|
Introduction by Jerry Ellis |
|
As a child, I grew up in the Southern Appalachian mountains in a three-room house without indoor plumbing. Owls in the night were, according to the Cherokee tradition to which I belonged, actually witches coming to kidnap children’s souls. At the age of 17, I ran away from home and the witches in the mountains of north Alabama to thumb to New York. As both a Cherokee and a Southerner, this trek inspired me to live a life of adventure, believing that the experience of meeting people from all walks of life was the master teacher. I did not want to wake up at the age of 40 stuck at some routine job, wishing that I had lived life to its fullest. |
|
Ellis’ Cherokee Great-Grandmother Margaret Painter c. 1860 |
|
By the age of 26, I had thumbed enough miles to circle the globe five times. An aspiring writer, I kept journals about my travels and those I met. I was inspired by John Steinbeck’s dignity of the common man in Grapes of Wrath, and Jack Kerouac’s philosophy of embracing the moment in On the Road. From the swamps of Louisiana to the rolling, golden wheat fields of Kansas and the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado to the cliff-crashing waves of California, the landscape of America filled my soul.
I told stories to those who gave me rides in exchange for meals. I was picked up by Mr. Universe and Mr. Teenage America and was their guest for lunch. Another time, riding with the Hell’s Angels in Florida, I watched as they ate from garbage cans. This was not, however, a life of total freedom, for I had to forever try to balance my worldly desires with my Native American spiritual values rooted in nature. I had one foot planted on a mountain top while the other foot tapped to an urban beat. |
|
female friend was shot in the back by a teenager as an initiation into a gang. She was paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of her life. In the process of healing over these tragedies I ultimately decided I had to walk the Trail of Tears and confront life’s witches. I had to see if all my years on the road had given me true insights into the human condition, and that I could complete a life-altering challenge that required my whole body, mind and spirit. |
|
My first book, Walking the Trail, One Man’s Journey Along the Cherokee Trail of Tears, was published in 1991 by Delacorte Press and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. A Cherokee, I was the first person in the modern world to walk in reverse the 900-mile route, from Oklahoma to Alabama, where 4,000 of my ancestors died in 1838. |
|
I have lectured about WALKING and the history of the Cherokee in schools around the world, including Asia, Africa, Europe and throughout the U.S. As a speaker/consultant I am represented by Speakers Platform in San Francisco (www.speaking.com), which list me as one of America’ leading college speakers. My literary agent in New York is Linda Konner (ldkonner@cs.com).
Since WALKING was published I have had three other non-fiction books published by Delacorte Press and Ballantine. All books are in print: On the Trail of the Pony Express (hardcover, paperback), Marching Through Georgia (hardcover, paperback, audio book) and Walking to Canterbury (paperback).
I have written for The New York Times, had five plays produced and received grants from the National Endowments for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. I speak Spanish and Italian and, for several years now, have divided my time between Fort Payne, Alabama and Rome, Italy. I have also hung my hat in London and Madrid. I am the co-founder of Tanager Retreat International, A Place to Embrace the Extraordinary in Life, Business and Art.
|
|
That year 7,000 armed U.S. soldiers invaded the sovereign Cherokee Nation and herded 16,000 Indians into 31 concentration camps (non-Indians called them “forts”), where they were detained for weeks before being forced on the tragic march. In the heart of winter, many of the Cherokee were barefooted. The dead, mostly children and elderly, were buried in shallow, unmarked graves along the Trail. WALKING is a very personal and spiritual account of my own journey interwoven with nuggets of Cherokee history, and the stories of those I met living along the Trail. The route is now a national trail.
A Literary Guild Selection, WALKING was published in hardcover, paperback, large print and German. It received rave reviews from the LA Times to the Boston Globe and was featured in Reader’s Digest. It was anthologized by Norton with In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction, in Travelers Tales America, and in Measured Progress. Still in print today, reprinted by Bison Books, WALKING has sold over 250,000 copies and is required reading in some U.S. high schools and colleges. In 2006, Bison Books renewed the WALKING reprint license for another five years, which means that the book will have been in print for at least 20 years. |
|
My life on the road began to grind to a halt when tragedies struck almost back to back. My closest male friend, an accomplished author from Yale who was best friends with e.e. cummings, killed his own mother and was sentenced to five years in prison for the criminally insane. My best |