"Efforts to preserve Trail of Tears fitting, proper"

[orleans]

Tuesday, January 15, 2008 11:22 PM CST
One of the prettiest drives in Southern Illinois follows the route of Illinois 146 between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

One of the state's oldest communities, Golconda, nestles hard against the levee lining the Ohio River at the eastern edge of the route. Traveling west, the highway quickly moves out of the flattened floodplain into the rolling hills, heavy forests and farmland of our beautiful region.

Motorists are often surrounded by the Shawnee National Forest on the more than 60-mile route between the rivers, a natural palette of earthborn hues occasionally interrupted by a string of pleasant towns, including Vienna, Anna and Jonesboro.

The countryside that cradles the highway is a splendid scenic backdrop for any season, though many would agree spring and fall are the most special.

There is more than a little irony, then, in the history of the frontier route that predated Illinois 146. This was the Illinois segment among the Trail of Tears routes linking Georgia and the southeast, the native land of the Cherokees, to their federally mandated new home in Indian Territory lands that later became Oklahoma.

The irony? Using our beautiful land for such a sorrowful purpose.

Perhaps you reacted in a similar manner Sunday after reading Reporter Adam Testa's thoughtful account of the Cherokee's forced march across our region in the winter of 1838-1839. The route through Pope, Johnson and Union counties was one of devastation and death for the Cherokees.

Yet it is part of our history, not something we chose. It is important that it be recalled as it happened, just as we preserve the Illinois historic sites that were visited by Marquette and Joliet, Lewis and Clark and the frontiersman lawyer who became our nation's greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.

We've done a great deal to preserve the heritage of explorers and statesman, rightfully so, and the efforts to raise awareness of the Trail of Tears are both overdue and justified. The recent dedication by the National Park Service of a site along Illinois 146 as part of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail was both the right thing to do and an encouraging sign for our region.

The history of our region is part of who we are as people, worthy of study and of greater recognition by history buffs everywhere. Proposals to further honor the Cherokees - interpretive signage for the Trail of Tears rest area in Union County, a statue of a Cherokee for the Pope County Courthouse lawn - should be pursued.

We think Steve Hudson, a member of the Pope County Board, understands the value of the projects goes beyond tourism, which, undeniably, benefits from historic preservation efforts.

"I think it comes from your heart sometimes," he said in Sunday's newspaper. "It's just something you've got to do."
http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2008/01/15/opinions/voice_of_the_southern/22978213.txt

[mopinko]

1. a great book- lies across america

same guy who wrote "lies my teacher told me" sorry, too lazy to google. all about the kind of candy coated, slanted history that is told on historical markers. it would be great to see these guys tell the real story.

[orleans]

2. lies across america by james w. loewen

i'm looking it up on amazon
(1999)

"If you were to trust those sources, Loewen suggests, you would learn, erroneously, that the first airplane flight took place not at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, but at Pittsburg, Texas. "It must be true--an impressive-looking Texas state historical marker says so!" Loewen chortles.
In these entertaining pages, Loewen takes a region-by-region tour of the United States, pointing out historical oddments as he travels. For example, a massacre of white pioneers by Indians commemorated in Almo, Idaho, never took place, Loewen continues; neither did many other such events. Indeed, he insists, "throughout the entire West between 1842 and 1859, of more than 400,000 pioneers crossing the plains, fewer than 400, or less than .1 percent, were killed by American Indians." And if you were to visit Helen Keller's Georgia birthplace, over which a Confederate flag flies, you would get the impression that Keller had been an unreconstructed daughter of the Old South, whereas she was in fact an early supporter of the NAACP. And so on."
--amazon review

both books sound interesting.

[mopinko]

3. it's very interesting. read "lies my teacher told me" if you haven't

you will wonder about every bit of history you ever learned.
how these markers get placed in the first place is the really interesting part. and like this story, what they don't mark is also very illustrative.