They Walked Into Darkness is based on the Cherokee Indian ‘Trail of Tears’, a grueling 1,000 mile forced march to Indian Territory in Oklahoma in 1838. It tells of a teenage Cherokee girl named Ellie Sheldon Starr. Her people are rounded up by Government troops and forced to walk in the snow to a ‘promised’ new land. It tells of Ellie’s escapades in the empty wilderness, her love for a young soldier and a near rape at the hands of another soldier.
For the civilized non-savage Cherokee people this forced journey meant death, sorrow, hunger, exposure and humiliation. They had to deal with living out in the open, experiencing attacks by wild animals. There are no doctors, only a medicine man who does his best to administer first aid with his healing herbs. All around Ellie many Indians begin to die – the young and the old. One by one Ellie loses her family. Then, when she learns she is pregnant, she begins to fall ill herself…