Because the Smoky Mountains have not only a natural history but a human history as well, there are occasional glimpses of common elements of human society: work and play, wealth and poverty, joy and sorrow, industry and subsistence, justice and injustice, life and death. This human side of these mountains can be observed in museums, old photographs, pioneer cabins, resort cabins, rock walls, railroad tracks, mine shafts, swimmin’ holes, school houses, and cemeteries.
In the broad sweep of history, there’s probably nothing sadder than the injustice perpetrated upon the Cherokee people by Andrew Jackson (with a lot of help from the state of Georgia, aggressive white settlers, and President Van Buren) in the 1830s. The Congressional record calls it the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which is coldly accurate but less poignant than its more familiar name: The Trail of Tears. And while we may be tempted to declare past generations guilty and our own innocent and enlightened, let us not forget that most of us live on land that was taken from the Cherokee. We are the prime beneficiaries of that past injustice and are, in a sense, guilty of dealing in stolen property.
To see this tragedy in our national park requires a solid understanding of regional history supplemented by a sharp imagination because there’s very little physical evidence of the Trail of Tears in the park simply because most of the Cherokee settlements and government internment camps were south and west of the park in today’s Nantahala and Cherokee National Forests. There are, however, rumors of a rocky overhang on the southern slopes of Clingmans Dome where Tsali and his family hid after killing a couple of soldiers who were transporting them down the Little Tennessee River under today’s Fontana Lake.
On a more personal, punch-you-in-the-gut level, there’s a lingering sorrow in the cemeteries that are scattered around the park. For instance, a one mile walk up Porters Creek Trail leads to a small cemetery in which one of the first grave stones you’ll encounter provides a stark reminder of the harshness of life without advanced medicine. It simply says: Mary Whaley, Born & Died, Aug 11, 1909. Far too many grave stones in rural communities of the early 1900s have a single date etched on their surface, accompanied by that hauntingly familiar phrase: “Born & Died.” The Smokies were no exception and because of their ruggedness may have been worse than most.
I suppose there’s no way of proving that one graveyard is sadder than the next. The grave stones of every cemetery are squares of a quilt that tells the story of an interwoven community in which the life and death of each member touched the hearts and lives of nearly everyone else in the cove. That closeness and connectedness which we associate with small, rural communities also created vulnerability. The death of a neighbor left a palpable void in the lives of those who remained, just as tearing a square from a quilt not only leaves a hole but also diminishes the loveliness of the pattern. Every Smokies cemetery tells a sad story.
And yet, there is one place in the Smokies, one obscure set of grave stones, that strikes me with a dull, repressed sadness. It’s the same feeling I get when I hear the low tones of violin music in a minor key, the feeling of some dark memory struggling – and once again failing – to make itself known. But in the case of this graveyard, it’s the sadness that accompanies the death of children.
The trail to this tiny cemetery begins on the road leading to Ramsey Cascades. For the first few minutes the trail is obvious, paralleling old rock walls, evidence of lives spent clearing fields and farming the land. Other evidence of human habitation is an occasional clump of daffodils, a holly bush, or an unnatural pile of rocks. After 10 or 15 minutes the trail joins Bird Branch, a modest creek which serves as the most significant natural landmark on this hike.
About 30 minutes into this hike the worn path turns left away from Bird Branch and crosses a low ridge to join a tiny, unnamed creek that my partners and I call Barnes Branch. The path sticks with this small creekbed for about 20 minutes before turning away to make its final, brief ascent to the old Barnes homesite and the graves of three young girls. [To be continued]
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