“Lost a Warrior Today”

Our world lost a warrior

Just today

The bravest of fighter

For our native ways

Singer of the truth

Fight you nail and tooth

He’s with our ancestors

Beneath the Sacred Tree.

The winds lost a voice

That represented choice

Yet his spirit will visit

Let us all rejoice

As the struggle he fought for

Will carry on

I’m so damn sad

To know that he’s gone.

He stood for every tribe and nation

Swam to shores

To fight the indignation

Spoke the words

So many called obscene

My heart is weeping

For my brother…

Russell Means.

As the Great Spirit

Brings him home

Seven generations

Will smile, yet mourn

Father sky

Grandfather sun

Mother Earth

Grandmother moon…

Will wrap around his spirit

Take him in to their womb…

It was a bad day today

A sad one

Bad one

We lost a warrior today

I can’t wait to see him

Just to hear him say

Our world,

Lost a warrior today.

 

         “Guns and Bibles”

 

Guns and bibles

Brought down my people

Military boots

That stomped on their hands,

Disease in blankets

Such indignation

Whiskey fueled

As they stole our lands.

 

Jesus sculptures

Hanging on beaded bands

Resurrected

Time and again,

As you forced our heads

Deep into the sand

Guns and bibles

Killed the native man.

 

           Guns and bibles

           Powder fed….

           Guns and bibles

           Can’t count the dead..

           Guns and bibles

           So full of dread

           Guns and bibles…

           Get out of my head.

 

As the sun sets

Over the badlands

An eerie silence

Echoes inside,

Devil smiles

‘cause his work is done

Guns and bibles

Destroyed everyone.

 

             Guns and bibles

             Made the weak liable

             Justified everything

             Killing all that was tribal,

             Put our souls

             Up on your mantle

             As your evil proceeded

             To pummel and trample.

 

When the moon is rising

Above the Sacred Tree

Our pain subsiding

Setting us free,

Gathered together

In harmony

Our Creator and ancestors

Wait for you and me.

 

 

Waya Adanvdo

© 2012 Defense Counsel

"Letter From A Soldier To His Children/Disgraced By The Tail of Tears"

John Burnett's Story of the Trail of Tears

Birthday Story of Private John G. Burnett, Captain Abraham McClellan’s Company, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry, Cherokee Indian Removal, 1838-39.

"Children: This is my birthday, December 11, 1890, I am eighty years old today. I was born at Kings Iron Works in Sulllivan County, Tennessee, December the 11th, 1810. I grew into manhood fishing in Beaver Creek and roaming through the forest hunting the deer and the wild boar and the timber wolf. Often spending weeks at a time in the solitary wilderness with no companions but my rifle, hunting knife, and a small hatchet that I carried in my belt in all of my wilderness wanderings.
 
On these long hunting trips I met and became acquainted with many of the Cherokee Indians, hunting with them by day and sleeping around their camp fires by night. I learned to speak their language, and they taught me the arts of trailing and building traps and snares. On one of my long hunts in the fall of 1829, I found a young Cherokee who had been shot by a roving band of hunters and who had eluded his pursuers and concealed himself under a shelving rock. Weak from loss of blood, the poor creature was unable to walk and almost famished for water. I carried him to a spring, bathed and bandaged the bullet wound, and built a shelter out of bark peeled from a dead chestnut tree. I nursed and protected him feeding him on chestnuts and toasted deer meat. When he was able to travel I accompanied him to the home of his people and remained so long that I was given up for lost. By this time I had become an expert rifleman and fairly good archer and a good trapper and spent most of my time in the forest in quest of game. 

The removal of Cherokee Indians from their lifelong homes in the year of 1838 found me a young man in the prime of life and a Private soldier in the American Army. Being acquainted with many of the Indians and able to fluently speak their language, I was sent as interpreter into the Smoky Mountain Country in May, 1838, and witnessed the execution of the most brutal order in the History of American Warfare. I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west. 

One can never forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning. Chief John Ross led in prayer and when the bugle sounded and the wagons started rolling many of the children rose to their feet and waved their little hands good-by to their mountain homes, knowing they were leaving them forever. Many of these helpless people did not have blankets and many of them had been driven from home barefooted. 

