Possum Hair Hat

 [From April 3, 2007]

I’d call it an astonishing mystery - on April 3, 1730 in the Cherokee village Nequassee (present Franklin, NC), Sir Alexander Cuming (a Scottish adventurer) orchestrated a ceremony to install Chief Moytoy as the "Emperor of the Cherokees," and won the allegiance of the Cherokees to the King of England. A member of Cuming's party related the event:

April 3. They proceeded this Morning to Nequassee, being. five Miles Distance from Joree, their Company always increasing. Here the Indians met from all Parts of the Settlements, (having received Intelligence of the General Meeting intended) by the Expresses sent from Keeowee. This was a Day of Solemnity the greatest that ever was seen in the Country; there was Singing, Dancing, Feasting, making of Speeches, the Creation of Moytoy Emperor, with the unanimous Consent of all the head Men assembled from the different Towns of the Nation, a Declaration of their resigning their Crown, Eagles Tails, Scalps of their Enemies, as an Emblem of their all owning his Majesty King George’s Sovereignty over them, at the Desire of Sir Alexander Cuming, in whom an absolute unlimited Power was placed, without which he could not be able to answer to his Majesty for their Conduct. The Declaration of Obedience was made on their Knees, in Order to intimate, that a Violation of their Promise then made in so solemn a Manner, would be sufficient to make them no People. Sir Alexander made the Witnesses sign to the Substance of what they saw and heard, in order to preserve the Memory thereof, after Words are forgot. The Witnesses were Sir Alexander Cuming, Eleazar Wiggan, Ludovick Grant, Samuel Brown, William Cooper, Agnus Mackferson, David Dowie, Francis Beaver, Lachlan Mackbain, George Hunter, George Chicken, and Joseph Cooper, Interpreter, besides the Indians.

Cuming anticipated some details of the ceremony, as indicated by one contemporary account:

Sir Alexander had been informed of all the Ceremonies that were used in making a head beloved man, of which there are a great many in this nation. They are called Ouka and as we translate that word King, so we call the Cap he wears upon that occasion his Crown, it resembles a wig and is made of Possum’s hair Dyed Red or Yellow, Sir Alexander was very desirous to see one of them, and there being none at that Town One was sent for to some other Town, He Expressed Great Satisfaction at Seeing of it, and he told the Indians that he would carry it to England and give it to the Great King George.

During the ceremony, Moytoy insisted that Cuming share in the glory of the moment. The Cherokees present lifted Cuming up onto the seat reserved for Moytoy and performed the Eagle Tail Dance that involved stroking him with the tail feathers of 13 golden eagles.

We’re told that Cuming made the trip to the colonies because of his wife’s dream that he would accomplish great things among the Cherokees. Drawn to a place he’d never seen, Cuming left England on September 13, 1729 and arrived in Charleston on December 5.

He was a persuasive confidence man, who wasted no time in swindling Charleston investors and planning an escape on the next ship heading back across the Atlantic. But not before his trip to the Cherokee territory as a self-appointed emissary of the crown.

For guides, Cuming enlisted white traders and Indian fighters familiar with the Cherokee land and people. On March 11, 1730, they set off from Charleston toward the southern mountains. Along the way, the party shot a wild bison in South Carolina, and were warned to avoid Cherokee territory because of the natives' toward the English.

Cuming never hesitated, but sped forward. At that time, there were about 64 Cherokee villages in parts of four present-day states, 30 to 60 houses per town. In an incredibly short time, Sir Alexander visited many of those villages, was greeted with exceptional generosity wherever he went, and forged extensive alliances with Cherokee leaders, culminating with the April 3 ceremony. He must have impressed the Cherokee people, because very soon after his arrival they hailed him as a 'lawgiver, commander, leader and chief' and presented him with the scalps of their enemies.

His whirlwind tour among the Cherokees began in the Lower Villages along the headwaters of the Savannah River, like Keowee, and then proceeded to Nequassee and the other Middle Settlements along the upper part of the Little Tennessee. He crossed the Unicoi Range past Murphy and visited the Overhills Settlements, including Tellico, before starting back to Nequassee.

He somehow convinced seven Cherokees (depicted in the illustration above) to return with him to the royal court as evidence of the agreement he had negotiated with the Cherokees. Cuming and his entourage arrived back in Charleston on April 13, just a month and two days after starting their expedition to the mountains. They boarded a ship on May 4 and landed in Dover, England on June 5, 1730. He was promptly thrown in jail for debt. The Cherokees thought it a counterproductive punishment in that it rendered the debtor unable to repay his debts.

What a day it must have been, 277 years ago today, when Sir Alexander went to Franklin and was crowned with a possum’s hair cap.

One "embellished" book on this episode is William O. Steele’s "The Cherokee Crown of Tannassy" which expands on the contemporary accounts of the expedition.

[The illustration: Seven Cherokee men show off English costumes given to them by King George II on a walk in St. James Gardens, London, summer 1730. Engraving, British Museum.]

Whoop Up the Laggards

 [From December 21, 2007]

From The Great South, by Edward King (1875), illustrations by James Wells Champney

View on Pigeon River, near Waynesville

Our expedition grew rapidly after we left Waynesville, and our group of horsemen, followed by "the baggage train," toiling along the mountain roads, caused a genuine excitement at the farms by the way. One of our most memorable trips was that from Waynesville to Whiteside and the return.

Upon the beautiful country through which we were now wandering the Indian lavished that wealth of affection which he always feels for nature, but never for man. He gave to the hills and streams the soft poetic names of his expansive language--names which the white man has in many cases cast away, substituting the barbarous commonplaces of the rude days of early settlement.

