Journal Entry of a Subordinate Group Member

Assignment: Journal Entry of a Subordinate Group Member

• Resources: Ch. 1 in Racial and Ethnic Groups and U.S. Census Bureau American Fact

  Finder Web site

• Due Date: Day 7 [post to the Individual forum]

• Select any of the subordinate groups from Ch. 1 of the text, provided below.       Because the chapter does not list all subordinate groups, you may select any   other group that has a documented history in the United States.

Subordinate Groups: Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Arab Americans, Filipino Americans, Korean Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Asian Indians, Hawaiians, Irish Americans, Polish Americans, Norwegian Americans, Jewish Americans, Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans.

• Identify and describe which, if any, of these creation and consequence      situations the group has faced:

o Creation: migration, annexation, or colonization

o Consequences: extermination, expulsion, secession, segregation, fusion, or assimilation

• Write a fictional, first-person account of the creation and consequence      situations of a subordinate group in the United States in the form of a 700- to 1,050-word journal entry.

• Describe, as if you were a member of that subordinate group, where the group

originated, how it came to the United States, and one or two locations in the United States where members of your group live. Be creative in your fictional descriptions, but accurate with your facts. Search through chapters of the text, the Internet, or the University Library for information about your chosen group. Of particular usefulness is the People section of the U.S. Census Bureau American Fact Finder Web site at http://factfinder.census.gov/

• Cite your sources according to APA requirements.

                                • Post your journal entry as an attachment.

Axia College Eth125 Week One Assignment

  

            I can still remember those days, the days of home, safety, freedom.  Remember as if they were yesterday.  Life was so happy in those days, playing in the village with my friends, hugging my mom, hunting with my dad.  We lived in a little village next to the river with high cliffs on one side to protect us from our neighboring tribes.  Oh how I loved that country, playing in the water, climbing on the cliffs, running through the woods.

            That all changed the day the white man came.  At first they came in peace, looking for trade, gave us weapons to help us fight our enemies, some even lived among us for a while with seeming awe at our lifestyle and professed interest in our culture.  And, for a short time we did all live peacefully with each other.  Then one day soldiers came into our village with guns and forced us out of bed, forced us out of our homes.  My father fought them and they killed him.  They took us to a fort where there were many others from our tribe.  I cried that night, all night for the home I lost and the father I saw murdered.  We were there for many, many days.  I was hungry all the time.  Often my mother would give me her food and go without so I could eat.  I am not sure how long we were in the stockade, but after a time, we were forced to walk.  We walked with the soldiers and their guns every day, all day, until sometimes I felt as though I couldn’t walk anymore.  Every day we buried several of our people on the roadside in shallow graves with nothing but a pile of rocks to serve as marker.  After what seemed like forever we came to a river so vast you could barely see the other side.  We waited for weeks before the ferryman would take us across.  The river froze as we waited; we were forced to huddle under a shelter bluff known as “Mantle Rock”.  In some places ice came down the river in chucks making it dangerous to cross on foot.  The locals became enraged at our presence and a few of my people were murdered.  We named this road “Nunna dual Tsuny” which is translated to “The Trail Where They Cried” or “The Trail of Tears”.  I buried my grandmother on that road.  She has an unmarked pile of rocks I can never visit.

            We walked over half this country and lost thousands of our people.  When we finally settled in the place the white man would let us have, near the city of Tahlequah, Oklahoma.  We then went through the tedious job of plowing and tilling the land, building houses and rebuilding our village.  At least things were peaceful, somewhat, again.  After a while I heard the fate of some of my family.  A few of my distant cousins and uncles hid up in the mountains to avoid being forcibly removed from our home.  My mother talks every day about us one day being able to return home.  I do not think she can admit that our father is dead.  She still has hope he somehow survived the beating the white soldiers gave him and maybe his brothers took him into the mountains with them. 

            Even now, years later, on my mother’s deathbed she still dreams of going home.  Her hope and wish is that someday I return there and see the land we called home for so long.  She wants me to raise my children there.  I think of returning, and maybe for my sister who married a white man that may be possible.  She was too young to remember the horror of the walk or of watching our people die around us as we were forced to walk across the country cold and starving into unfamiliar territory just because the white man wanted our home.  I will not take away her dreams.  But for me, it will be forever burned in my head, the soldiers, the walk, and the dead.

Martin, K (2001) History of the Cherokee. http://www.cherokeehistory.com/#history Retrieved Nov, 2009.