Speaker 1: I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2: The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
Speaker 2: the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
Speaker 2: I regret to tell you that very many American lives
Speaker 2: in love.
Speaker 3: Was heard to shouts from the car.
Speaker 1: He's dead.
Speaker 3: Whether he rebird to president.
Speaker 1: Or wait for four hours, people must get up and
Speaker 1: google identifica.
Speaker 2: I am here in the in between, to collect their
Speaker 2: spirits and carry them to what comes next. This road
Speaker 2: is not on any map. It spanned the thresholds between
Speaker 2: their most forbidden desires and their greatest fear. All I
Speaker 2: ask for in payment is a tale and accounting of
Speaker 2: their lives and the great temporary that is the land
Speaker 2: of living. These are their stories.
Speaker 3: This is.
Speaker 2: The passage yeah the Oklahoma territories. The smell of dirt
Speaker 2: and wood smoke. Grassland is far as the eye can
Speaker 2: see the sky. The sky here is massive, envelops the
Speaker 2: whole of the earth and the soil, rich and dark
Speaker 2: and bloody. We meet someone today who did not choose
Speaker 2: this land. His land is far to the east, the
Speaker 2: land of the ancient mountains orn down by time, of
Speaker 2: dense woods that cover the land that cradle its people
Speaker 2: that shield them from the great terrible sky. His people
Speaker 2: did not willingly leave the safety of their bows.
Speaker 1: They were forced west by.
Speaker 2: Men who came from over the Atlantic and arrived with
Speaker 2: their guns and their crosses, bent on subjugating a land
Speaker 2: that was not theirs for the taking. This man resisted
Speaker 2: the colonizers. This man rose up and fought back against
Speaker 2: those who tore his people from their lands. We find
Speaker 2: him here in the tier drenched plains, Suyeta standing dear.
Speaker 3: Oh so you sue.
Speaker 1: Hello, follow me.
Speaker 3: English? Then, of course English. I should not be surprised
Speaker 3: that it has spread to even here. We are on
Speaker 3: the way to the spirit realm.
Speaker 2: Yes, Bingo, I'm here to offer you passage.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm, the darkening land in the west. My grandfather
Speaker 3: told me about the next plane, the first of the
Speaker 3: next five. I know this place from my dreams. This
Speaker 3: realm runs parallel with the other one, casting its shadow.
Speaker 2: There we are to begin our journey.
Speaker 3: Yes, I am old, I have lived in a I'm ready. Well.
Speaker 2: There is a matter of payment.
Speaker 3: Payment. Again, I should not be surprised, but I have
Speaker 3: no medicine, no tobacco, I have no money. You have
Speaker 3: nothing to offer you.
Speaker 2: Well, you have a story I wish to hear it.
Speaker 3: A story I won't stories I can tell you. I
Speaker 3: can tell you of the origin of my homeland, how
Speaker 3: the water beetle came down from the sky vault to
Speaker 3: dove deep into the ocean to find the mud that
Speaker 3: spread the continents. I can tell you how the great
Speaker 3: Buzzard grew tired and flew too close to the ground,
Speaker 3: so that when his wings went up, he created the mountains,
Speaker 3: and when his wings went down, he made the valleys.
Speaker 3: I can tell you how the world was cool and
Speaker 3: dark then, so the creator sent lightning that blazed a
Speaker 3: fire in a tree on a nearby island, And how
Speaker 3: even though many animals tried to retrieve it, none but
Speaker 3: the lowly water spider, who made a pot from clay
Speaker 3: and weaved a basket on her back, could bring the
Speaker 3: fire to the real people. That's what we call ourselves,
Speaker 3: the ANDII. It was others that called his chakes. The
Speaker 3: elders told me many stories that I could tell you,
Speaker 3: stories that would teach you, Kadugi, how we work together
Speaker 3: for the betterment of all of us, and do the
Speaker 3: right paths each one must follow for balance. Peace and harmony.
Speaker 3: But these are not the stories you want to hear.
Speaker 3: You look at my hands like you already know what
Speaker 3: they've done. You want a blood story, Fine, I have one.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you why I did what I did, and
Speaker 3: if you think I have done wrong, we will part
Speaker 3: ways with the knowledge that you have at least heard
Speaker 3: the truth. From the beginning, we were here and for
Speaker 3: thousands of years we had only two laws. One do
Speaker 3: not marry within your clan, and the other blood law.
