Swept Into Eternity

As members of the Cherokee nation were forced by the U.S. government to walk the hellish Trail of Tears in the 1830s from their lands in the east to Oklahoma, many hundreds died along the way, including children. In the words of Lucy Ames Butler, a Presbyterian missionary and wife of a minister who supported the Cherokee and traveled with them, these souls were “swept into Eternity by the cupidity of the white man who is in the enjoyment of wealth and freedom on the original soil of these oppressed Indians.”