The Cherokee names of Cowee and Cullowhee, of Watauga, of Tuckaseege, and Nantahela, have been retained; and some of the elder settlers still pronounce them with the charming Indian accent and inflection. The Cowee mountain range runs between Jackson and Macon counties, and the valley of Tuckaseege, walled in four crooked, immense stretches, includes all of Jackson county which lies north of the Blue Ridge.

The river itself, one of the most picturesque in the South, "heads" in the Blue Ridge, and swelling into volume from a hundred springs of coldest, purest, most transparent water, which send little torrents down all the deep ravines, it goes foaming and dashing over myriads of rocks, sometimes leaping from dizzy heights into narrow cañons, until it comes to, and is lost in, the Tennessee. Where the Tuckaseege forces its way through the Cullowhee mountains there is a stupendous cataract.



View near Webster, North Carolina

The little inn at Webster, the seat of justice of Jackson county, was none too large to accommodate our merry cavalcade. We came to it through the Balsam mountains from Waynesville, along a pretty road bordered with farms and giant mulberry-trees. In the valleys we saw the laurel and the dwarf rosebay, the passion flower and the Turk's-cap lily, and on the mountain sides the poplar or tulip-tree, the hickory, ash, black and white walnut, the holly, the chincapin, the alder, and the chestnut, each in profusion.

Webster is a little street of wooden houses, which seem mutely protesting against being pushed off into a ravine. For miles around the country is grand and imposing. A short time before our arrival the residents of the county had been edified by the execution of the only highwayman who has appeared in Western North Carolina for many years. The hanging occurred in front of the jail in the village street, and thousands flocked to see it from all the section round about.

Sunset came with a great seal of glory. Before the dawn we were once more in the saddle, en route for the Cowee range. Just below Webster we crossed the Tuckaseege river at a point where once there was a famous Indian battle, and wound up the zigzag paths to the very top of Cowee, now and then getting a glimpse of the noble Balsam left behind.

Now we could look up at one of the "old balds," as the bare peaks' tops are called. (The Indian thought the bare spots were where the feet of the Evil One had pressed as he strode from mountain to mountain.)

Now we stopped under a sycamore, while a barefooted girl brought a pitcher of buttermilk from the neighboring house; now a group of negro children, seeing a band of eight horsemen approaching, made all speed for the house, evidently thinking us Ku-Klux or "Red Strings" resuscitated; and now a smart shower would beat about our heads, and die away in tearful whisperings among the broad leaves. The mile-stones by the roadside were notched to indicate the distance; and from hour to hour, in the mountain passes, stops were made to whoop up the laggards.


The Devil's Couthouse, Whiteside Mountain

The Promise of Spring

All this week, and especially today, Winter has made itself known here in the Cowees. So I began to comb through my old photos for something warm and colorful to post here.  I came across the following and it touches on topics that I ponder often, and more than ever.  My affinity with the plant world, for which I am so grateful, grows deeper and deeper with each new season.

[From February 22, 2010]

Biophilia

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.
-Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia



By the end of next month, I’ll be out in the woods slithering around on my belly to take pictures of early spring wildflowers.

I’m looking forward to seeing my friends again. Throughout this cold winter, though, I’ve seen them in my mind’s eye. Just beneath the surface of the frozen ground, they’ve been there all along. Even on the bleakest days, the bright colors of spring are near.

Last year, I began to get serious about learning the wildflowers. I regret waiting so long. It could be a lifelong quest, no matter how long your life, and I’ve learned just enough to recognize how little I know. It’s one thing to identify individual specimens in bloom, but quite another to understand them in a fuller context.

Over the winter, I’ve considered how to botanize this year - by finding a different frame through which to view the world. I got some help with this by attending a native plant symposium over the weekend, hosted by the North Carolina Native Plant Society, Asheville Chapter. By the end of the day, I had some ideas for new perspectives on the upcoming woodland rambles. 

For now, from the symposium…

Tom Baugh, a biologist and former poetry editor of Rapid River magazine, began the day with a discussion of life on earth and our human connection to other life. Baugh shared the quote from E. O. Wilson that I used at the beginning of this post.

E. O. Wilson, a Harvard University entomologist, coined the term "biophilia" referring to our innate affinity with nature. Wilson’s hypothesis is that humans evolved as creatures deeply enmeshed with the intricacies of nature, and that we still have this affinity with nature ingrained in our genotype.

His book, Biophilia, The Human Bond with Other Species, includes essays on his own journey of understanding:

I have argued in this book that we are human in good part because of the particular way we affiliate with other organisms. They are the matrix in which the human mind originated and is permanently rooted, and they offer the challenge and freedom innately sought. To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained. I offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry and myth: mysterious and little known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit. Splendor awaits in minute proportions.

Among those inspired by Wilson’s eloquent argument is social ecologist Stephen Kellert who has applied biophilia to the design of buildings and communities, as described in the book Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life:

This book offers a paradigm shift in how we design and build our buildings and our communities, one that recognizes that the positive experience of natural systems and processes in our buildings and constructed landscapes is critical to human health, performance, and well-being. Biophilic design is about humanity's place in nature and the natural world's place in human society, where mutuality, respect, and enriching relationships can and should exist at all levels and should emerge as the norm rather than the exception.

Wilson and Kellert co-edited The Biophilia Hypothesis, a collection of invited papers supporting & refuting the biophilia hypothesis

Here are a few thoughts from E. O. Wilson:

The great philosophical divide in moral reasoning about the remainder of life is whether or not other species have an innate right to exist.

Biodiversity is the most information-rich part of the known universe. More organisation and complexity exists in a handful of soil than on the surfaces of all the other planets combined.

Biodiversity of a country is part of its national inheritance - the product of the deep history of the territory extending long back before the coming of man.

