Product Description
Rounding out the American Trails with the fifth composition in the collection, Trail of Tears is in reference to the heart-wrenching dark history of over 60,000 American Indians being expelled from their lands. During the period between 1830 and 1850, natives from five tribes were forcibly displaced from their homelands in what later became known as the American Deep South. These Five Civilized Tribes included the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole nations. Under the leadership of President Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 which revoked all land ownership from all Native Americans in the Southeast. Although Jackson was not the originator of the movement to remove the Indians, it was his top legislative priority upon taking office. In his mind, they were a primary obstacle for the fulfillment of the Manifest Destiny and American national success. There were many opponents to the violent legislation, such as David Crockett of Tennessee and Catherine Beecher.
The most brutal year of the Trail of Tears occurred in 1838 among the Cherokee who had resisted the Treaty of New Echota of 1836 through petitions and pleas to the US government. Despite their efforts, the expulsive treaty was ratified and the resistant Cherokee were compelled by militia to vacate all lands east of the Mississippi River. The heaviest death tolls occurred in the summer and winter months of 1838 after the deadline to depart had passed in May. Disease, exposure, starvation, and harassment by frontiersman compounded the physical exertion of the death marches that killed many.
This composition extensively borrows the four-note motif from Beethovens Symphony No. 5. That symphony was composed in the early 1800s in Europe at the same time as the growth of the anti-Indian sentiment across the American frontier. Rather than primary thematic material, Trail of Tears uses the motif as a morose, plodding accompanimental pattern that adds depth of sorrow to the musical homage.
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