Speaker 3: Blood law meant that if someone was murdered, their clan
Speaker 3: had the right, had the responsibility to murder someone in
Speaker 3: the offending clan. It was the way to restore balance.
Speaker 3: Then the Europeans came. They brought diseases or plants didn't
Speaker 3: know how to cure. They brought weapons Our warriors didn't
Speaker 3: know how to fight, and they brought their God. They
Speaker 3: say they are made in their God's image, and so
Speaker 3: they say they should rule over every other living thing. Well,
Speaker 3: they are right, they are made in their God's image,
Speaker 3: and like their God, they are completely insane. They think
Speaker 3: the world belongs to them, the land, the water, life us.
Speaker 3: We couldn't reason with them, We couldn't convince them they
Speaker 3: were wrong. Still, we tried to get along. Some of
Speaker 3: us adopted their ways. Men turned from hunting to farming,
Speaker 3: women from farming to domesticity. Sequoia created our system for writing.
Speaker 3: We began a newspaper printed in English and Cherokee. We
Speaker 3: formed a government with a constitution based on the invader's own.
Speaker 3: We even mentioned their god in it, and we codified
Speaker 3: what was already known, that the punishment for giving away
Speaker 3: our land was death. The white politicians thought the more
Speaker 3: traditional conservative Cherokees would give up the land be nomad's hunt,
Speaker 3: and that the mixed bloods were the ones holding out
Speaker 3: to retain their power. They did not know that even
Speaker 3: the Cherokees, who learned their language and studied at their
Speaker 3: schools and worshiped their God, also wanted to remain. Georgia
Speaker 3: wanted our land. Gold had been discovered, after all. Jackson said,
Speaker 3: build a fire under them. When it gets hot enough,
Speaker 3: they'll move. The Georgia Guard and their legislature provided the heat,
Speaker 3: and our people got burned. The state passed laws designed
Speaker 3: to force us away, and the Guard terrorized our people.
Speaker 3: But with all the theft and lies and brutality, there
Speaker 3: was hope. The Supreme Court decided that the State of
Speaker 3: Georgia did not have the authority over our affairs, that
Speaker 3: it had no right to extend its laws over the
Speaker 3: Cherokee people. Just as Marshall wrote that the Cherokee nation
Speaker 3: was separate and sovereign, he pointed out that we were
Speaker 3: not savages, but legitimate Indian nations with our own traditions
Speaker 3: and institutions. That we were and had been treated in
Speaker 3: the past as equals. Our entire nation rejoiced to celebrate
Speaker 3: was short lived when he heard the decision. President Andrew
Speaker 3: Jackson reportedly commented, John Marshall has made his decision. Now
Speaker 3: let him enforce it. Now. Whether he actually said the
Speaker 3: words or not hardly matters. His point of view was clear.
Speaker 3: The judgment meant nothing, and that is when some of
Speaker 3: our most capable leaders parted ways. Before this, John Ross
Speaker 3: and the leaders of what we called the Treaty Party
Speaker 3: agreed to fight removal at all costs. But now if
Speaker 3: the laws were in our favor and still not sufficient,
Speaker 3: what should we do? What did it mean to be
Speaker 3: a loyal Cherokee? What was better to leave our ancestral
Speaker 3: lends and live as we please? Away from the white man.
Speaker 3: And if we did that, how long would it be
Speaker 3: before they came for these new lands? Or should we
Speaker 3: stay and fight and possibly die? Chief Frost thought a
Speaker 3: loyal Cherokee would never trade his homeland. Some others thought
Speaker 3: that giving up the land was worth saving Cherokee sovereignty
Speaker 3: and identity against the degradations of the white settlers. I
Speaker 3: was twelve years old in eighteen thirty five, the year
Speaker 3: Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, and Elias Budenot signed
Speaker 3: the Treaty of knew each Other and sold away our homeland.
Speaker 3: The United States knew the traders represented only a handful
Speaker 3: of Cherokees and had no authority to negotiate. Both sides
Speaker 3: went through with the charade. After the treaty was signed
Speaker 3: by the traders and ratified by one vote in the Senate,
Speaker 3: there was nothing else to be done. We call it
Speaker 3: now no through Natoila, the trail where they cried, the
Speaker 3: trail of tears. And if you want to know why
Speaker 3: we did what we did, this is it. The knock
Speaker 3: on the door came at midday. My grandfather answered it.
