Travelogue Pt. 2

There is no rest for the weary and summer never stops! My husband and I embarked on our yearly trip back to the east coast to visit family in Atlanta, but this year included a detour through Gatlinburg to meet up with the in-laws. Therefore, we were able to hit up "my" mountains and another National Park, the Great Smoky Mountains.

A waterfall nestled amongst exuberant green foliage in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Not entirely sure the kids really appreciate how unique the geography of the United States is -- I know I didn't at their age. But it is wild to me to think about how the indigenous peoples of these regions lived such dramatically different lives. I grew up on the east coast with an interest in indigenous cultures, so I have a decent understanding of the general lifestyles of the Iroquois and Powhatan, the Cherokee and the Creek. But two things have become strikingly clear to me this summer after traveling through Pueblo and Ute territory and then returning home to the areas I know well.

A pathway through ferns and trees with roots visible along the well-trodden path in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

First, the lifestyles of these people are extremely different. Their challenges and their hardships, their foods and their cultures, and it is an extreme disservice that we ever lumped them all together as "Native Americans" or, even worse, "Indians." It's fascinating to me to think about how deeply they were connected to the land and how it impacted their way of life. Seeding berries through the lush growth of the Appalachian Mountains is entirely different than planting squash, corn, and beans on top of a cuesta south of the San Juan Mountains.

Tobias' hand holding a blackberry found and picked (and eaten) along the trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Second, I feel like I am just now really able to reckon with what a horrific insult it was to move these people from their lush forests and the land they knew as home and cast them out into totally unfamiliar landscapes where they had nothing. Like, obviously I "knew" this as a kid. It was told to me and I believed it because frankly, it makes sense. I moved from rural Pennsylvania to the suburbs of Atlanta at ten and I thought THAT was hard. So yes, it made sense to me that no one would want to be forced out of their home by foreigners and a government they didn't recognize or believe in. But I feel such a profound sense of horror and grief now revisiting these ideas with a deeper understanding of what that must have meant for these peoples.

I ended up having to leave Atlanta early for a job interview, but I haven't been able to shake my thoughts about colonization and the indigenous peoples who were here before they were invaded -- especially now that I live here in Denver where their past is far more present than it was in the southeast.