1838: Trail Where They Cried (Nunna dual Tsuny)

Allison's great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee who survived the travesty of the Trail of Tears--a heartbreaking time for a courageous, heartening people who sang hymns as they were forced along:

In 1838, in one of the best remembered incidents of the Removal of Natives from the American Southeast, sixteen thousand Cherokees were forcibly marched nine hundred miles from Georgia to present-day Oklahoma. One-fourth of the Cherokee Nation died along the route that came to be called the Trail of Tears. As they walked, Christian Indians among them sang Christian hymns in their own language. The best known of these was an atonement hymn, "One Drop of Blood," which asks, "Jesus, what must I do for you to save me?" The reply is, "It only takes one drop of blood to wash away our sins. You are King of Kings, the Creator of all things." The Cherokee translation of "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah," also sung on the trail, is equally poignant:

Take me and guide me, Jehovah, as I am walking through this barren land.
I am weak, but though art mighty. Ever help us..
Open unto us thy healing waters. Let the fiery cloud go before us and continue thy help.
Help us when we come to the Jordan River and we shall sing thy praise eternally

Source, Google Books: Jace Weaver's Other words: American Indian literature, law, and culture. UOP, 2001, p. 280.

There is additionally this snippet from the article: Among the Cherokee Indians, 1824, p. 224:

There are several hymns in the Cherokee language, which our dear friends sing almost constantly. We sing in Cherokee at night when the school closes. The Lord is visiting this nation in great mercies. I have witnessed what my weak faith hardly ever dared to expect...

Google Books is a rich repository of early 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century accounts of Cherokee history and faith, here.

It's a reminder to remember and treasure the love, faith, endurance of a great-great-grandmother at this time of year in a late May now so long ago.