Not very far from where I live there’s a winding rock wall,
the largest non-mortared rock wall in the United States. Containing 8.5 million
pounds of stone and 1.25 miles long, it is a memorial to a Native American
woman.
It was built by Tom Hendrix as a tribute to his great-great
grandmother, a Euchee Indian, who as a teenager was forced from her home in
North Alabama to the Oklahoma Territory along the Trail of Tears in 1839.
Te-lah-nay was 18
years old when she was relocated by the American government to Muscovy, Okla. She stayed one winter and wanted to return
home. She walked all the way. It took her five years.
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| Tom Hendrix flickr photo by Paul Mashburn |
Upon her return to North Alabama, she was called Mary Hipp and earned a
living as an herbalist. She befriended a Methodist minister named Wiley B.
Edwards by curing him of “a bad case of yellow toes and a disorder of the
middle.” He recorded stories of the remainder of Te-lah-nay’s life in a
168-page journal.
Official records are scarce but Hendrix said she lived to be
about 35 years old and is buried in Parsonage Cemetery in Lauderdale County.
Nearly 100 years later, when Hendrix was a child in 1936, he
sat by his grandmother, Parmelia Hendrix, and listened to tales of his
Indian heritage. It was there that Hendrix learned of Te-lah-nay’s incredible
journey.
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| Credit |
In 1988, Tom Hendrix felt a need to honor his great-great-grandmother and began constructing a memorial, in stone, because his grandmother told him, “We all shall pass this earth; only the stones will remain.”
The wall contains 8.5 million pounds of stone. Hendrix kept track by weighing his
trailer while empty and then weighing it filled with stones for each load.
In 2000, he wrote a book about his
great-great-grandmother’s journey and the wall, and called it “If the Legends Fade.”
Please go here to watch a four minute video and see more photos. It will be well worth your time.
Being from Oklahoma, I'm familiar with the Trail of Tears, but I'd not heard about a woman who returned home. I bet that wall is pretty amazing.
ReplyDeleteThe Trail of Tears was certainly a sad chapter in our country's history. Amazing that she walked all those YEARS to get home.
DeleteGreat info. I am in process of reading the book "If the Legends Fade". We must put seeing this wall on our "to do list".
ReplyDeleteOh wow, didn't realize you're reading the book. Let me know what you think. I may want to read it myself!
DeleteAnother really interesting story from your area Sanda. In Canada, my daughter's brother-in-law is building one of these, and it is years in the making. They are very beautiful, but I doubt his will reach over a mile in length!
ReplyDeleteIt must take a great deal of patience to build a mortar-less stone wall. But they are so beautiful. I've only recently learned this story.
DeleteWhat a beautiful and sad story! I really love reading your blog, it always gives me so much to think about.
ReplyDeleteIt IS a sad story. The Native Americans were badly treated by the early European settlers. Thank you for the kind words about my blog!
DeleteYou provide such interesting information. What a great story and the wall is amazing. There are some mortar less rock walls in the Napa wine country but nothing near the size of this.
ReplyDeleteDarla
I try to be on the "lookout" always for something interesting to post here. My fall back subjects can get mundane at times. But there's always the pets, which seem to be a popular topic!
DeleteHow interesting. Haven't figured out the story about bringing Native Americans to Oklahoma - was there really so little land that there was no more room for them? I understand the tug to return to the place you lived as a child. No matter how much it has changed, Southern California just feels "right" to me when I'm there, as Alabama probably feels to you.
ReplyDeleteHi Beryl,
ReplyDeleteI THINK the answer to your question is that the white settlers and land speculators simply desired the land. in the southeast for farming. Clearing the forests for that purpose would deplete the hunting grounds of Native Americans and deprive them of their livelihood. The American government apparently wanted to relocate them to lands west of the Mississippi and transform the Natives into an agricultural society. It might be called ethnic cleansing.