John Ehle (1925–2018)

The Land Breakers is a work of historical fiction following the lives of a group of American settlers in the late 1700s who attempt to create a life in the mountains of North Carolina. The first there are Mooney and Imy, who claim a remote piece of land. That same year two other families show up. The book follows this small community as they try to tame the land and create a space for human life in the wilderness. Whether or not they'll be able to come together as a community is constantly show more in doubt throughout the book.

I really liked this. It reminded me of some of the Scandinavian fiction I've read, like [Growth of the Soil] or [Independent People]. The people don't have a lot of time for talk - they are busy trying to survive. And the main interaction is between the individual and the wilderness. However, within that, the characters grow and you get to know them through their actions and fortitude (or lack thereof!).

One of my favorites so far this year. show less

An Appalachian book stuffed with research (there's a six-page bibliography in the back matter) and told as if a grandfather is passing a record down to his grandchildren. The author and editor both "grew up in Asheville, not far from Cherokee, and as children we absorbed many impressions of the Cherokee and stories of their past" (Acknowledgments). The style feels like we as readers are expected to recognize names and allusions such as "consent in series" without introduction or explanation. show more Attacullaculla is clearly important from the opening pages, but who is that?

There's an old fear, frequently justified, of community stories fading away because they were past down. My grandfather used to write this way; I'm thinking of him and our ancestors when reading Ehle's stories.

I appeciate this book and the perspectives it offers, which feels especially important as the current governments in the subject areas are destroying historical archives of American peoples and silencing today's storytellers.

The copy of Ehle's Trail of Tears I'm reading from is showing its age, tanned and feeling fragile at its edges, except on the slerk white pages of photographs in two sections, near the front and near the back. show less

REVIEW:

Cherokees called it The Trail Where We Cried.

One of my forbears was a Cherokee abandoned as a baby along the Trail of Tears. After the Indians had all passed by, the family heard the wailing of an infant who had been left on their wood stack. They took him in and raised him as their own. So this is a subject of interest to me. After reading this book, the conclusion I reached is: my previous ‘knowledge’ was skewed.

In grade school, I ‘learned’ about the mean old white folks’ show more treatment of Indians. Later, I ‘learned’ about Andrew Jackson’s treatment of Cherokees. Indeed, if you pass your flash light over the picture of the Cherokee Removal, you would see some of each. But, this book illuminates the whole picture.

It is a careful illustration of the life of the Cherokee people, the author picking up the story beginning about 1770. He discusses treaties, the parties involved, what they meant to each group; numerous were the treaties between the various Indian tribes, between the Indians and the whites, and how the government did not keep the spirit of the treaties. The political climate of the time, the players in the government of Georgia and in Washington, some wanting autonomy for the Indians, and others desiring their removal. The rise of the Cherokee nation’s leaders. You hear the stories of their shamans, their battle chiefs, and their later leaders, who actually led them into prosperity.

Not written like a historical novel, with flowing narrative, nor like a strict listing of dry facts, but rather something in between. The author puts flesh on the facts. Exhaustively researched, he weaves the source documents chronologically through his story. With many original letters and speech transcripts inserted into the narrative, it sometimes reads disjointedly, but I don’t know how he could have done this any differently, for the correspondence between the major parties are crucial to the story and its timeline.

My first thought was that the book was misnamed. Pages covering the actual trail of tears were comparatively few. On reflection though, I wondered if the author was inferring that the Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation WAS their Trail of Tears. The documents presented show that the tribe essentially imploded from the results of the actions of one faction of the tribe. And this same faction caused The Trail to become one of tears.

Their two main leaders during the time of the Cherokee Removal were John Ridge and John Ross. Two Cherokees, both, at first, earnestly striving to lead their people in the best way. When it became apparent that the state of Georgia WOULD have them forced out, John Ridge advocated for acquiescence, John Ross for avoidance. When Ross wrangled the removal contract from the government for the enrichment of his own family, mismanaged the job, and insisted on a long land route, rather than the shorter water route, simply to increase his own take, he consigned his own people to hell on the trail.

In the end, it was a history of a people who wanted to believe the hope held out to them by an unscrupulous leader. Through the whole ordeal, they kept following him, because he was one of them. And they never saw how destructive that path was, even as their own society crumbled around them because of it.

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SUMMARY AND QUOTES:

Both Ross and Ridge had often been to Washington, meeting with Indian Affairs, and with the President, himself. Both worked toward an end which would allow their people to remain. In the end, it became apparent that it was a losing fight. The whites, by sheer number and force of law and military, could not lose. Whenever they came back from Washington, Ridge would urge the people to get ready to leave for the land set aside for them in the west. Ross told them to stay put. During this time that the Cherokees needed national debate, Ross abolished elections. The Cherokees were wedded to the land; they wanted to stay. So, most of them listened to Ross, because they hoped that would be the outcome. Even after the ratification of the treaty of the 23rd of May, 1836, which gave them two years to make ready, Ross still told his people to wait.

Some, though, listened to Ridge. Four to five thousand had already made their own way to the new lands. Then, when the government began its removal program, about a thousand pro-Treaty people were moved, going in three groups. The government provided a fleet of keel boats for their journey. Ridge and his family were among one of the first three groups; their trip, using the government run water route, took 24 days.

