Where in the World? #9

What you are seeing is the core of the Milky Way and one of the spiral arms of stars that stretches out from the core. The galaxy's center, or core, is on the right just above the horizon. The bright object near the core is Jupiter.

There are not many places where it is dark enough and flat enough to photograph this much of the Milky Way at one time. It is 5 a.m. in the American West. Can you guess where we are? Or, how this image was captured?

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And, how about our last image. Did you  guess where we were last time?

The image above is of the Council House at New Echota State Historical Park in Northwest Georgia. taken one Fall evening just as the sun was setting. This was the governmental center of the Cherokee Nation until the United States absconded with their land and drove them out men, women and children to their new "home" in Oklahoma.

It is from here that General Winfield Scott and his 7,000 soldiers rounded up the Cherokee citizens who had occupied this land for centuries and drove them by foot through winter snows and a hardship that cost many lives on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. The Cherokee were a particularly civilized tribe, even by white man's standards, at the time.

They had their own alphabet and published their own newspaper from New Echota. Profitable estates and business were confiscated and, yes, even slaves owned by upper class  Cherokee farmers and businessmen.

It was a land grab sanctioned by Andrew Jackson and enforced by the U.S. military, plain and  simple. The Cherokee were moved to make way for white settlers.

My first encounter with this particular piece of American history came in the summer of 1973, while I was clerking for a law firm in Rome, Georgia. My first assignment was to run the titles on some properties that were being sold.

As I left the office, the partner advised me not to worry about finding any property records before 1835. There weren't any. That was when the government started dividing up the land in and around Rome that was taken from the Cherokee.

Living history, you might say.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.