By: John Ehle
The Trail of Tears is an event that happened in history in America, written by John Ehle. The Trail of Tears was the event where Andrew Jackson was trying to push the Indians out of their land immediately after the time of his presidency. Andrew Jackson pushed them out of their lands East of the Mississippi River, forcing them to move down to Oklahoma. Throughout the story, I got to learn about the ups and downs the Native Americans had to face through one of the Native's point of view. The Native that experienced all of these hardships was Ridge. The hardships he faced was diseases, losing loved ones, losing his home, also missionaries trying to convert his religion.
There were a few themes I found throughout the entire book. One of the themes I found was displacement, the reason I thought that the theme is displacement is because of how the Natives were pushed out of their homelands and forced to move South. Another theme I saw throughout the story is empowerment, beings that he faced so many problems and hard times Ridge had a sense of power and he shared it with his tribe. Another theme I additionally saw throughout the book was materialism or exploration for power beings that Americans were taking more and more land from the Cherokees. The …show more content…
It was hard for me to get into the book because I felt it drug on a little too long. Some of the time the wording of the book was hard to understand especially when the Native Americans would speak. A few parts of the book were somewhat gruesome and graphic. The parts that were graphic was when the Natives would resort to cannibalism of whites, the author used specific details. Although the book was long it was very informative. I would recommend this book if you have an interest in learning about Native