Trail of Tears, by John Ehle
Or, The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation . Trail of Tears describes the historical event known by that name, the removal of the Cherokee people in 1838 from their homeland in the South East of America, to what was then known as Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, West of the Mississippi. John Ehle's book was published in 1988, so in some ways it really isn't that old; but I must have bought it not long after. At any rate, it's been sitting on my bookshelf for a very long time. Browsed through a few times, that's all. I have a number of books about the Cherokee and their history - as a people they're rather better documented than most other indigenous American nations - and with a renewed interest in the topic I thought this volume would be a good place to start. So, why have I been putting off reading the book properly? I think it's partly because I may have felt I knew the basics of the story already, and partly because I understood it as a story of genocide