In the great stone hall at Giant City State Park in southern Illinois hangs the three large sketches shown below and a large plaque that reads:
During the winter of 1838-39, the five (5) great Nations of Native Americans (Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw) were forced to leave their homes and made a treacherous journey through what is known as the “Trail of Tears” which comes directly through Southern Illinois. My Great-Great Grandmother, Rachael Whitehead, passed down the story of how her family made this treacherous journey. These drawings represent this journey directed by the sun, moon and stars and are dedicated in their honor.
—William Null III, Cherokee Heritage
The figures represent, from left to right, the moon, the sun, and the stars.
Southern Indiana contains numerous Trail of Tears sites that a person might just happen upon by accident. One I happened upon with my wife was “Field Trovillion Cemetery”, which contains two different memorials. One states simply, “The TRAIL OF TEARS 1838. Sadly, 9500 Cherokee Indians passed through this cemetery on their way to their new home in Indian Territory”. Another reads, “In honor of the Cherokee people buried here who died on the forced march of the Trail of Tears during the winter of 1838.”
The other side of the marker relays the “Legend of the Cherokee Rose”, which says that particular wild rose, “which grows along the route of the Trail of Tears into Eastern Oklahoma today”, sprang from the prayers of Cherokee elders and the tears of Cherokee mothers on the trail. (Various sources say the flower was introduced into the US in the 1780s, so it may be that it started appearing in Southern Illinois around the time of the Trail of Tears.) Other markers note how the Cherokee were treated as they passed through the area—usually badly. Sometimes they were prohibited from passing through towns for a reason that echoes our own recent past—fear of disease.
While Null’s sketches are not intended to be realistic representations of astronomical objects, the “moon” sketch has an astronomically interesting feature. The Cherokee person in the sketch is wearing a medallion, one that presumably represents the moon. The moon medallion seems to feature something like the lunar edge glow that has been the subject of a number of my posts here at Sacred Space Astronomy and that Bob King at Sky & Telescope has investigated (click here for his work).
Is this really a representation of lunar edge glow? That is hard to say. It might just be an interesting coincidence. Regardless, Null’s sketches at Giant City in honor of his family and of the sun, moon and stars are a notable example of Astronomy in Art & Architecture.
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