This essay examines the histories of three Cherokee graves, moving from east to west along the Trail of Tears. It treats these marked historical graves as dynamic sites, places where memorials interpret the past in complex and shifting ways. At the grave sites along the Trail of Tears, monuments not only recall Cherokee removal, but speak eloquently of Southerners' ongoing and contentious efforts to interpret the Indian past. Removal graves, meanwhile, illustrate the particular power the dead can confer upon sites of memory. In Hopkinsville and at Moccasin Springs, residents' awareness of Cherokee graves played an essential role in commemoration. The dead encouraged the public identification of these places with Cherokee history by rooting the removal story in the landscape, and they led some members of these communities to consider the moral significance of the Trail of Tears.