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THE FIRST INHABITANTS
Native Americans were the first human visitors to the mountains. The Cherokee, whom some have speculated were an offshoot of the Great Lakes region's Iroquois, journeyed south in about 1000 AD. They
named this place Shaconage, "place of blue smoke;" even then, the mountains were wreathed in a blue-toned haze. To explain the mountains' majesty, Cherokee myth tells how Great Buzzard flew over
the still-soft earth, dipping his wings in the mud. As his wings pushed the earth down, the mountains sprang up. By the time of European
arrival, over seven bands totaling 25,000 Cherokee occupied much of the southeast. Making their homes in log cabin villages throughout the mountains, the Cherokee lived a life based
on agriculture, harvesting crops of corn, beans and melons. Each village was centered around a large, seven-sided Council House where public meetings and religious ceremonies were held.
Though Native Americans were highly advanced, the Cherokee combined native ingenuity
with the technology brought by Europeans to create an original written language. Sequoyah, a silversmith, developed a written language for his people in the 1820s utilizing a code of
86 images which represented every sound made in the Cherokee language. The entire nation adopted the language within two years and used it to publish their own newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix.
A short period of peaceful coexistence with settlers ended with the discovery of gold in the Georgia mountains. Ever searching for westward
lands, settlers had encroached upon Cherokee territory until tension was high, with many whites clamoring for the Cherokees' removal. In 1830
President Andrew Johnson demanded their removal, signing into law the Removal Act. It called for the transport of all native peoples east of the Mississippi River to reservations in the Oklahoma desert. The
Cherokees' epic journey became known as the Trail of Tears and of 16,000 who departed, only 12,000 arrived in the strange land. But not all the Cherokee were willing to forsake their
homes; some escaped capture by fleeing to isolated mountain valleys. In 1889, North Carolina's 56,000 acre Qualla Indian Reservation was chartered to serve as their home.
Today, these Cherokee are known as the Eastern Band and their descendants live on in the tribe's original homeland. |
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Winterfest in the Smokies