Trails of Tears Drowning Dreams of Hope

This short story is not meant to be a definitive statement on aspects of US history. It is the result of my gleanings on the subject and the collection of data that gave meaning to my search. The ocean of information made me sit back many times and question my ability to provide an empirical analysis of such a complex history. Yet I persisted and hope that students of the history of the Native North Americans can use it as a springboard to pursue their own researches. After the entire journey is always a personal quest. Objectivity is an aspiration and a guide to accurate portrayal of history. Up to recently I never dreamt of writing about Native Americans, although the subject has been one of my main interests over the years. This was for various reasons. Firstly, the history was very complex. It was not easy to find threads or themes that would join the dots up. When I was about ten years of age, I used to watch films that were projected in a local community hall on Sunday afternoons. It was one of my thrills to watch these in what we called a matinee. The range of films was quite extensive for the times...