On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th, 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold, and exposure. Among this number was the beautiful Christian wife of Chief John Ross. This noble hearted woman died a martyr to childhood, giving her only blanket for the protection of a sick child. She rode thinly clad through a blinding sleet and snow storm, developed pneumonia and died in the still hours of a bleak winter night, with her head resting on Lieutenant Greggs saddle blanket. 

I made the long journey to the west with the Cherokees and did all that a Private soldier could do to alleviate their sufferings. When on guard duty at night I have many times walked my beat in my blouse in order that some sick child might have the warmth of my overcoat. I was on guard duty the night Mrs. Ross died. When relieved at midnight I did not retire, but remained around the wagon out of sympathy for Chief Ross, and at daylight was detailed by Captain McClellan to assist in the burial like the other unfortunates who died on the way. Her unconfined body was buried in a shallow grave by the roadside far from her native home, and the sorrowing Cavalcade moved on. 

Being a young man, I mingled freely with the young women and girls. I have spent many pleasant hours with them when I was supposed to be under my blanket, and they have many times sung their mountain songs for me, this being all that they could do to repay my kindness. And with all my association with Indian girls from October 1829 to March 26th 1839, I did not meet one who was a moral prostitute. They are kind and tender hearted and many of them are beautiful. 

The only trouble that I had with anybody on the entire journey to the west was a brutal teamster by the name of Ben McDonal, who was using his whip on an old feeble Cherokee to hasten him into the wagon. The sight of that old and nearly blind creature quivering under the lashes of a bull whip was too much for me. I attempted to stop McDonal and it ended in a personal encounter. He lashed me across the face, the wire tip on his whip cutting a bad gash in my cheek. The little hatchet that I had carried in my hunting days was in my belt and McDonal was carried unconscious from the scene. 

I was placed under guard but Ensign Henry Bullock and Private Elkanah Millard had both witnessed the encounter. They gave Captain McClellan the facts and I was never brought to trial. Years later I met 2nd Lieutenant Riley and Ensign Bullock at Bristol at John Roberson’s show, and Bullock jokingly reminded me that there was a case still pending against me before a court martial and wanted to know how much longer I was going to have the trial put off? 

McDonal finally recovered, and in the year 1851, was running a boat out of Memphis, Tennessee. 

The long painful journey to the west ended March 26th, 1839, with four-thousand silent graves reaching from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains to what is known as Indian territory in the West. And covetousness on the part of the white race was the cause of all that the Cherokees had to suffer. Ever since Ferdinand DeSoto made his journey through the Indian country in the year 1540, there had been a tradition of a rich gold mine somewhere in the Smoky Mountain Country, and I think the tradition was true. At a festival at Echota on Christmas night 1829, I danced and played with Indian girls who were wearing ornaments around their neck that looked like gold. 

In the year 1828, a little Indian boy living on Ward creek had sold a gold nugget to a white trader, and that nugget sealed the doom of the Cherokees. In a short time the country was overrun with armed brigands claiming to be government agents, who paid no attention to the rights of the Indians who were the legal possessors of the country. Crimes were committed that were a disgrace to civilization. Men were shot in cold blood, lands were confiscated. Homes were burned and the inhabitants driven out by the gold-hungry brigands. 

Chief Junaluska was personally acquainted with President Andrew Jackson. Junaluska had taken 500 of the flower of his Cherokee scouts and helped Jackson to win the battle of the Horse Shoe, leaving 33 of them dead on the field. And in that battle Junaluska had drove his tomahawk through the skull of a Creek warrior, when the Creek had Jackson at his mercy. 

Chief John Ross sent Junaluska as an envoy to plead with President Jackson for protection for his people, but Jackson’s manner was cold and indifferent toward the rugged son of the forest who had saved his life. He met Junaluska, heard his plea but curtly said, "Sir, your audience is ended. There is nothing I can do for you." The doom of the Cherokee was sealed. Washington, D.C., had decreed that they must be driven West and their lands given to the white man, and in May 1838, an army of 4000 regulars, and 3000 volunteer soldiers under command of General Winfield Scott, marched into the Indian country and wrote the blackest chapter on the pages of American history. 

