The Cherokee's Burden

Today, we discussed the Trail of Tears and how the Cherokee Amerindian tribe was pushed out of the Southeast in the nineteenth century. Below, I wrote a parody of the poem "The White Man's Burden," by Rudyard Kipling. My poem explains the problems that white Americans created for the Cherokee people when they forced them to leave their homes in the Louisiana Territory and travel 1,000 miles west to Oklahoma during the Indian Removal Act.

The Cherokee's Burden

Pile on the Cherokee's Burden,
You white men of this nation.
When he has been reduced to nothing,
Will be cause for jubilation.

Rid the country until it is civilized,
Eliminate the savage race.
Move West the Cherokee nation,
Until nothing remains in its place.

Pile on the Cherokee's Burden,
Mr. President, you know what you do.
You hate the "red man" of the Southeast,
But you want his land too.

So send the Cherokee West,
To Oklahoma they will go.
What false opportunity awaits them,
Only the white man knows.

The judicial branch and Christians objected,
But President Jackson made his choice -
With no support to enforce their rights,
The Cherokee people had no voice.

And West the Cherokee went,
No shoes, possessions, or packs,
Avoiding towns and carrying the Cherokee's Burden,
Which the white man placed on their backs.