Jerry ellis valve

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The Fort Payne native and graduate of The University of Alabama has written nine books.
Jerry Ellis, of Native American heritage, graduated from the University of Alabama.

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Walking and writing: A visit with Alabama author Jerry Ellis

Jerry Ellis has done a lot of walking - and not just for his health.

As he walked, he took a good long look at his fellow human beings and their history, both good and bad. Eventually, he decided to share his experiences for the edification of readers everywhere. He decided to write what he learned so that others don't necessarily have to do all that hoofing.

Ellis was born in 1947 in what he proudly calls "the little Indian town of Ft. Payne, Alabama," on the brow of Lookout Mountain, where he still lives most of the time. He proudly states that it was the home of Sequoyah, who invented the Cherokee alphabet and created the tribe's written language. Like so many in the state, Ellis does have Cherokee heritage. He was raised in rural Alabama, far from the streets of our major cities, not poor but a long, long way from wealthy. His family—mom, dad and two sisters—had no indoor plumbing for most of his childhood. He does not remember having a television set until he was six or seven years old, and even the

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When I called Jerry Ellis a man of letters, he liked that so much he asked me to repeat it. But I really wasn’t kidding. The Fort Payne native and graduate of The University of Alabama has written nine books. His inaugural book, about walking the Trail of Tears, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award.

I will call this interview the tip of the iceberg because Jerry’s story is so rich that we couldn’t cover it all here. So, I asked for the “Reader’s Digest” version.

“I was born in 1947 in Fort Payne,” he says. “My ancestors, who were mixed-blood Indians, settled in Sulphur Springs in 1837. I had a great childhood, but by age 17, wanderlust kicked in and I started feeling strangled by a small town.”

Needing to stretch his wings, Jerry took off to New York to stay with his sister, actress Sandra Ellis Lafferty (you may know her from “Walk the Line,” “Hunger Games,” “A Walk in the Woods,” and other films). During the trip, he realized he loved everything about hitchhiking.

Fred Hunter visits with author Jerry Ellis to discuss walking the Trail of Tears and hi

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Walking the Trail: One Man's Journey along the Cherokee Trail of Tears

October 5, 2021

At first I was disappointed that this short book was more about the author than about the Cherokee but after a while, I was drawn into the experience of the walk itself.

Jerry Ellis's home is the northeast Alabama mountains, near Fort Payne, where one of the 13 Cherokee "gathering" stockades for the Trail was located. Like many folks in the area, he had grown up finding arrowheads and hearing bits and pieces about lost Cherokee heritage. So, as a middle aged pilgrimage, he decided to walk the trail, in reverse, starting at the current capital in Oklahoma and ending at New Echota, GA, the last homeland capital of the Cherokee Nation.

Book reminds me a bit of William Least Moon's Blue Highways since it is about the people Ellis meets along the way as much as it is about the walk or about the Trail itself. The last few pages, about his wanderings through the New Echota historic site (which I visited recently) and his homecoming back to his mountain cabin were the most poignant.