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Fallen SkyA voice of the Cherokee's
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 I am called Fallen Sky, for I was born in the year of the
great star that fell earthward. It was a time of fear and apprehension for our people, and
my mother was quite filled with terror at this strange and portentous event. My
grandmother, who was known as Oconolana, was a myth keeper for our people, and she calmed
my mother at my birth. According to her, the baby born in the year of the great
heaven-sent star would live and grow to be a man, healthy and strong, and know peace and
love -- until his later years, when he would know great strife and trouble. Oconolana
could read the skies, she could feel the tremors of the earth, and she could hear the
whispers of the ancient ones as they flew on the wind from the mountains. And so it was
that she named me Fallen Sky.
It is a good name, and it has served me well. And Oconolana was true in her knowledge, for I have lived a good life, and known great harmony and contentment. But now I am come to the turning of my years, and -- just as Oconolana foretold -- great strife and trouble have come to my homeland. When I was yet a boy, the white men began to arrive. They came from the north and the great sea in search of our bear and beaver. They came from the south in search of moderate summers and cooler winters for growing corn. They came across the misty mountains from the east as they traveled our rivers looking for new lands. They came by ones and by twos, and eventually by herds and droves.In the beginning, they were good men and good neighbors. My people had no fear of them. We saw in them a restlessness, an unease, and we felt that their intrusion into our lives was temporary. Their race was always in search of something "new," and our lands were not new. My people have lived these valleys since middle earth, since the great ice demons stomped out these mountains. Untold generations have fished the waters and walked the woodlands. We have not always called ourselves "Tsali" -- what the white men call "Cherokee." There have been many names for our people. We have been called the "Yuchi," and before that simply the "Woodland tribes." But we were here long before ... before the earth shook, our people grew their corn. Before the heavens opened, our people hunted the white-tailed deer and lived in mud huts along the rivers and creeks. We are the hunter-gatherers of the eastern woodlands, and now we are known as Cherokee, the Ani-Yun-Wiya, the real people, the principal people -- and this land is ours. But more than that ... the land owns us. The red soil is the color of our skin. It owns us and claims us and ties us to the earth. The smoke on the mountains swirls in our souls and speaks to us of the ones who have gone before and directs our paths. The blossoms in spring reflect the beauty of our people and the sparkling rivers shine in the sunlight as our eyes shine with purpose and determination. We are as old as the mountains, and this land is ours. Or so we thought. There is a great wrongness here. The stars have slipped from their anointed paths and our people face trouble and loss at every turn.... The white men who have come to share our lands present a tremendous challenge for our people. One by one, day by day, and face to face, the white settlers and their leaders are true and worthy and just. We trade with them, and they are fair. We talk with them, and they listen. We live near them, and they are good neighbors. One by one we have taken their measure and they have proved to be good men. But a dark strangeness seizes them when they band together and talk about "their" land. Their voices grow sharp in timbre and their eyes grow tense with greed as visible demons possess their souls and drive their actions. How claim they this land? By whose god do they stand in such righteousness? Did their forebears hunt and die here? Did their mothers and grandmothers sow seed and bear young ones? What voices taught them the lay of these hills and the ways of the waters? What spirits have guided their feet under the mountains down through the ages of the woodland man? What stars have blessed their homes, their farms, their firstborn? And yet they come....This is a great sadness to be borne by my people, and the time is close at hand. Oconolana was right. The star that fell foretold the time of tears -- when mothers must leave their hearths and fathers must leave the lands they have worked ... when distinguished leaders are imprisoned and justice is ever-fleeting, out-of-grasp ... when life is a hard and heavy stone. This is a moon grown too full to ever wane -- a moon grown full to brimming with the tears and blood of my people, and only the great master Toomsuba himself can save that silver sphere, burning with the sadness of the Cherokee, and gently remove that glowing brilliance from the skies of Ocoee, and place it in the heavens of the place called Oklahoma.
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