Cherokees stage outdoor drama of ancestors' story

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. -- They stumble along the path of their ancestors, some barefoot, coughing and crying as they trudge toward Indian territory.

Wrapped in thin blankets, they shiver as they pretend to walk on frozen earth and through icy rivers. Some fall to the ground, as if they are too weak and too sick with measles and dysentery to go any farther.

These actors are telling the 160-year-old story of their ancestors. It's the story of the Cherokees, who walked the 900-mile Trail of Tears when the federal government forced them from Southeastern states and into the hills of present-day eastern Oklahoma.

The bones of 4,000 to 8,000 Cherokee Indians were strewn along the trek from Tennessee, across the Mississippi River, through parts of Missouri and Arkansas to Oklahoma.

Today, the Cherokees portray the story each summer in an outdoor amphitheater near their headquarters here. The "Trail of Tears Drama" began in 1969 and tourists from across the world have come steadily since.

The production got a boost this year when the American Bus Association named it one of the top 100 events in North America. Still, the drama almost never sells out and always ends the season in the red, says producer Patrick Whelan.

The drama shut down from 1997-2000, then returned last year with a new playwright and a friendlier, shorter and more accurate script. The script by Joe Sears, a Tony-nominated actor and author of the "Greater Tuna" trilogy, added a narrator -- humorist Will Rogers, an Oklahoma native who was one-quarter Cherokee.

"He was very proud of his Native American heritage, and back then it wasn't popular," says Gene McFall, who plays Rogers in the drama and in a one-man show that travels the country.

The story begins with heroine Anawake sharing her cornbread with forest animals, who warn her the Cherokees will have to leave Georgia.

"Look to the seasons of change," says the deer, a light-footed dancer in antlers and animal hide.

"The great one will make you keepers of a new land," adds the wolf.

Then an orange owl appears, flashing its beady eyes and flapping its wings. It's a bad omen for the Cherokee people, and Anawake shoos it away.

The play follows Anawake as she marries Willy Hawk and has a son, then travels the Trail of Tears with her father and sisters. A flood -- portrayed by ballet dancers wearing flowing, ice-blue gowns -- kills her family and separates her from her baby. Anawake has amnesia from a whack on the head and spends years in the forest with the animals.

Eventually, she is united with her son and husband.

Geninne Marie Washington, a Cherokee, Uychi, Seminole and Shoshone who plays Anawake, thinks of her ancestors before she goes on stage.

"Our survival is an answer to their prayers," she says.

Washington says she seeks roles for American Indian women who are strong and victorious. "Because that's exactly the way native women were," she says. "They were victorious throughout any kind of circumstance."

Robert Lewis, who plays Willy Hawk, is Cherokee, Navajo and Apache.

"When I'm out here performing, I'm trying to give voice to all those people who have passed away, who cannot speak," says Lewis, who wears his long, black hair loose. "I'm trying to make a connection with the audience.

"Some of them go away feeling angry. Some of them go away feeling hurt and sad. Some of them go away enlightened, and that's what we hope."

Lewis is one of several amateur actors in the drama. He worked his way up to the romantic lead after starting as a stagehand and villager in the mid-1990s.

By day, Lewis gives tours at the Cherokee Heritage Center. He sings and stomp dances around a fire pit in a replica of an Indian village that would have existed before European contact. He also demonstrates the use of a blow gun and the game of stickball.

At the drama, the audience is subdued. A few weep as they hear mezzo-soprano Barbara McAlister sing opera in Cherokee from atop a grassy hill, as if she were a spirit. Below, villagers moan and cry and pretend they are dying.

About 16,000 Cherokees remained in the Southeastern states when federal troops herded them into stockades to await the journey to Indian territory. Thousands died from cholera, measles and dysentery.

The Cherokees organized themselves into 13 detachments of 800 to 1,200 people to make the journey. The first groups arrived in what is now Oklahoma in January 1839.

That year, the Cherokees adopted a new constitution and built homes, churches and schools in Tahlequah. The Cherokee Female Seminary was the first higher education institution for women west of the Mississippi River. The Cherokee Advocate, printed in 1844 in Cherokee and English, was the first newspaper in the territory.

Today, the Cherokee Nation is the second-largest Indian tribe in the country, with 200,000 members.

The tribe never will forget its ancestors and will try to teach its history of heartache and inspiration to anyone who comes to Tahlequah, said Will Hill, who plays Sequoyah, creator of the Cherokee language.

"It's not just a play for entertainment," he says. "It's an actual reliving of history that my family endured. The fact that the Cherokee people are telling it on their own land, among their own people, is one way that helps those that are nonnative understand the tragedy and the gravity of this history."