Speaker 3: Thirty Georgia guard were waiting outside the house with guns.
Speaker 3: They told us we could take what we could carry.
Speaker 3: I watched my mom decide what we'd bring. When we
Speaker 3: left the house, they burned it down. My father walked
Speaker 3: with his arm around my mother's shoulders. She cried into
Speaker 3: his chest. My sister cried alone. I watched my feet
Speaker 3: as I walked. I could feel the eyes of the
Speaker 3: soldiers on the back of my neck, and when they laughed,
Speaker 3: I knew they were laughing at me, at us. We
Speaker 3: were held in stockades for months. There was no roof,
Speaker 3: only large poles in the ground fencing us in. We starved,
Speaker 3: people died, More people came and replaced the dead. We
Speaker 3: stayed like that for months, and then when the mud
Speaker 3: had dried and the temperatures lowered, they forced us to march.
Speaker 3: What can I say to make you understand the devastation
Speaker 3: to know that you are leaving the place where your
Speaker 3: ancestors lived for thousands of years, To be forced to
Speaker 3: leave behind the bones of your grandfathers and grandmothers, to
Speaker 3: never again see good one the mother town, to leave
Speaker 3: behind your home and possessions, beets and livestock, to have
Speaker 3: it all given away by lottery to liars brutes, And
Speaker 3: of course the pain of the march itself hundreds hundreds
Speaker 3: of miles. It was the roughest on the young, the old,
Speaker 3: and the sick. Babies were born and died, Aunties and
Speaker 3: grand fathers carried until they could be carried no longer,
Speaker 3: and then left by the side of the trail. And
Speaker 3: the coldest winter anyone had seen in years. Supplies limited.
Speaker 3: Disease spread, pneumonia, dysentery. The stench of sickness and death
Speaker 3: has never left me. At least four thousand people died
Speaker 3: on the trail, and there was nothing to be done
Speaker 3: about it but walk and survive. We met at the
Speaker 3: council house for the trial. There were one hundred of
Speaker 3: us there. I was among the youngest. Three judges from
Speaker 3: the clan of each trader were present, The defendants were not.
Speaker 3: But what was the dispute. Didn't our laws say that
Speaker 3: whoever sells Cherokee land without counsel approval should be put
Speaker 3: to death. Weren't their signatures on the treaty? What was
Speaker 3: to debate? What more evidence was needed? Had Major Rich
Speaker 3: as he signed his mark on the Treaty of nu Echoda, said,
Speaker 3: I've signed my death warrant? What more should we have done?
Speaker 3: After the men were found guilty, a committee was appointed
Speaker 3: to plan the executions. Numbers were put in a hat,
Speaker 3: one for each person present. Twelve were marked with an
Speaker 3: X executioner. The hat smelled of horses and sweat. My
Speaker 3: hand shook as I pulled my lot, and my father
Speaker 3: and I both pulled an axe. He looked at me
Speaker 3: with sad eyes. And it'll be okay, he said. I
Speaker 3: tried to say, but my mouth had gone dry. In
Speaker 3: the very early morning of June twenty two, eighteen thirty nine,
Speaker 3: three separate groups of Cherokees rode out to assassinate Elias
Speaker 3: Budnot Major Ridge and his son John Ridge. A group
Speaker 3: of about thirty rode out to Park Hill and hid
Speaker 3: in the trees near the house that Budnut was building.
Speaker 3: Two members of the group Budenot for medicine. It was
Speaker 3: his job to dispense it to the people in the
Speaker 3: area as they want to get it. One of the
Speaker 3: men stamped him in the back, and the other split
Speaker 3: his skull open with a tomahawk. Another group ambushed Major
Speaker 3: Ridge near white Rock Creek. Five bullets entered his body
Speaker 3: and he fell face down into the creek. Our group
Speaker 3: arrived at John Ridges, just before dawn. I wanted to
Speaker 3: go inside, but my father told me to stay on
Speaker 3: my horse. He and three others crept quietly into the bedroom.
Speaker 3: One of the men had a gun. Justice would be quick.
Speaker 3: Those of us outside waited to hear the blast and
Speaker 3: to write off, but minutes passed and nothing had happened.