Men working in the fields were arrested and driven to the stockades. Women were dragged from their homes by soldiers whose language they could not understand. Children were often separated from their parents and driven into the stockades with the sky for a blanket and the earth for a pillow. And often the old and infirm were prodded with bayonets to hasten them to the stockades. 

In one home death had come during the night. A little sad-faced child had died and was lying on a bear skin couch and some women were preparing the little body for burial. All were arrested and driven out leaving the child in the cabin. I don’t know who buried the body. 

In another home was a frail mother, apparently a widow and three small children, one just a baby. When told that she must go, the mother gathered the children at her feet, prayed a humble prayer in her native tongue, patted the old family dog on the head, told the faithful creature good-by, with a baby strapped on her back and leading a child with each hand started on her exile. But the task was too great for that frail mother. A stroke of heart failure relieved her sufferings. She sunk and died with her baby on her back, and her other two children clinging to her hands. 

Chief Junaluska who had saved President Jackson’s life at the battle of Horse Shoe witnessed this scene, the tears gushing down his cheeks and lifting his cap he turned his face toward the heavens and said, "Oh my God, if I had known at the battle of the Horse Shoe what I know now, American history would have been differently written." 

At this time, 1890, we are too near the removal of the Cherokees for our young people to fully understand the enormity of the crime that was committed against a helpless race. Truth is, the facts are being concealed from the young people of today. School children of today do not know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless race at the bayonet point to satisfy the white man’s greed. 

Future generations will read and condemn the act and I do hope posterity will remember that private soldiers like myself, and like the four Cherokees who were forced by General Scott to shoot an Indian Chief and his children, had to execute the orders of our superiors. We had no choice in the matter. 

Twenty-five years after the removal it was my privilege to meet a large company of the Cherokees in uniform of the Confederate Army under command of Colonel Thomas. They were encamped at Zollicoffer and I went to see them. Most of them were just boys at the time of the removal but they instantly recognized me as "the soldier that was good to us". Being able to talk to them in their native language I had an enjoyable day with them. From them I learned that Chief John Ross was still ruler in the nation in 1863. And I wonder if he is still living? He was a noble-hearted fellow and suffered a lot for his race. 

At one time, he was arrested and thrown into a dirty jail in an effort to break his spirit, but he remained true to his people and led them in prayer when they started on their exile. And his Christian wife sacrificed her life for a little girl who had pneumonia. The Anglo-Saxon race would build a towering monument to perpetuate her noble act in giving her only blanket for comfort of a sick child. Incidentally the child recovered, but Mrs. Ross is sleeping in a unmarked grave far from her native Smoky Mountain home. 

When Scott invaded the Indian country some of the Cherokees fled to caves and dens in the mountains and were never captured and they are there today. I have long intended going there and trying to find them but I have put off going from year to year and now I am too feeble to ride that far. The fleeing years have come and gone and old age has overtaken me. I can truthfully say that neither my rifle nor my knife were stained with Cherokee blood. 

I can truthfully say that I did my best for them when they certainly did need a friend. Twenty-five years after the removal I still lived in their memory as "the soldier that was good to us". 

However, murder is murder whether committed by the villain skulking in the dark or by uniformed men stepping to the strains of martial music. 

Murder is murder, and somebody must answer. Somebody must explain the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country in the summer of 1838. Somebody must explain the 4000 silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokees to their exile. I wish I could forget it all, but the picture of 645 wagons lumbering over the frozen ground with their cargo of suffering humanity still lingers in my memory. 

Let the historian of a future day tell the sad story with its sighs, its tears and dying groans. Let the great Judge of all the earth weigh our actions and reward us according to our work. 

Children - Thus ends my promised birthday story. This December the 11th 1890.

  This is dedicated to all of my Native brothers and sisters of not only Tsalagi but all nations of indigenous peoples. Nvwatohiyadv ....................

"Final Words From Chief Crazy Horse"

Chief Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux (This statement was taken from Crazy Horse as he sat smoking the Sacred Pipe with Sitting Bull for the last time, four days before he was assassinated.)

"Upon suffering beyond suffering: the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one."

"Nothing We Could Do"

"You are going to love your new home."

The thunder rolled, across the plains

Filled with anger, followed by rain

A coming truth, would soon be seen

Our native world, became just a dream.



