(An addendum: More than 3 years since I first visited CSWMA by boat, it is yet almost impossible to learn the regulations for mooring. I still read conflicting things online; the information I include here is still really hard to find; phone calls advertised to give advice, as well as voice mails and emails all go unanswered.)
CSWMA consists of nearly 25,000 acres taken by the Tennessee Valley Authority during the planning of Norris Lake. It was ancestral home to many families, some of Native blood, others who had occupied the land for nearly two centuries. Their land was taken under the eminent domain clause of the fifth amendment DESPITE THE FACT THAT HAS NEVER BEEN COVERED BY WATER.
When I tried up at CSWMA I thought I was legal. I received advice that I may not be allowed to tie up over night. I searched the net for any information I could find. Finally, despite what seems to be an attempt to confuse the issue, I found some mention in an obscure article from a few years earlier. It appears that I had docked for two nights illegally, but the next day I would be okay. Since I wanted to stay a couple of nights longer I baited my lines and "fished" until midnight when I should be safe, then I slept soundly.
In 1828 gold was discovered in North Georgia. The discovery turned out to be pretty much of a dud, but the wealth seekers and the land speculators got themselves all aglow with excitement, ready to get rich. The trouble was that the land belonged to the Cherokee Indians who had adapted to the ways of the new arrivals, becoming farmers and business people, had developed an alphabet and were by all definitions “civilized”.
Along comes Andy Jackson, a man who had lived through less peaceful times and understandably had less benevolent regards for the local tribes. (I am trying to be fair to Old Hickory in that I am sure his feelings regarding the Indians harked back to the uprisings and dastardly things done to the white settlers years before, an uprising where the old soldier first made his reputation.) Influential speculators and a subservient Congress decided to take the land from the Indians. Jackson eagerly began the rounding up and marching along the converging routes that eventually became known as the Trail of Tears.
The communities that had claimed the ancestral lands for centuries, the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and the Cherokee were uprooted and forcibly removed to the Territory west of the Mississippi. They were promised the land which became Oklahoma in perpetuity.
A small band of North Carolina Cherokees who had previously been granted lands (legal language is tricky -- grant means we will not steal it too) were allowed to keep their homes.
What happened to the gold soon to be taken from the newly acquired treasure? Alas, it turned out much like the Kelo property taken by New London, Connecticut just a few years ago (https://youtu.be/xCan-2SYmDY)
Almost a hundred years later history came to visit its repetition (or rhyme) upon the residents of the Tennessee Valley. Ironically, many of these families had blood connection to the Cherokee and other tribes who had intermarried before the Removal Act and through the Eastern Tribe of the Cherokees who had remained behind. And roots ran deep in the area enclosed by the coming new lakes, as evidenced by the fact that scores of graveyards remain from the earlier settlements. FDR set out to “save” the hillbillies in Appalachia, rescue them from their poverty despite the fact that there were fewer hungry people in the hills of the Tennessee Valley than could have been found in the limits of his own New York City or the “jungles” of Chicago. Lorena Hatfield, girlfriend of the president’s wife, was assigned the task of evaluating the situation. Her arrogant and superior assessment:
“What to do with these people makes a nice little problem. Whether to move them off--and, if so, where to put them--or, on table land, for instance, where with careful and authoritative supervision they might eke out a living, leave them there and take a chance on their being absorbed in the industries that should be attracted down here by the cheap power furnished by TVA.
“There might be, I should think, the possibility of a sort of temporary supervision. Rehabilitate the present adult generation where they are. Try out orchards instead of corn on the table land, for instance. And have it understood that their children are not to inherit that land, but that it will be taken over by the Government as they die, the Government to pay the heirs for it, either with cash or land somewhere else. The idea was advanced by Grace Falke, Secretary Tugwell's assistant, who has joined me on this trip. Help the parents to get at least a fairly decent living now and do a bang-up job of public health and education on the children.”
(Sometimes when I write I hem myself into a box, a box where I feel inadequate or unable to grab the right words to continue. This happened in the middle of this piece. I felt such strong emotions when I looked at what had occurred in the CSWMA that I was not sure I could complete my appraisal of what I saw around me. I felt the heartbreak of the families who had been ripped from their roots and the connections they were forced to sacrifice, as did those kindred more than a century before. I did not think I could adequately write their story. I feel no more capable now, but after a few days mentally dealing with all the changes since I left, I will do my best. Wish me luck!)
Mark Twain said that history did not repeat itself ---- but that it rhymes. And thus the cruel rhyme is visited upon the descendants of those a century before whose heartache watered The Trail of Tears.
As I walked along the quiet pathway dividing the Chuck Swan Wild Life Management Area (CSWMA) I entered a secluded nook, a little valley of sorts, still and beautiful by its very seclusion. Along the road was a border of daffodils in all their Spring splendor. I stopped and was overwhelmed by the tranquility and beauty surrounding me. But then reality slapped me. I realized that these beautiful Spring blossoms were evidence of the rape that had occurred here years before. These harbingers of seasonal rebirth had once bordered a homestead for those who had loved this place as home, possibly for more than a century, were forced away as the machines of the leviathan were moved in to topple the home and all remnants of their formerly peaceful existence. I looked more closely and I found what I knew was there, the foundation of the house and imprints of the outbuildings, all that remained, after a benevolent government made “some more enlightened improvements”. Entwined all along the roads in the CSWMA you will find these testaments of the arrogance of government and their all wise planers. Was it legal? Yes. Was it constitutional? In a distorted way, yes. Was it right? I think it is never right to take something through force. God, save us from those who would do what is best for us.
