A Journey Into U.S. History Along the ‘Trail of Tears’

--Six covered wagons left Cleveland, Tenn., on a 1,000-mile journey to commemorate the “Trail of Tears,” the route the Cherokees followed when the government forced them to relocate to Oklahoma in 1838. Ray Morris, coordinator of the 150th-anniversary project, said: “About 4,000 of the Indians, or more than one-third of those who started out from Tennessee in the fall of 1838, died along the way. Yet, there are only two marked graves, in Hopkinsville, Ky., along the entire route.” Morris, of Golconda, Ill., said the six wagons represent the states the Indians traveled through: Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The wagon train expects to make it to Tahlequah, Okla., by early December. Wilma Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokees there, sent a letter that said: “Those of you who are taking part in this commemoration of the Cherokee Trail of Tears cannot conceive the human misery of those you now honor. . . . The effect of the removal was to thrust the Cherokee people back into the Stone Age.”

--Four-year-old Grazyna Marks arrived in the United States to be fitted with an artificial left arm to replace the one partly lost in a 1986 mauling by a bear at the Fauna Garden zoo in Myslecinek, Poland. She and her mother, Barbara, flew into New York’s Kennedy airport en route to Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in Philadelphia. Brian Rusk of the Polish-American Congress, which organized the trip, said Polish doctors were unable to fit Grazyna with an artificial limb. The trip was paid for by Harbor Healthcare Foundation, a group founded by businessman Earl Waxman after an audience with Pope John Paul II, a Poland native, who said to “please help the children of the world.”

--The boyhood home of William Howard Taft, who served as the nation’s 27th President and later as the Supreme Court’s chief justice, was dedicated as a national historic site and opened for free public viewing in Cincinnati. Four rooms downstairs in the three-story 18-room home where Taft was born are restored with artifacts and furniture, and exhibits in the house help trace his career: federal judge in 1892, governor of the Philippines in 1901, secretary of war in 1903, President in 1909 and chief justice in 1921. Taft was born in the house in 1857 and died in Washington in March, 1930, only weeks after resigning from the high court. Steven Kesselman, National Park Service superintendent for the site, said the restoration of the house, built in the 1840s, cost $3 million in public and private funds.