The Art - Photography

New Echota, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, established in Georgia in 1825, was to last only a few short years, the Cherokee removed to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears in 1838.

The first gallery is the primary one. I added the third gallery for sentimental reasons, and the second gallery for tree studies, part of my personal record of taking Aaron to different Indian sites at this time, so the primary gallery of the trees came from this excursion.

Digging through these files again, after many years, to process images I'd previously ignored, I came across several very, very short movie files I made at New Echota in which I'm trying to educate Aaron, who was then eight years of age, on New Echota. They're a rare thing as I never did movies as my DSLR just did stills. I must have borrowed Aaron's little camera for this. I subsequently posted these to Facebook because I was amused by the fact that Aaron (who was looking weary with the heat, from our having visited the Etowah Indian Mounds earlier in the day, and probably wanting something to eat) was, anticipating his later going into film, already trying to direct my filming in the first file, he was insisting we start again the filming of the council building by starting outside it, then in the 2nd and 3rd files he was intent on the old tavern (recreated) being haunted, and for some reason I'm adamant about, "No, it's not haunted or creepy, it's a new-old tavern!" Negating ghosts, I suppose I sounded bossy in these little clips, which I can at times, but I was simply good-natured enthusiastic and was focused on trying to instill in Aaron that this was Cherokee history, which had personal relevance because of (1) the treatment of Indians, and (2) because of Marty's Cherokee ancestor who married a white man who was raised by the Cherokee and so knew the Cherokee language and was an interpreter, their son marrying a woman whose Folsom mother was closely related to the Choctaw Folsoms and is thought to have been herself Indian. It's a murky area, the best researchers confused by who is related to who, and made further complex by children being absorbed into the families of relatives when a parent died.

In my original gallery of the images, I only had the first gallery of the trees so as not to water down or distract with lesser images, and gave no personal history, but I'm rethinking that style of presentation.