16th Trail of Tears Ride and Commemorative Sculpture in Tennessee

Tne Sixteenth Annual Trail of Tears Remembrance Motorcycle Ride will begin this weekend (Saturday, September 19) in Chattanooga, TN.  Held annually on the third Saturday in September, the TOT Ride commemorates the forcible removal of the Native American Indians from the southeast to reservations in the west 170 years ago.

This year, at the intersection of the Bell's trail and the Benge's trail in Pulaski, TN, there stands a magnificent bronze statue of a Cherokee family created by Athens State University art professors Pamela Keller and Gail Bergeron. The sculpture is the latest addition to the new Trail of Tears Interpretive Center in downtown Pulaski. The Cherokee family in the sculpture is depicted as walking west where the two trails — Benge’s Route and Bell’s Route — converged in Pulaski during the fall of 1838. The bronze sculpture graces a corner of the area surrounding the new Trail of Tears Interpretive Center in downtown Pulaski.

On June 8 of this year I had the privilege of attending the unveiling and dedication of the life-sized sculpture commemorating the Trail of Tears. This magnificent sculpture of a Cherokee mother, father, daughter, baby, and their dog bears the Cherokee name "Nunahi-Duna-Dlo-Hily-I" or "The Trail Where They Cried.". ..

Pamela Keller, a Pulaski resident and chair of the Art Department at Athens State University, had this to say about the project. "Professor Bergeron and I worked over 700 hours  just on the clay original and nearly ten years on funding and awareness for the Trail of Tears memorial sculpture. Of particular interest to us is the teaching potential this artwork has for young people. "  (Pictured is Gail Bergeron far left and Pamela Keller far right with Cherokee representatives who participated in the ceremony.)

Giles County's tourism foundation undertook the $1 million project to create a memorial to the tragic march and ensure that future generations know the story of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The group hired the Professors Keller and Bergeron to create the sculpture for the center. The statue stands just beyond the Trail of Tears Interpretive Center which is housed in the former Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. The widow of Frank Mars, founder of the Mars Candy Company, donated money in his memory to build the church in 1941.  Recently the Pulaski First Baptist Church donated the 2000 square foot church to the Trail of Tears project. In front of the center is a mosaic in the form of a mandala that illustrates the convergence of the two trails---Benje's and Bell's. (Pictured: my two friends and myself in front of the TOT Interpretive Center.)

The foundation is building the interpretive center in four phases. This summer marked the completion of Phase III. When finished, the Trail of Tears Interpretive Center will be filled with video, photos, text and the wizardry of Disney’s Imagineers telling the story of the Cherokee’s passage through Pulaski. .

The trail is the route that follows the forced removal of the Cherokees from the eastern United States to Oklahoma. From 1838-39, the Cherokee people were forced to leave their homes in Georgia for the western United States. Two of the trails they followed, the Bell’s and Benge’s paths, went through Giles County and intersected in Pulaski. The Tennessee Preservation Trust has identified the Trail of Tears as the state’s most endangered historic site.

The Trail of Tears Ride begins in Chattanooga, TN, and ends near Florence, Alabama. If you are not a biker, be sure to drive up to Pulaski to see the sculpture and then down to Florence and over to Tuscumbia, Alabama, where another powerfully moving sculpture stands. It is a statue by Birmingham artist Branko Medenica of a Native American woman holding a baby and gazing down at the grave of what could be her other child. Tears run down her cheeks. The statue, Sacred Tears, can be seen in Tuscumbia's Spring Park.

---Penne J. Laubenthal

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