Major Ridge’s son John Ridge and friends decided to travel themselves via horseback and carriage; their trip took 49 days. Upon arrival in their new lands, John Ridge said, “I have traveled extensively in that country [the new Cherokee lands] … and every evidence of prosperity and happiness was to be seen among the Cherokees as a people.”

All the way to the last moment, Ross kept his people from preparing. When the actual removal began, soldiers were sent door to door to accompany the Cherokees to the gathering places, telling them to gather up what they wanted to take. “The Indians asked why it had to be decided now, all in an hour. Two years and a month and an hour, the soldiers said.”

Ross, finally seeing that the end was inevitable, went back to Washington, and negotiated the contract for the rest of the removal (about eleven thousand Cherokees still in the east), the contract to be given to the Cherokees, and then he awarded that contract to his brother. “Ross wanted more than twice the budgeted amount to move the remaining Indians and slaves. He wanted $65.88 per head, with eighty days expected on the land route. … The land route would take longer by many weeks, it’s true, but Indians prefer the land.” A negotiator tried to get him to agree to the water route – safer, better and faster. But Ross negotiated a contract that gave him more money if the trip took longer than expected.

“Questions about the advisability of land travel in winter were shunted aside. As to use of the federal boats tied up at the three river ports, they would not be needed. … They refused clothing and blankets and other aids.” The first of the Ross managed groups was to leave about Sep 1, the last about Dec 5.

The Indians learned that Ross was in charge, that the removal was now Indian-led. The general in charge “saw that the attitude of the Indians had improved under their own leadership … Let the Indians take themselves to the West; let them decide how they wanted to go…”

Altogether, there were 16 groups of Cherokees removed from the east, 3 government run, and 13 Ross managed. The book did not give the number of days on the trail for each of the 13 detachments. I would like to have seen an appendix with a table of numbers. Three groups specifically noted in the narrative were 189 days, 5 months 3-1/2 weeks, and 5 months. John Ross chose the water route for his own family.

“The Trail of Tears … was a trail of sickness, with Indian sorcerers as doctors.” One of the contingents was accompanied by a white doctor, who left records of the trip. He tried to do what he could, but found that the Indians preferred to be attended by their own, so could not stop them from courses that led to more deaths.

Regarding the Ross brothers contract – he received $776,394, and was asking for another $86,940, and then for even more, totaling an extra half a million. Finally, in Sep. 1841, “Pres. John Tyler, needing to settle the Cherokee matter, consented to pay to John Ross his claim. He had John Ross’s assurance that any dollars left over after full settlement of [incurred removal related] debt would be paid into the Cherokee treasury. None was left.”

“Lewis Ross [the brother of John Ross] took some of the profits and played a hunch. In the West, the backbreaking work of clearing and constructing and planting would create an excellent market for black slaves. He bought a supply of slaves in Georgia and sent them out there. He sent them by water. He sent five hundred.”

The Cherokee society in the west was peaceful, and well run by the “old settlers”. When Ross’s contingent arrived, “law and order on all counts broke down; even theft became commonplace, theft of slaves and everything else of value. The Cherokee men and women from the East became devourers of their own society.“ Through machinations and duplicity, Ross and his faction took over the government in the western lands, murdered Ridge and his faction, and enacted laws giving amnesty to those involved. “The federal agents informally accused John Ross of complicity in the murders; unable to prove it, they denounced him for refusing as chief to assist in bringing the guilty to trial. He continued to refuse, and worked to protect them. The agents and Washington officials called on him to resign as head of the Cherokee government, but he declined.” show less

Why is John Ehle so sparsely read? Is it because his books are hard to come by? This book has 330 ratings and 31 reviews, which is shameful, because it is marvelously written and packed with everything you want from Southern/Appalachian literature. A dynamite story, fear, tension, terrific character development, and descriptions that are heart-stopping.

If you have ever stood and looked out over a stretch of the Blue Ridge, you cannot help perfectly visualizing this scene:

He saw Young. He show more was leisurely walking toward the north. Now he paused to consider streaks of gold in the east. A holy morning, suitable for worship. Wayland walked over to the edge of the divide, to an overlook, with the North Carolina mountains stretching to the horizon. This morning clouds had slept late, were still filling in the valleys around the peaks, so that the peaks resembled toes of a prone giant.

There was a single hawk on the wing, bathing in sunlight, now it dipped down into the clouds to moisten its wings. Now it rose into sunlight again.

I was standing on that mountain in the first paragraph, but IMHO, the addition of the hawk was a bit of genius that made me want to reach out and touch that sky. At the end of Chapter Five, I could honestly say I have been on a bear hunt. By the end of the book, I had an ache in my chest from holding my breath.

Collie Wright is living alone in a cabin with her 6-month old baby. She has refused to tell anyone who the father of the baby is, and her brothers and father are nervous and anxious to know. Wayland Jackson comes down out of the mountains, where his car has stalled, with his teenage daughter in tow, and finds himself standing at Collie’s door.

We know immediately that this is going to get complicated. There are factions in the mountains, the Wrights, the Campbells and the MacGregors barely existing as neighbors and anything, like a stranger who is a clockmaker moving in with a woman and her child, can set a spark to the flame.

A vital nerve had been touched, old and buried, almost forgotten animosities had been laid bare; mindless were days like this one, and the fears rose out of the bowels, not the mind, and were vital, close to the quick. One death caused others.

This is my second Ehle, and not my last. He can truly spin a tale, as my grandpa would say.



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