Dearest daughter,

By the time that you read this I will be just a memory, I will be one with the place that we all are first formed, the Earth. This letter is my last testimony to this world that has corrupted to a point of no recognition. Many times when you asked about how I came to be the way that I was and how you came in this world I just told you that you weren’t old enough to know, but now that I have joined with the Earth you should know the story of our people. The story of us.

There are many things that caused me to be the way that I was. I was a Cherokee Indian woman who has lost many of my people when the pale faces came, took over our land and sent us away from our sun. I’ve walked the many miles that they sent us. They sent many of us to our home in the earth where they now sleep for eternity. My father, the chief, protested the walk of many miles, but they used their loud arm machines against him and put him into eternal sleep, so we walked. My brother was killed in another village trying to get food for my baby sister, who died of an empty stomach. My mother so sick with grief died a few moons later, leaving me alone on this world that was falling into the dark...falling into corruption.

First,was Indian Removal Act. An act brought one by the paler faces Senate and their House of Representatives that pushed our people passed the splitting river(Mississippi river). The Indian Removal act led to the Trail of Tears. My father the chief believed that if we lived with the pale faces peacefully then the pale faces wouldn’t destroy our homeland; that they wouldn’t remove us from our homeland, that our homeland would be honored in the way that it has always been. With removing us from our land our anger and hatred with the pale faces sparked. My father decided that he would speak with the pale faces. I followed him without him knowing, like I always did; I wanted to be just like my father. I wanted to be everything that he was, everything that he represented. I hid in a tall oak tree and watched. My father pleaded and begged with the pale faced men to let our tribe be and to let us stay where we were. He even got down on his knees and my father never got down on his knees. The pale faced men didn’t care about the reason that we wanted to stay, all they cared about was their “manifest destiny” they had begun to walk away.My father tried to stop them, he grabbed one by the leg and they shot him and let him die. I walked back to the tribe and told them the news and that we must walk.
We did, but on that walk many of my friends joined my father in eternal slumber. Once we passed the splitting river we stopped in a village where we were treated like animals, stealing food to keep ourselves alive another day. One day my brother snuck into a house their so that he could get food for baby sister, he was hung by a limb of a tree. A day later my baby sister took her last breath in my arms. My mother could not take it, she tried but she couldn’t. So sick with the grief of losing so many she lost herself and died a few moons later. I stayed strong for all of the lost souls of our people, I lived.

Then there was the Gold Rush. A myriad of opportunities so I went father west. Farther away from my sun. I wanted to make a life for myself and show people that we Native Americans are the same as you paler faces,  it started out well, but then it went down hill. You always said that you would want to know your father, but after this I am not sure you want to. I got a job at a local clothing factory to keep myself afloat and met a young man, named Charles Thompson he seemed nice enough. One night I let him walk me home and he attacked me, did horrible things to me, made me pregnant with you.

Not a month or two after there was a convention for woman's rights called the Seneca Falls Convention. It was made by woman for the woman. I though it would be a good idea to go so I did, and learned that I wasn’t the only woman who had these types of experiences, and that there are things that we can do about them. It gave me hope for the future generations, for you.

I started making dreamcatchers and selling them around the town that I lived in and as you know I kept with that. I have a lot of hope for you, so darling just remember that no matter how much it hurts, there is always something that can be done to make it stop hurting. I am terribly sorry that I had to leave you the way that I did, but it was time that I saw my family again.

        Love you truly and forever,
          Your mother