They pushed us west, without a care

Took our world, gave us white man's prayer

Killed our game, raped our land

Tried to break our spirit, with their hand.

In the name of greed, with no recourse

Silent death, from a devil's seed

Wanted our gold, the fertile soil

Abused our women, left the rest to spoil.




Then came disease, backed by decrees

Dying natives, down on knees

The setting sun, had just begun

While the first peoples world, came undone.



Yet we wondered why

Did we anger Father Sky

Was it something we did not do

With the tears in our eyes

We wiped away the lies

Just trying to get through...



But the bottom line is the whole thing

Left us nothing we could do.....



When they waded in to the shore

Sea was calm, yet the thunder roared

Under dusk and cover

It was a one way war.



The first to fall had no name

A victim of the evil game

Dragged down under
Without a bit of shame....



Yet we wondered why

Had we angered Father Sky

Was it something we did not do

With the tears in our eyes                            

We wiped away the lies



"Thanks For Everything"

Tried to get through........



But the bottom line is the whole thing

Left us nothing we could do.....



Somehow we're still fighting to

Make you listen to the truth.....



© 2012 Defense Counsel

"Father Sky"

I saw a light in my eye last night

It was a vision from Father Sky

He grabbed my soul

And asked me why.....

We've left our Mother to die?



Winds of truth began to blow

I realized there was nowhere to go

He had me captive

And wanted to know......

Where did our spirits go?



I stood up with tears in my eyes

Begged forgiveness as I cried

Tried to tell him, I don't know why

It seems they want it all to die.



He told me stories long and cold

Tears falling on the Red Road

Showed me peoples

That I've always known

I see their faces....

Spirits...



I stood up with tears in my eyes

Begged forgiveness

Tried to tell him, I don't know why

It seems they want it all to die......



So now I'm asking

Are you willing to try

It'll cost you nothing

Not a piece of your life...

Can you step back

So the lies aren't so bright....



When the Father asks you

To look him in the eye

Will you love the Mother.....

If not.......

You better tell him why...



Father Sky...

He's tired of your lies......

It's over...

He's tired of your lies...

Our blessed parents....

You're going to answer Father Sky...

Our weary Mother is tired of the lies......





© 2012 Defense Counsel

"We're All Proud Of Our Indian Names"


I have brothers and sisters

Who would take my hand

Ties to Oklahoma

And the Eastern Band.

Proud of my birthright

I'm Cherokee

These words that you are reading

Are a tribute from me.



There are Chippewa and Choctaw

Apache and the Creek

Arapahoe, Navajo

Oh how they long to speak.

Shawnee, Delaware

Sioux and Cheyenne

They'd all say the same thing

"This used to be our land".



We are all related

One in the same

Fighting for our people

Trying to stop the pain,

The Red Road that we travel

Isn't paved with shame

We're all proud

Of our Indian names.



On a rundown reservation

One can clearly see

What the cold hand of progress

Has left for you and me.

But the world we cling to

Still isn't free

How much more

Do they want from you and me.



We are all related

One in the same

Fighting for our people

Trying to stop the pain,

The Red Road that we travel

Isn't paved with shame

We're still proud

Of our Indian names.



In the eyes of our Creator

Our beauty abounds

Mother Earth cradles us

Fills our soul with native sounds.

Wraps the Circle around us

Strength for our feet

So we can walk the Red Road

Together....

You and me......



We are all related

One in the same

Fighting for our people

Trying to stop the pain,

The Red Road that we travel

Will never be in shame

We'll always be proud

Of our Indian names......





© 2012 Defense Counsel

"Seven Wolves"

Seven wolves

And seven spirits

Seven winds

Across the land.

Seven prayers

Within the darkness

Seven children

In despair.



When the truth comes

We'll be listening

To a muffled sound

While no one cares

It doesn't take... a genious

To understand ......

But when he howls

We know he's ..... here.



All of our clans

Have come together

Our people

Are growing strong.

Rising up

Just like our brother

Father sky

Knows the song.....



Gives us reason for tomorrow

Wipes away the stain

Stops the pain and struggle

When you're alone.....

Seven wolves will sing

In harmony.......



Seven wolves say....



Why can't I be me.........



Seven wolves will sing......





© 2012 Defense Counsel