I am a bit of a fan of the Swedish rock group, Europe. I love their music and harmonies, though their song lyrics can be a bit unwieldy, at times. I hadn't heard any of their music for a while, so I went to YouTube to see what was available.
I immediately found their 3 biggest hits: The Final Countdown, Carrie and Rock the Night. I then happened on a song, Cherokee (see below).
While the song itself is okay, both the lyrics and the video seem to have a few facts confused. For starters, it's rather obvious the video was shot in the American Southwest (cactus, for example, in the opening frames). When the white man first encountered the Cherokee, they lived in what is now Eastern Tennessee and North Carolina and, as far as I know, that is nowhere near the southwest!
A second discrepancy is that the Cherokee did not live in tepees. (That sort of structure was more predominant of Indian nations that traveled on the Great Plains following the bison herds.) They lived in cabin-like structures similar to what the early colonists lived in and, like the Iroquois, they had established meeting houses.
The third inaccuracy is related to the two above. In the lyrics, the song addresses the infamous Trail of Tears; an enforced relocation to present-day Oklahoma. The lyrics indicate the Cherokee marched across the plains when, in truth, they were nowhere near the plains.
The Great Plains begin roughly in central Kansas/Nebraska/Oklahoma and travel west to the Rocky Mountains. The actual Trail of Tears ended at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma Territory which is in Eastern Oklahoma, not so far from the Arkansas border. So, most of the Cherokee's enforced march was through untamed woodlands and river bottomland.
As these boys hail from Scandinavia, they undoubtedly don't know as much about American history as they might think, but since the video was shot in this country, why didn't one of their record producers point out one or more of these glaring goofs?
I immediately found their 3 biggest hits: The Final Countdown, Carrie and Rock the Night. I then happened on a song, Cherokee (see below).
While the song itself is okay, both the lyrics and the video seem to have a few facts confused. For starters, it's rather obvious the video was shot in the American Southwest (cactus, for example, in the opening frames). When the white man first encountered the Cherokee, they lived in what is now Eastern Tennessee and North Carolina and, as far as I know, that is nowhere near the southwest!
A second discrepancy is that the Cherokee did not live in tepees. (That sort of structure was more predominant of Indian nations that traveled on the Great Plains following the bison herds.) They lived in cabin-like structures similar to what the early colonists lived in and, like the Iroquois, they had established meeting houses.
The third inaccuracy is related to the two above. In the lyrics, the song addresses the infamous Trail of Tears; an enforced relocation to present-day Oklahoma. The lyrics indicate the Cherokee marched across the plains when, in truth, they were nowhere near the plains.
The Great Plains begin roughly in central Kansas/Nebraska/Oklahoma and travel west to the Rocky Mountains. The actual Trail of Tears ended at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma Territory which is in Eastern Oklahoma, not so far from the Arkansas border. So, most of the Cherokee's enforced march was through untamed woodlands and river bottomland.
As these boys hail from Scandinavia, they undoubtedly don't know as much about American history as they might think, but since the video was shot in this country, why didn't one of their record producers point out one or more of these glaring goofs?
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