Humanity needs a vision of an expanding and unending future. This spiritual craving cannot be satisfied by the colonisation of space. The other planets are inhospitable and immensely expensive to reach. The nearest stars are so far away that voyagers would need thousands of years just to report back. The true frontier for humanity is life on earth, its exploration and the transport of knowledge about it into science, art and practical affairs. Again, the qualities of life that validate the proposition are: 90% or more of species of plants, animals and micro organisms, lack even so much as a scientific name; each of the species is immensely old by human standards and has been wonderfully moulded to its environment. Life around us exceeds in complexity and beauty anything else humanity is ever likely to encounter.

The manifold ways by which human beings are tied to the remainder of life are very poorly understood, crying for new scientific enquiry and a boldness of aesthetic interpretation.

---

Wildflower photos from Spring 2009 include (from top):

Geranium maculatum

Trillium erectum

Sanguinaria canadensis

Erythronium americanum

James R. Gilmore's "Mountain-White Heroine"

 After decades perusing nineteenth century documents pertaining to the Southern Appalachians, it is easy for me to assume that I've already found all the "Really Good Stuff."  Of course that's not the case, though the rare gems I still unearth from time to time have been well hidden.

The work of James Roberts Gilmore is a good example.

A prolific and popular author during and after the Civil War, Gilmore deserves to be better known than he is today.  His 1889 novel, Mountain-White Heroine, is a Civil War story set in Western North Carolina.  His introduction to the novel is a commentary on the threats posed by lax immigration laws and the diffusion of socialist thought in America.  In contrast, Gilmore saw the embodiment of desperately needed "American values" in the mountaineers of Southern Appalachia.

Although his political commentary at the front of Mountain-White Heroine is a somewhat surprising curiosity, I wasn't expecting anything special from the novel that followed.  I've read, or tried to read, other 19th century regional fiction.  Some of it is worth the effort, but much of it is deeply flawed.  Besides if Gilmore was any good, why had I never heard of him?

The Author

Born in Boston, James Roberts Gilmore (1823 - 1903) began his career in New York as a businessman involved in the cotton and shipping industries.  During the 1850s, his work took him to the South where he became acquainted with whites and blacks. During the Civil War and the decades that followed, he devoted more of his time to writing, often publishing his work under the pseudonym, Edmund Kirke.  He was a novelist, historian, poet and lecturer, spending time in the South to collect material for his books.  He took particular interest in John Sevier and other pioneers of trans-Appalachian settlement and stayed in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina while conducting research for his historical book series.

The Novel

As a Civil War story, as a suspenseful tale well-told, Mountain-White Heroine rises well above my low expectations. It warrants a space on the same shelf as similar works by modern writers like Charles Frazier and Robert Morgan.  The novel recounts the hardships endured by Union loyalists in Madison County, NC.  Sons and husbands who refuse to fight for the Confederacy suffer the most dire of consequences. Several historic figures appear in the novel:  Robert Vance (briefly), Daniel Ellis (a Union officer who wrote a popular memoir about his war-time exploits in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina), and Union Colonel George Kirk. More often than not in other novels and histories, Kirk and his "Raiders" are portrayed as cruel bushwhackers, terrorizing North Carolina mountaineers regardless of their allegiances in the war.  Gilmore, though, presents a different perspective on Kirk's Raiders, casting them in an unusually positive light.

Several things ring true in Mountain-White Heroine: Gilmore was intimately familiar with the geographical setting for the story, primarily in Madison County, although action ranged as far as Charleston (Bryson City), Soco, Waynesville and Morganton.  Gilmore also had a sense of the social strata of mountain communities.  His descriptions of some mountain people as ignorant and slovenly verge on stereotype.  On the other hand, he devotes as much or more space to mountaineers who are resolute, principled and brave.  Gilmore introduces us to the best and the worst of society.

The novel opens in April 1861 with the arrival of the circus:

...the monster placard announced that the dancing dogs, the monkey that plays the tambourine, and the half-nude goddess who rides four steeds at once, bare-backed, and at full gallop, would soon be on exhibition in the widely-known village of Asheville. The circus stole into town over night, and when the half-asleep dwellers in the place heard its measured tramp on the highway, they knew that a long procession of Mountain-Whites would follow in the morning. And it did. One unbroken stream of both sexes, and all ages, on foot, on horse-back, mule-back, and "critter back," and in every kind of nondescript vehicle, poured into the town, over all its principal thoroughfares, from early dawn till high-noon...

Gilmore devotes several pages to colorful descriptions of the people travelling to the big show:

The most of the people in this procession had dull, expressionless faces, and only a casual glance was needed to show that they were below the average of our rural population in civilization, and intelligence. A considerable portion had the appearance of well-to-do farmers, the remainder are known, far and wide, as "poor whites;" though they are not poor in the sense of being homeless, and destitute of the necessaries of life. However, their homes are often little better than hovels, and their food is usually a ration of salt pork, hominy, and "corn-dodger," which fails to develop in them a very high order of manhood. But the hovels are their own, and so are the small patches of cleared ground which they cultivate in the rudest and most primitive manner.

During the circus, news of the recent attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston begins to circulate through the crowd:

It is probable that not an individual in the assemblage had any adequate conception of the national bearing of the event, or of its vital relation to his own future; and yet, a feeling of dread and uncertainty, a vague sense of a grave crisis having come into their lives, pervaded the entire gathering, and sent each one back to his home pondering the tidings with more than his accustomed thoughtfulness. By none was the political bearing of this event more fully appreciated than by three youths, aged respectively, fifteen, seventeen, and nineteen years, who occupied one of the upper seats of the immense tent at the beginning of the itinerant performance. They were of a better class than a larger portion of the motley audience. Their clothing was of homespun, like that of the others, but it was neat, cleanly, and well-fitting, and sat upon them with the easy grace which betokens good breeding.

Apollonians and Dionysians

A reference to "good breeding" might chafe the sensitivities of the 21st century reader, but so be it. Gilmore's distinctions bring to mind an interview with Charlotte Young (1879-1985) a poet and educator who taught in remote mountains schools in the early twentieth century.  She had her own way of depicting the range of virtue and vice that she observed among mountain folk:

According to Greek belief, there two groups in the world. Apollo stood for reaching for Divinity for music and poetry. The followers of Bacchus emphasized the physical side of like, and were called Dionsyians. In Western North Carolina you see that as it was then in Greece and Rome, and everywhere, for that matter. You can see it all over the world now; all civilization, or lack of civilization. It was a fight between those two forces. In North Carolina the force for seeking the Divine is rather strong.  Some are followers of Bacchus and some are followers of Apollo, reaching for the Divine in art, in music, in beauty, as Apollo stood for all the finer things of life, as we say. So Bacchus stood only for his wine and women and eat, drink and be merry.  In North Carolina, I don't know if it's more so than in other places, but those who are with the group that reach for Divinity are very strong in it; and just as strong are those who like to shake their feet and dance and drink and run with the Bacchus crowd. I find that in my teaching, and I suppose it's more or less that way everywhere.

The three brothers in Gilmore's novel have never been so far from their home across the Ivy River in Madison County.  Growing weary of the circus, they leave early to share the news of Fort Sumter with their widowed mother, Mrs. Nancy Hawkins, a saintly woman and the central character of Mountain-White Heroine, a Charlotte Young Apollonian if there ever was one.

Mrs. Hawkins and Sukey

Mrs. Hawkins' relationship with a mountain "wild-woman" named Sukey is remarkably similar to the Ada and Ruby friendship in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain.  For anyone steeped in 19th century mountain narratives, Frazier's "borrowings" from that pool of literature are obvious.  Frazier acknowledges as much in an afterword to his novel, listing a dozen books that he found particularly helpful.  Nothing by James R. Gilmore is listed.  So, the parallels between Nancy-Sukey and Ada-Ruby could be sheer coincidence...or not:

...house-keeping was not Sukey's "gift."  She preferred to roam the woods, rifle or shot-gun in hand, in pursuit of the deer or wild rabbit. With these she kept their larder well stocked, and sometimes she brought down game that would have been regarded as a trophy by a male sportsman — on two or three occasions, a bear, and once a panther, which had stretched itself along the limb of a tree, and was about to spring down upon her.  

Sukey faces ongoing difficulties with her neer-do-well common law husband, the "Parson:"

"He's just loike what they say uv his farder and gran'ther — lazy as one, an' as big a thief as t'other. Why, he steals game thet I gits by all-day hunting; and swops hit off for bacon. He'd ruther pay twenty cents a pound for greasy swine-flesh, nor eat my best venison for nothin'. An' the swine ar' got inter his blood — made him just loike the porkers, an' thet's the trouble with all the folks round yere. They'se lived on swine so long that they'se got to be swine tharselves."

Word Pictures

Yes, some of the dialect might be an issue for today's reader, but isn't as extreme or pervasive as that found in other Appalachian literature from the same time period, Mary Noailles Murfree (aka Charles Egbert Craddock) being a prime example.  Gilmore is also more moderate than Murfree with another common device from that time, florid descriptions of mountain scenery.  I happen to enjoy over-the-top word pictures like those painted by Murfree, including this one from The Frontiersmen:

The mockingbirds were singing in the woods outside. The sun was in the trees. The leafage had progressed beyond the bourgeoning period and the branches flung broad green splendors of verdure to the breeze. The Great Smoky Mountains were hardly less blue than the sky as the distant summits deployed against the fair horizon; only the nearest, close at hand, were sombre, and showed dark luxuriant foliage and massive craggy steeps, and their austere, silent, magnificent domes looked over the scene with solemn uplifting meanings.

It is worth remembering that most readers in the mid to late 19th century had no access to full-color, high resolution images of the Smokies.  Perhaps they had seen a few black-and-white lithographs in popular magazines, but they relied on their own imaginations to form a mental image of the mountains.  Compared to other writers of his time, Gilmore exercises restraint with his depictions of the landscape, and this passage is about as extravagant as it gets:

...the horsemen set off at a brisk gallop down the road to Waynesville, until they came opposite the point where the Oconolufta joins the Tuckasege. There in Indian file, each horseman treading as nearly as possible in the tracks of the one preceding him — they forded the Tuckasege, and striking a north-east course entered, at the distance of a few miles, the wooded ravine bordered by steep mountain ranges, a mile or more in height, through which flows the picturesque Oconolufta.  They were now in a magnificent region of mighty woods, majestic mountains, and noisy cascades, which leap over precipitous cliffs, and rush in sheeted foam down steep declivities. Here and there a grassy cove indents the side of the ravine, or a quiet, tree-sprinkled valley, where the mountains had receded farther from the river, and left some luxuriant nook to be one day the abode of man. As yet, however, no human habitation can be found in all the forest-covered region, and a stillness unbroken save by the noisy rush of the river, the startled cry of some bird, or the occasional bleat of a deer, or growl of a bear, reigns over all the leafy solitude.  

I'll reveal nothing more about the plot of Gilmore's novel.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the literary license he takes with historic facts, he gives us an engaging and valuable perspective on a tragic episode of Appalachian life.  The author's obscurity, 130 years after his hey-day, is revealed by googling "James Roberts Gilmore."  After reading his novel about the people of Madison County, I would say he deserves to be rediscovered.

Cumberland Chronicler and Presidential Confidante

Among his other books was the historic work, Advance Guard of Western Civilization, focused on James Robertson and the pioneer settlers of Middle Tennessee's Cumberland Region. However, Gilmore's contemporaries were underwhelmed by the depth of his scholarship.  With a lengthy footnote in the The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt skewered Gilmore for shoddy research about John Sevier.  Even so, and even if Gilmore's version of history might have its shortcomings, Advance Guard is an entertaining read. Until finding Gilmore's book, I knew nothing about Spanish intrique among the trans-Appalachian pioneers in the 1780s, and I was unaware of James Wilkinson, a man who challenges Benedict Arnold for the title of "America's Worst Traitor...Ever."

With a little digging, one can find some unusual items from and about James R. Gilmore.  It would seem that President Abraham Lincoln sought his advice, if we are to believe the dialogues in Gilmore's Personal Recollections Of Abraham Lincoln And The Civil War.

Indeed, the New York Times reported on Gilmore's July 1864 mission to Richmond where he intended to convince Rebel leader Jefferson Davis to surrender.  Had Gilmore's mission been a success, no doubt his name would be better known today.

Dillsboro's Very Own Mastodon

Long, long ago mastodons frequented the banks of the Tuckasegee River.  Or so suggests one old newspaper clipping.  But this discussion requires some background before we investigate the evidence found in Dillsboro, North Carolina.

Mastodons and other megafauna

First off, mastodons and mammoths were two distinct creatures.  Mammoths originated in Africa and migrated through Eurasia and North America.  The woolly mammoth, which went extinct about 10,000 years ago, was closely related to the elephant.

Mastodons lived in Central and North America before their extinction, also about 10,000 years ago.  Compared to mammoths, they were slightly smaller, with shorter legs and flatter heads.  They were anywhere from seven to fourteen feet tall and covered in long, shaggy hair.  Both animals were herbivores.

During the Pleistocene Era, 12,000 years ago, humans and megafauna (including mastodons) quite possibly encountered one another on the Great Smoky Mountains.  Though glaciers did not reach this far south, the climate was much colder than today.  The highest peaks must have been tundra-like environments with permafrost and few trees.  The fossil record reveals many large mammals inhabiting the park region prior to the Quaternary Extinction: Jefferson’s ground sloth, Harlan’s ground sloth, tapir, horse, half-ass, long-nosed peccary, flat-headed peccary, stout-legged llama, helmeted musk-ox, bison, white-tailed deer, caribou, elk, giant beaver, black bear, Florida spectacled bear, giant short-faced bear, cougar, jaguar, saber-toothed cat, scimitar-toothed cat, coyote, dire wolf and mastodon.

Spear-points found in this area indicate that migratory hunters came to this area in search of mastodons and other large prey.  A paleontological site near Nashville, Tennessee has provided abundant information about mastodon-hunting in the Southeast.  The Coats-Hines-Litchy site has yielded portions of four mastodon skeletons, one of which was directly associated with Paleoindian stone tools such as blades and scrapers, signs of a successful hunt on one day 10,000 to 14,000 years ago.

Ominous events at the Cowee Tunnel

This brings us back to Dillsboro and the year 1882.  Construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad was underway and the “Cowee Tunnel” adjacent to the Tuckasegee River was posing many challenges for the convict laborers digging their way through the mountains.

An ominous note from “Sojourner” appeared in the September 18, 1882 issue of the Asheville Weekly Citizen:

I did not intend to convey the impression in my last letter that the entire Cowee tunnel had fallen in.  The workmen on the west end of the tunnel came to dirt, and it has fallen in several times. Mr. Dick Wilson says they are having much trouble in bracing it up, the dirt falls in so fast.  Many thousand yards of rock and dirt have been taken out, and some think the trees from the top will come through soon.  It is a serious drawback in the work on the tunnel, and there is some talk of having to make it a cut, but that seems impracticable.   If the dirt can be removed, and the hole walled in safely, the work will proceed on the tunnel as usual. 

The ”big” story coming less than six weeks later, was reported in North Carolina newspapers and reprinted in papers across the country:

The skeleton of a full grown mastodon has been found in the Cowee tunnel on the Ducktown branch of the Western North Carolina railroad.  When the monster was discovered the convicts fled in terror, and it was by hard work that they could be induced to return to their picks.  It was found six feet below the surface of the earth.  It was in a perfect state of preservation, and crumbled to dust as soon as exposed to the air.  The mastodon is the Russian term of fossil elephant, and is extensively found in Russia and all over Europe.  It became extinct, according to geology, near 10,000 years ago, died on the Pleistocene beds.  In 1799, one was found in the icy districts of Russia, the hide of which was in a fair state of preservation, and was of such weight that it took ten men to support it a distance of 150 feet.  The one found in the Cowee tunnel was stretched out a distance of forty feet – supposed to have been devoured by carniverous animals, and the bones disengaged from their original position.  The largest mastodons range from fourteen to twenty-four feet in length, and from nine to twelve feet in height.  - The Greensboro Patriot, Oct. 27, 1882  

Questioning the newspaper account

The temptation is to dismiss the story as fake news, something too preposterous to be believed. 

Maybe so. 

On the other hand, as the earlier story reported, the tunnel was not cut through solid rock.  Is it plausible that an unfortunate mastodon, grazing alongside the Tuckasegee River on a chilly day 12,000 years ago, was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was buried by a landslide? 

Perhaps.

Steam locomotive emerging from Cowee Tunnel, ca. 1892

But isn’t it almost too convenient that the bones of the Dillsboro mastodon practically vanished into thin air before the discovery could be verified?  It turns out that long-buried bones can crumble fairly quickly when exposed to the air.  That issue was broached in a 2017 newspaper report of mastodon bones unearthed at a Michigan construction site:

Eagle Creek Homes, the developer behind the Railview Ridge housing project, reached out to University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology Director Dan Fisher. Fisher has 40 years of experience investigating claims of prehistoric remains found in the region….

Most remains of mastodons and mammoths found in Michigan, Fisher said, are somewhere in the range of 11,000 to 15,000 years old.

"That was at a time that humans had found their way to North America," Fisher said. "These were some of the animals that they were sometimes lucky enough to bring down or otherwise get access to. So people butchered them, ate them and stored their meat."

As glaciers moved through Michigan several thousand years ago, they created lakes, ponds and swamps that became surrounded by vegetation attractive to the American mastodon and Jefferson woolly mammoth. Fossils of both are prevalent in the southern two-thirds of the state.

The age of the bones means they are often very fragile, and can sometimes disintegrate when exposed from the sediment that has been preserving them all that time.

"They dry, shrink, crack and sometimes they literally fall to pieces," Fisher said.

Those words from Dan Fisher go a long way toward erasing my doubts about the veracity of the Dillsboro mastodon story. 

But not completely. 

Overshadowed by tragedy

If workers actually found a mastodon skeleton in Dillsboro, why haven’t I heard about it until now?

One reason could be that the event was overshadowed by a tragedy that occurred two months later, on December 30, 1882.  As convict laborers were crossing the river to start another day’s work on the Cowee Tunnel, their barge capsized.  Nineteen men, shackled together, drowned in the Tuckasegee.

Is it any wonder that some crumbling bones of an ancient animal were soon forgotten?   On January 3, 1883, the News and Observer in Raleigh reported on the accident:

"A few days since we published an account of the trip of Governor Jarvis to the Western North Carolina Railroad, and gave an account of the operations at the Cowee tunnel, which is near the bank of Tuckaseegee River, in Jackson county. On that section of the road are employed about 200 convicts. Yesterday Lieutenant-Governor James L. Robinson, who came down from his home in Macon county, brought the news of a horrible disaster at the crossing of the Tuckaseegee River, the news of which he received from Mr. W.B. Troy, the officer in charge of convicts on the Western North Carolina Railroad.

" It appears that the camp of the convicts, that is, the stockade in which they are quartered, is on the bank of the Tuckaseegee river, opposite the Cowee tunnel. The river is at that particular point deep, with a current somewhat sluggish as compared with parts immediately above and below, where it breaks into rapids and rushes with the swiftness peculiar to those mountain torrents. The means of ferriage across the stream has been a large barge or flat boat, capable of containing fifty convicts, a rope stretched across being grasped by the hands and the boat then pulled over.

On Saturday, while thirty convicts were being thus transferred, they became alarmed on seeing some water and ice in the boat, and despite the fact that there was no danger, rushed panic-stricken to one end of the boat, which was at once capsized and all the men thrown into the cold river, there deep, though not more than fifty yards wide. A white guard who was on the boat went down with the rest.

A terrible scene followed, as the men struggled to get out, each man looking only after his personal safety. Many of the convicts swam ashore, or after being washed down a short distance reached the bank ere they came to the swift water. Twelve thus saved themselves, but eighteen clasped each other so closely that they became a struggling mass and were all drowned. The guard was taken from the water to all appearance dead, and it was only by dint of great and long continued efforts that his life was saved.

" The gang of convicts at this particular place, or rather section of the road was in charge of Mr. J.M. McMurray. Yesterday afternoon Capt. E.R. Stamps, chairman of the board of Penitentiary directors, left for the scene to make investigation of the disaster, which as, he state to a reporter, fairly appalled him. It was one of those accidents which seem to be unavoidable, and due to the sudden panic which seized the convicts in the boat, which it is said was in no danger of sinking, the water having fallen in it from the rains. Some of the drowned men were found some distance below, locked together in a last and fatal embrace. Many who could swim were hampered by others, who clutched them in a death grip.

"This is the greatest disaster that has happened on the road. A portion of the Cowee tunnel was of so treacherous a character that it caved in on a number of convicts, and they narrowly escaped death. The utmost precautions were used to prevent a repetition of the occurrence, an immense “cut” being made and arched over. The dirt was replaced, and all made secure. The tunnel is eighteen miles from the Balsam mountains, and thirty-four miles from Pigeon River, and is on what is known as the Ducktown branch of the Western North Carolina Railroad.

- News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), January 3, 1883

Butterflies of the Mountains

 [From November 3,  2008]

With the turning of the seasons, I suppose we've seen the last of the butterflies until next spring. From what I observed this year, and from what others mentioned to me, butterflies were unusually abundant. Here are a few of my favorite shots from the past couple of years.

The butterfly is a flying flower,

The flower a tethered butterfly.

~Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

~Nathaniel Hawthorne

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

~Chuang Tzu

This great purple butterfly,

In the prison of my hands,

Has a learning in his eye

Not a poor fool understands.

~William Butler Yeats, "Another Song of a Fool"

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

~Rabindranath Tagore

"A Way I Know"

 

Cullasaja River, October 2015

From The French Broad Hustler, April 23, 1908

The Cullasaja
(By Charlotte Young)

I wish you knew a way I know
   Along the Cullasaja.
There, everything to quietness
   And happy thoughts persuade you.

The river sings its own wild song
   Around the rocky turnings,
There honey-suckles light the banks
   With red and yellow burnings.

Along the cliffs the ferns uncurl,
   And trails the pink arbutus,
And here the wood thrush lilts a song
   As sweet as any flute is.

I wish you knew a way I know
   By dreaming flowers and river,
The little cares that hurt you so
   Would float away forever.

--Charlotte Young  [1878-1985]

"reckon up all the names of these wild apples"

 [From October 18, 2008]

So as I say poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of anything. – Gertrude Stein



The odd perversity of human nature. How else can you explain it? The fruit associated with our expulsion from Paradise is the fruit we hold in highest regard.

The forbidden fruit,
The golden apples,
The apple of discord,
Adam’s Apple,
William Tell’s apple,
Isaac Newton’s apple,
Johnny Appleseed’s apple,
Apple of my eye,
Apple a day,
Baseball hot dogs apple pie and Chevrolet,
An apple for the teacher,
The Big Apple
And one bad apple.
How ‘bout them apples?

On a brisk October afternoon in the 1850s Silas McDowell wandered the Cullasaja Valley searching for wild apples. On that same afternoon, hundreds of miles to the north, Henry David Thoreau set out from Concord searching for wild apples. Silas left us the Nickajack, the Alarkee, the Equinetely, the Cullawhee, the Junaluskee, the Watauga, the Tillequah and the Chestooah. Henry left us a treatise on Wild Apples in which he contemplated the naming of them.



Oh, the delights of pomaceous nomenclature! When enthobotanist Gary Nabhan visited Highlands recently, he spoke of the many varieties of apples originating from the Southern Appalachians:

I think the names of these apples are interesting because some of the varieties go by multiple names. The Nickajack apple that was first promoted in Franklin was also known as Carolina Spice, Spotted Buck, Colonel Summerhour and World’s Wonder. What a great name for an apple – World’s Wonder. You have things like Hubberson’s Nonesuch and Seek-No-Further. Just park yourself under that tree and wait for them to fall into your lap! That’s about the highest compliment you can give another species. Seek No Further!




When apple breeders breed apples they must eventually name those apples. That was the challenge facing some Minnesota apple breeders after they crossed a Gala with a Braeburn:

We put a very scientific 'keep an eye on this one' note on the Sugar Shack tree. Of course, we hadn't named it yet, and we are the type of people who would name an apple 'Keep An Eye On This One,' but we later thought 'Sugar Shack' was a better name. The guys who named the apple variety 'Westfield Seek-no-further' in Connecticut 'way back in the mid-1700's didn't do too bad with a novel name, though. Antique apple collectors are still growing the variety, and the intriguing name certainly has something to do with that. We could name an apple 'Minnesota Never-stop-growing-this-one' and then hang around a few hundred years and see if it worked. It's worth a shot.



Some UK orchardists consider how the naming of apples has become yet another corporate enterprise in this fallen world:

Part of the appeal of the old heritage apple varieties is their good honest names. In the "good old days" apples were named without fuss. A common strategy was the name of the person who discovered them - Pott’s Seedling, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Kidd’s Orange Red, Granny Smith, Chivers Delight and so on. If that didn’t have quite the right ring to it, the name of the local village might suffice: Ribston Pippin, Barnack Beauty, Allington Pippin, Braeburn. Another popular strategy was to borrow the name of a famous person such as Lord Lambourne, Freyberg, Bismarck for example. If you were stuck (or not very inventive) you just went for something really simple like Red Delicious or Golden Delicious. In the 21st century however the important job of naming (or branding) new apple varieties is no longer left to the happy grower, but has been taken over by marketing departments, who see apples as just another consumer item, and might as well be naming a new car as a new apple. Thus we have Kanzi, a brand new 21st century apple, which means "hidden treasure" in Swahili - of course.

For the last word on this subject, I’ll yield to Henry David Thoreau for a passage from Wild Apples:

The Naming of Them

[73] It would be a pleasant pastime to find suitable names for the hundred varieties which go to a single heap at the cider-mill. Would it not tax a man's invention,--no one to be named after a man, and all in the lingua vernacula? Who shall stand godfather at the christening of the wild apples? It would exhaust the Latin and Greek languages, if they were used, and make the lingua vernacula flag. We should have to call in the sunrise and the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel and the jay and the butterfly, the November traveller and the truant boy, to our aid.

[74] In 1836 there were in the garden of the London Horticultural Society more than fourteen hundred distinct sorts. But here are species which they have not in their catalogue, not to mention the varieties which our Crab might yield to cultivation.

[75] Let us enumerate a few of these. I find myself compelled, after all, to give the Latin names of some for the benefit of those who live where English is not spoken,--for they are likely to have a world-wide reputation.

[76] There is, first of all, the Wood-Apple (Malus sylvatica); the Blue-Jay Apple; the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods, (sylvestrivallis), also in Hollows in Pastures (campestrivallis); the Apple that grows in an old Cellar-Hole (Malus cellaris); the Meadow-Apple; the Partridge-Apple; the Truant's Apple, (Cessatoris), which no boy will ever go by without knocking off some, however late it may be; the Saunterer's Apple,--you must lose yourself before you can find the way to that; the Beauty of the Air (Decus Aëris); December-Eating; the Frozen-Thawed, (gelato-soluta,) good only in that state; the Concord Apple, possibly the same with the Musketaquidensis; the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New England; the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple (Malus viridis);--this has many synonyms; in an imperfect state, it is the Cholera morbifera aut dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima;--the Apple which Atalanta stopped to pick up; the Hedge-Apple (Malus Sepium); the Slug-Apple (limacea); the Railroad-Apple, which perhaps came from a core thrown out of the cars; the Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth; our Particular Apple, not to be found in any catalogue,--Pedestrium Solatium; also the Apple where hangs the Forgotten Scythe; Iduna's Apples, and the Apples which Loki found in the Wood; and a great many more I have on my list, too numerous to mention,--all of them good. As Bodæus exclaims, referring to the cultivated kinds, and adapting Virgil to his case, so I, adapting Bodæus,--

"Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,
An iron voice, could I describe all the forms
And reckon up all the names of these wild apples."

Under the Hiccory Tree

[From October 3, 2010]

If we had lived here during the hunter-gatherer days, then we would have been paying closer attention.

