ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at literature written by those who were victims of what the settlers in America termed as the ‘Indian Problem’. The Native American people refer to this as ‘Trail of Tears’. Native American intellectuals are increasingly assertive that the motivations behind this historic act of displacement of an entire people was unabashedly mercenary and unjust. The reason ‘given’ was that the Native Americans were getting corrupted and accumulating vices such as alcoholism due to their proximity with the Euro-American culture. To “save” them from complete destruction, it was necessary to deport them far away from the reach of “civilisation”. Through a close reading of the accounts of childhood and children in Native American literature this chapter critically disseminate the trauma countless children went through. Stories such as Life Among the Piutes (1883), Along the Trail (1941), Grace (1989) and Roseanna Snead’s non-fictional account Two Cherokee Women, all are about experiences of displacement recounted and remembered through the figure of children
