The Reading Warehouse

The Sacred Path of Tears is a journal written by a young Cheyenne Indian woman, nicknamed Mokee, during the Indian Wars in Kansas in the late 1860s. After Mokee and her companion observe the Sand Creek Massacre, they warn the other Indian camps along the Smoky Hill River. They take cover in a barn near Salina, Kansas, where they are discovered by a widow and her two sons. Mokee's companion leaves to join the fight against the white soldiers but hating war, Mokee, with her lighter coloring, gains a safe haven with the widow's family. She finds a mentor in the well-educated widow and embraces the opportunity to read and write English. As her life unfolds, Mokee is torn between two worlds at war and the two men she loves, one a white settler and the other her companion, who has become a Cheyenne Dog Soldier. Though war is her constant shadow, Mokee tries to find the purpose for her life and a path of peace in her war-torn world.