1998 Poppino Reunion
The Cherokee National Museum

 
 
Tammy Frostad, daughter of Bonnie (Poppino), standing in front of the Cherokee National Museum, near Tahlequah, Oklahoma. 
 
 
The Exodus

Over a trail of tears, reaching from the great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee to eastern Oklahoma, the Cherokees west were uprooted, transferred and transplanted in our present state.  In this block of native walnut, from a tree, older perhaps than the time and heartache being overcome by a courage and determination seldom, if ever, equaled by any race in history against such heavy odds. 

In arriving at this composition, I tried to boil down and bring into focus the heavy load of life the whole of mankind carries and put it into an individual mother and child.  The design is composed of two large teardrops - one balancing the other - on a base representing the contour of the earth for each man's individual trail as he carries his load through his lifetime.  One teardrop is composed of his courage and determination to survive in his search for happiness; the other is representative of the heavy load of love in his heart on on his back that he willingly carries in his short time on his long trail. 

Willard Stone, Sculptor 
1967 
 
 
A Cherokee man exhibits the art of designing and crafting hunting bows and arrows.  This gentleman also demonstrated his impressive skills as an archer, and the incredible accuracy of these weapons hewn, polished, and styled by his own hands. 
 
 
Examples of Cherokee artisanship and resourcefulness, these arrow heads are each designed for a specific hunting style and type of prey.  Notice the local reptilian native inspecting the collection.
 
 
 
 
A relocated one-room school house which typifies hundreds, if not thousands of others, similar in design, which were scattered across the North American continent during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Somehow American children were successfully educated, and a nation prospered without an $8,000 per child per year price tag.