Speaker 3: I dismounted and walked towards the house. Before i'd taken
Speaker 3: six steps, John Wedge's body flew out the front door
Speaker 3: and landed hard in the dirt in front of me.
Speaker 3: Only he wasn't dead. He tried to get up, but
Speaker 3: my father ran out the door and tackled him and
Speaker 3: me both. I grabbed one of John's legs and held
Speaker 3: on as tight as I could. I could hear John's
Speaker 3: wife screaming from the house. Then two shadows flitted past
Speaker 3: me and pushed her back inside. I could still hear
Speaker 3: her pleased, but they meant nothing to me. All of
Speaker 3: my energy was devoted to holding on to his leg.
Speaker 3: Bridge was talking, but I couldn't hear what he was saying.
Speaker 3: My dad had started war whooping. Maybe he remembered how
Speaker 3: persuasive John Ridge could be. Maybe he didn't want to
Speaker 3: hear the screams of pain. He motioned for the rest
Speaker 3: of us to join in. I tried, but I couldn't.
Speaker 3: The others had now surrounded us and were circling him,
Speaker 3: jumping and yelling. Others were helping hold him down now
Speaker 3: and there was a high pitched scream that split through
Speaker 3: the whooping, and the leg went still. Then I opened
Speaker 3: my eyes. A knife was lodged in his heart. I
Speaker 3: slowly got up and dust myself off. My dad helped
Speaker 3: me back on my horse. I was woozy from the
Speaker 3: effort of holding on, and we rode off. Justice had
Speaker 3: been served. I'm anxious to complete my journey. Are you
Speaker 3: satisfied now? Well, I don't care if you are. You
Speaker 3: wanted a blood story, and you got one. I didn't
Speaker 3: leave anything out, and if I did, it's because I'm
Speaker 3: old and that was a long time ago. Why are
Speaker 3: you looking at my hand again? I told you. I
Speaker 3: grabbed his leg, I held it down. I wasn't even
Speaker 3: supposed to do that. I was supposed to stay on
Speaker 3: my horse, but Dad was in there too long and
Speaker 3: I thought something might have happened. So I got off
Speaker 3: and walked toward the house. And that's when I got
Speaker 3: knocked down, and that's when I held onto bridges legs
Speaker 3: so he couldn't kick anyone or get up. Stop looking
Speaker 3: at my hand. There's nothing on it.
Speaker 2: Blood.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is a little cut, and I remember now
Speaker 3: what it's from. I forgot. I was holding one leg,
Speaker 3: but his other leg had gotten free and he must
Speaker 3: have kicked the knife out of someone's hand. I picked
Speaker 3: it up without thinking and gave it back, but I
Speaker 3: accidentally grabbed it by the blade and it must have
Speaker 3: cut me. So that explains the blood. Now we can
Speaker 3: go have your story. I'm ready to move on. Stop
Speaker 3: looking at me like that. But there shouldn't be this
Speaker 3: much blood. Why is there blood on my shirt? It
Speaker 3: really was only a small cut, and my whole arm
Speaker 3: is wet. Dad, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it,
Speaker 3: but I was trying to give the knife back. But
Speaker 3: I feel in the knife and the knife went into
Speaker 3: his gut and I heard him scream like I heard
Speaker 3: so many others scream and wail and cry. He gave
Speaker 3: away our lands. He gave away our lands. So I
Speaker 3: stabbed him again and again and then again, at one
Speaker 3: for each sacred place he threw away in the name
Speaker 3: of their God and their power. But he still cried.
Speaker 3: So I stabbed him and the throne and his blood
Speaker 3: went everywhere, and I kept stabby until someone pulled me
Speaker 3: off him, and I yelled my war cry, and as
Speaker 3: one we picked up his dead body high above our heads,
Speaker 3: and we held him up, and without anyone saying so,
Speaker 3: we threw him down on the ground and stomped on him,
Speaker 3: one stomp for each of the one million steps we
Speaker 3: took away from our home. When we were done, we
Speaker 3: mounted up and rode to Joseph Lynch's place. He'd prepare
Speaker 3: a feast from a beef he'd harvested in preparation for
Speaker 3: our arrival. My father rode ahead of me and didn't
Speaker 3: look back. When we got to the farm, I ate
Speaker 3: till I was full, and after a while I walked
Speaker 3: over to the shade of a large tuniper tree and
Speaker 3: I threw up that's it. That's the story. Are you
Speaker 3: satisfied now?
