Cherokee Mountains

The invasion of Appalachia by the Spanish in the 16th century greatly influenced the social and cultural transformation of the Cherokee Indians, the Native Americans most often associated with the Southern Appalachians. As carriers of fatal epidemic diseases, De Soto and other Spanish explorers who visited the region during the16th century were directly responsible for the decline and eventual demise of the Mississippians. According to one estimate, for every 20 Native Americans present in the southern Appalachians at the time of De Sotos entry into the mountain region, only one survived. Within a century after Spanish contact, the Mississippians formerly known as "Pisgah" had been transformed into a culture group known as "Qualla"--the ancestral peoples of the present day Cherokees (Dickens 1976, Hudson 1997).

For most of the17th century, the Qualla Cherokees continued many of the subsistence practices of their Mississippian ancestors, including corn growing and clay-and-mud building construction. Sometime during the early17th century, bands of these Indians began migrating westward across the Blue Ridge Mountains and, a century later, there were permanent Cherokee settlements in the mountains of North Carolina and north Georgia, and along the fertile river valleys of east Tennessee (Mooney 1900).

By 1700 about 4,500 Cherokee families, or approximately 30,000 individuals lived in four main geographic areas of the Southern Appalachians. What historians refer to as the "Lower Towns" were located along the Chattooga and Keeowee rivers near the border of Georgia and South Carolina. To the north, in western North Carolina, were the "Middle Towns," a group of villages scattered along the upper tributaries of the Little Tennessee River. The "Valley Towns" were south and west of the Middle towns, along the upper Has and Knightly rivers. The "Overhill Towns," in what today is Tennessee, were west of the Great Smoky Mountains along the floodplain of the Tellico, Little Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers. Kituah, a middle town near present-day Bryson City, North Carolina, was the "mother town" of the Cherokees; its tribal leaders supposedly reigned over all Cherokee towns and villages (Finger 1984).

Cherokee Mountains

Like their Mississippian ancestors, the Cherokees knew the Southern Appalachians well. In spring, they collected dozens of herbs from the forest floor.In summer, they picked blackberries and blueberries; and in autumn they gathered hickory nuts, walnuts, butternuts, acorns, and chestnuts. The men routinely caught fish, crayfish and freshwater mussels from nearby rivers. The women raised communal gardens of beans, melons, and squash. Corn was their primary staple: by the early 1700s, Cherokees grew at least three different varieties of maize. They also depended heavily on river cane, which women wove into intricate baskets used to gather and store the annual harvest (Davis 2000).

Fire was likely used by Cherokees to encourage the growth of river cane or to clear corn fields, and the practice certainly made visible changes to the mountain landscape. The earliest ethno-historical documentation of burning in the region was recorded in 1756 by John de Brahm. He remarked in passing how the Cherokees replenished the soil by "phlogiston," or the annual burning of cultivated fields. In November 1799, Abraham Steiner and Christian de Schweinitz recorded burning at Great Tellico in southwestern Tennessee after seeing Cherokee women and children setting fire to the grass in the woods. The pair also noted the existence of "a large open meadow, a beautiful plain," that they believed was the result of past burnings by Cherokees or perhaps their "cultural ancestors"--the Mississippians (Williams 1928, p. 478).

Without question, the Southern Appalachians played a significant role in shaping the subsistence economy of the Cherokees. The mountain woodlandswere an ideal ecosystem for deer, elk, and buffalo as well as rabbits, squirrels, turkeys, and beaver. These animals were not only important food sources; they also provided pelts for clothing, blankets, and leather goods. Black bear, a common mammal of the mountain environment, was second only to white-tailed deer in the Cherokees diet.

Although they did not build permanent dwellings on the highest ridges, the mountains of the Southern Appalachians were the acknowledged cornerstone of Cherokee existence. As early as the mid-18th century, white settlers commonly referred to the hills and peaks of the Blue Ridge as the "Cherokee Mountains." The Cherokees frequently traveled mountain paths to trade, hunt, or conduct warfare, and the mountains themselves were incorporated into their religious cosmology. The mountains were home and spiritual center to the Cherokees (Davis 2000).

Because of widespread Cherokee occupation, the Southern Appalachians remained an obstacle to permanent frontier settlement until well into the18th century. But neither the lofty mountain peaks nor the Cherokees could stop white traders and trappers fromentering the region from the newly founded settlements on the east coast. Europeans from the Carolinas and Virginia sought trade with the Cherokees as early as the 1670s, exchanging tools, knives, glass beads, cloth, and axes, for animal skins and pelts (McLoughlin 1986).

By 1716, regular trade was occurring between Cherokees and Europeans. The Cherokees had become fascinated by manufactured goods, and their desire for guns and metal tools encouraged additional traders to settle in the region. Hunting and trapping for deer and beaver soon became a preoccupation of Cherokee men, who believed that European weapons might give them an advantage over neighboring tribes (Davis 1993).

After three decades of intense hunting and trapping, game in the mountain region became increasingly scarce. By 1760, buffalo and elk, the largest and most valuable animals of the Southern Appalachians, began to disappear entirely from the forests. Bear and deer populations also suffered greatly, not only due to indiscriminate hunting practices, but also because of the increasing number of open-range hogs and cattle, which competed with these animals for mast (Bays 1991).

Prior to European contact, Cherokee subsistence culture had been largely congruent with the southern mountain environment. Agriculture, hunting, and food gathering practices certainly changed during the period of occupation, but those changes were usually guided by a set of cultural values embeeded in nature.  For Cherokees, cultural stability depended to a very large extent upon their longstanding adaptation and attunement to the natural world.  After 1760, environmental change became irreversible. By the end of the19th century, a majority of Cherokees had made the transformation from a hunting, gathering, and farming society, to one almost entirely dependent on European goods and alliances.