Trail of Tears

One of Abbey's favorite things to do this summer has been to work on her State workbooks. I think they are a Highlights thing, every so often we get a workbook and a map of a state in the mail and then Abbey goes to town and learns a lot about that state and she's getting quite good at getting around the map. All of which is good. Oklahoma came the other day, so we started to work on it. Then we get to the word search page. It is a very long list full of eastern native tribes. Here is an excerpt from the text,

Alex is amazed to learn that one-third of the Native Americans who live in the United States live in Oklahoma!

So I explain to Abbey why it is that all of these people live in Oklahoma. About the forced relocation of so many people to this inhospitable area and about how it was better for them to move because otherwise they would be killed. Poor Abbey, she was horrified. All she could ask was "why? why would they do that? Why couldn't they just be neighbors?" And I really wish Andrew Jackson was here to answer her, here in this world in this life to answer for all of that mess. But he is not and it happened and the fact of the matter is I would rather for her to learn about how terrible people are and can be to each other sooner and from me rather than later and from some random. It was so sad, though and neither of us felt like doing the word search after that.