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Trail of Tears makes one stop and think about Freedom and Rights.

9/15/2007  Chattanooga, TN to Florence AL to Waterloo, Alabama
TRAIL OF TEARS
Trail of Tears is always the 3rd Saturday of September.
This year, the ride meets on Riverfront Parkway at Ross’ Landing in Chatanooga. Ride starts at 8am. 1st leg of the rides is approximately 125 miles. Arrives ~ 10am in Madison AL for gas and lunch. 2nd leg of ride leaves Madison at 11:30am, enroute to Florence AL. Is approximately 65 miles. Waterloo is approximately 32 miles further west of Florence on rte 72. In 2005, approximately 200,000 riders were in Waterloo.
History: In the 1830’s, the US government forced the removal of 17,000 Cherokee people from their homes in the Southern Appalachian Mountains to reservations in Oklahoma. Most traveled by land through Tennessee and on to Oklahoma, a journey called the Trail of Tears. Thousands of Cherokee Indians passed through Waterloo, Alabama. Many came by boat from Tuscumbia and camped in Waterloo to await transfer to larger steamboats. The encampment had deplorable conditions. Approximately 4,000 died either in the Waterloo concentration camp or along the Trail of Tears, of diseases and starvation
The Trail of Tears Ride commemorates the 1838 rounding up and forced march of 1070 Cherokees from Ross' Landing near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Following the general route of U S Highway 72 to Florence, they arrived in Waterloo, in miserable condition after a torturous 33 day journey in which many of the 1070 evicted Cherokee died.

What you saw at the 2006 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was NOT Indians vs Bikers. See Important Editorial Below.

A New Trail of Tears Could Lead to Bear Butte Mountain
Sacred Grounds Desecrated at Sturgis
Important Bikers USA Editorial:
With approximately 200,000 riders in Waterloo Alabama, the number of riders who go on the Trail of Tears Ride is quite impressive. Sadly, the number of supports for Bikers for Bear Butte, pales in comparison. If you care about freedoms, such as religious freedoms, or rights, such as the rights of indigenous people, there is what appears to be an evident hypocrisy that bikers need to be aware of in order to overcome. At the 2006 Sturgis Rally, most bikers saw lots of Indians gathered in protest. They were not there to protest your presence! They were there to ask your support in keeping commercial interests from destroying their sacred grounds. Only a few bikers stopped to talk with them and find out why. Good for those few! One uninformed biker spat at them as he rode past a group. They are not anti-biker.
What you saw at Sturgis was NOT Indians versus Bikers.
It is Indians versus Fatcats bent on further desecrating and ruining their sacred grounds and using your hard-earned money and politics to do it. The Indians RESPECT your heritage and traditions and want to work with you, to let you know how you can RESPECT theirs. Bikers USA calls on riders along the Trail of Tears to please learn of the pending destruction taking place at Bear Butte, and spread the word about supporting Bikers for Bear Butte in 2007.  Bikers for Bear Butte seeks to educate bikers about how to honor requests by tribes, to help them in preserving Bear Butte Mountain, north of Sturgis, as Sacred Grounds, rather than letting them be overrun by commercial interests who build closer and closer every year.

Whitwell, TN - Speaking of atrocities against people, in the little town of Whitwell, just north east of Chatanooga, there is a reminder of the genocide by Nazi’s during WWII. Learn how the students in this little town began the paper clip project and how the entire town learned a lesson in the value of freedom and ended up with a memorial - visit the railroad car and the paper clips. To find out more, here is a google search.

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