Thrasher's Call

New Echota’s empty fields have filled my thoughts: soldiers, armed with guns and orders – faceless agents, purging homes and hills, their hearts unmoved by care for lives or borders.

How many Cherokee then paid in tears the bloody price America excised to stoke and seed a country’s racial fears? How many “savage” native children died?

Today, the times have changed, but not that much; the thing that makes one “savage”, like the teenage girl, just minutes down 75 from the historic marker, is just not being “native” enough. The names and places shift, but the land’s old sins are rooted still: with every faceless agent, armed with guns and orders, New Echotas empty again, and new trails and cages fill.