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 3: Now you understand why we did what we did. Can
Speaker 3: you tell me that I acted wrongly?
Speaker 2: It is not my way to judge.
Speaker 3: In my last years back in our homeland East, I
Speaker 3: think back on the treaty party especially Major Ridge, Warrior
Speaker 3: statesman Trader, and his son John. I remember John Ridge's
Speaker 3: words in the Cherokee newspaper before removal. He said, you
Speaker 3: asked us to throw off the hunter and warrior state.
Speaker 3: We did so. You asked us to form a republican government.
Speaker 3: We did so, adopting your own as a model. You
Speaker 3: asked us to cultivate the earth and learn the mechanic arts.
Speaker 3: We did so. You asked us to learn to read.
Speaker 3: We did so. You asked us to cast away our
Speaker 3: idols and worship your God. We did so, and he
Speaker 3: was right. We did so. And what was it for?
Speaker 3: The white man has severed his relationship with his soul,
Speaker 3: and he is at war with himself. His soul calls
Speaker 3: to him from this side, but he can't hear. This
Speaker 3: is how he became the oppressor of the earth, always
Speaker 3: taking more and more and unsated hunger. This is the
Speaker 3: only way he could allow himself to commit these unspeakable
Speaker 3: horrors against us and the earth. Madness cannot negotiate with madness,
Speaker 3: you cannot defend against it. The invisible weapon of the
Speaker 3: white man. His madness spreads like a curse, his savagery
Speaker 3: and bloodluss spread. His fear becomes your fear. His self
Speaker 3: loathing becomes your self loathing. His savagery becomes your savagery.
Speaker 3: His hatred and rage get lodged in your heart like
Speaker 3: pellets and powder. The more we tried diplomacy with the
Speaker 3: white Man, the more our own madness grew, until we
Speaker 3: were also at more with ourselves. It is said that
Speaker 3: we are not allowed to journey on to the next
Speaker 3: level until we learn particular lessons in this one. If
Speaker 3: that is true, then the thing I have learned is this.
Speaker 3: There was nothing that the Treaty Party or the Ross
Speaker 3: Party could have done to prevent our tragedy. There is
Speaker 3: no cure for the white man's selfishness and greed. There
Speaker 3: is no medicine for this madness. But one day this
Speaker 3: madness will destroy him, and when there is nothing of
Speaker 3: earth left to devour, he will devour himself. I hope
Speaker 3: the great Spirit lets me see it. Until then I
Speaker 3: will wait here.
Speaker 1: In the land of the dead. Through the dog on high.
Speaker 2: So he passes westward. The justice he sought was small,
Speaker 2: but together with a million other drops, it helps the
Speaker 2: tide to rise more injustice will be done on this
Speaker 2: soil by Jackson and a thousand men after him, in
Speaker 2: the name of a mad god. This hard culling is
Speaker 2: far from over. Countless women, men and children, elderly and
Speaker 2: infants will be massacred. I will pass over this land
Speaker 2: again and again, then again and again, walking with these men, women, children,
Speaker 2: taking long before their time, and will carry their stories
Speaker 2: with me long after they have crossed the threshold to
Speaker 2: the next beyond. These souls plucked from life too early,
Speaker 2: are the heaviest. They weigh on the people on the
Speaker 2: land itself. They leave their whispers and the wind, and
Speaker 2: wear grooves and the stone as they make their passage.
Speaker 2: The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Ferryman.
Speaker 1: This episode features Wes Study as Uyetat.
Speaker 2: Written by Michael Owel with additional writing by Dan Bush
Speaker 2: and Nicholas Dakoski. Our executive producers are Nicholas Dakoski, Matthew Frederick,
Speaker 2: and Alexander Williams. First Assistant director, script's supervisor and production
Speaker 2: coordinator Sarah Klein. Music by Ben Lovett, additional music by
Speaker 2: Alexander Rodriguez. Casting by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Mormon.
Speaker 2: Editing and sound designed by Dan Bush, dialogue editing and
Speaker 2: sound mixing by Jan Campos. Additional sound editing by Racket Sound.
Speaker 2: Our supervising producer is Josh Than.
Speaker 1: Created by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakoski. Produced by Dan Bush.
Speaker 2: The Passage is a production of iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures