help her is not such a bad thing.