I’ve been thinking about this while taking short strolls on the mountain where I live.



At the very top is a secluded spot where I go to sit and listen sometimes. A large hickory tree stands tall there, and this weekend, I collected a few hickory nuts that had fallen from the tree. Hickory nuts have a delicious flavor.  However, the tiny nutmeat morsels hide inside stubborn shells.

If we had lived here during the hunter-gatherer days, then we would have known where all the productive hickory trees stood and visited them often, to get there before the small animals building their winter stores.

And we would have likely spent hours cracking out enough hickory nuts to amount to a handful.

When he traveled upriver from present-day Augusta, Georgia on his trip through the Southeast, William Bartram observed the Creeks processing great quantities of hickory nuts:

We then passed over large, rich savannas, or natural meadows, wide-spreading cane swamps, and frequently old Indian settlements, now deserted and overgrown with forests. These are always on or near the banks of rivers, or great swamps, the artificial mounts and terraces elevating them above the surrounding groves. I observed in the ancient cultivated fields:

1. Diospyros; [Persimmon, Diospyros virginiana]
2. Gleditsia triacanthos; [Honey Locust]
3. Prunus chicasau; [Chickasaw Plum, Prunus angustifolia]
4. Callicarpa; [French Mulberry, Callicarpa americana]
5. Moras rubra; [Red Mulberry, Morus rubra]
6. Juglans exaltata; [Shell-barked Hickory]
7. Juglans nigra, [Black walnut]

which inform us that these trees were cultivated by the ancients on account of their fruit as being wholesome and nourishing food. Though these are natives of the forest, yet they thrive better, and are more fruitful in cultivated plantations, and the fruit is in great estimation with the present generation of Indians, particularly Juglans exaltata, commonly called shell-barked hiccory. The Creeks store up the last in their towns. I have seen above an hundred bushels of these nuts belonging to one family. They pound them to pieces, and then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of the liquid; this, they call by a name which signifies hiccory milk; it is as sweet and rich as fresh cream, and is an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially homony and corn cakes.

In his 1873 book, Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Charles Colcock Jones described the stone implements used to crack hickories and other nuts:

We have thus, at some length, referred to the use of nuts as an article of food among the Southern Indians, because we hence derive the meaning and employment of these cup-shaped cavities. In our judgment these relics are simply the stones upon which the Indians cracked their nuts. Their cavities are so located that one, two, three, four, five, and sometimes more nuts could be cracked at a single blow delivered by means of the circular, flat crushing-stone so common, and so often found in direct connection with the rude articles now under consideration.

The cups are just large enough to hold a hickory-nut or a walnut in proper position so that, when struck, its pieces would be prevented from being widely scattered. Particularly do the soap-stones indicate the impressions left by the convex surfaces of the harder nuts. Upon some of them the depressions seem to have been caused simply by repeatedly cracking the nuts upon the same spot so that in time a concavity was produced corresponding to the half of the spherical or spheroidal nut. Such is the most natural explanation we can offer with regard to the use of these stones.

Emaline's Painter

 Here’s a panther tale...from very close to home.

What a beauty!

One of the pioneering families of the Cullowhee area used to own the land where I now live. Andrew and Pollie settled hereabouts in the 1840s and are buried on a hill nearby (a hill I can see without getting up from typing this).

Anyhow, their first child was a daughter named Emaline.

In the Jackson County Heritage Book, Ada Wall Lemmings wrote:

The small white lilies bloomed everywhere beside the Indian trail they were following, in the vast, untamed wilderness that was western North Carolina. The Indians called them Cullowhee, meaning white lily, in the Cherokee language.

[Emaline] would visit us and tell about her life as the daughter of one of the first settlers in that sparsely settled, remote, rugged area where they were miles from their closest neighbor. She told us what her father had said about the Cullowhee lilies. They were kept in our family and handed down, a living antique.

Aunt Emaline told us of the wild animals they shared the mountains with. One occasion she and her younger sister had been sent to a new ground far back in the dense woods, for a farming tool someone had left there. On their way home a huge, tawny colored cat leapt over their heads and landed in front of them.

They were too young to be afraid of it and tried to make friends.


It happened on these misty hills

Suddenly it leapt over their heads again. They turned around and kept trying to make friends. The cat disappeared in the woods as silently as it had come.

They rushed home to tell about the pretty cat. Only then, they knew they had met the dreaded mountain lion called “Painter” by the settlers and had miraculously survived without a scratch.


Emaline (1847 - 1933)

I would hope that if I ever encounter a "painter" in the woods around here, it would show me the same mercy...and give me enough time to grab the camera for a few shots!
.

The Music of Place

“Without music, the prehistoric past is just too quiet to be believed.”

― Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body

Which came first, music or language? Experts in such matters debate and disagree. 

While I can’t marshal much evidence one way or the other, my intuition leads me to believe that song preceded speech. Until now, I had never juxtaposed that supposition with my interest in toponomy, or “the place names of a region or language.”

Why do toponyms matter? Here’s one explanation from Toponyms as a Gateway to Society, An Abui Case Study:

Toponyms have been termed as “living fossils” of the study of language, history, and culture, and are particularly useful in describing the history of ethnic groups and changes in rural settlements…

- By Shaun Lim Tyan Gin and Francesco Perona Cacciafoco, in Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia, October 7, 2021.

We act as though the place names we take for granted have always been here and will always be here. After all, we see them on road signs and maps, and retrieve them from neatly catalogued gazetteers and databases. Around here, most of today’s place names came about within the past couple of centuries. Some originated during the colonial era, and a few others might be attributed to Cherokee or Muskogean nomenclature from a century or two earlier than that. 

Before that, words from languages long lost were used to denote different places in these mountains, though we'll probably never know what those words might have been.  Looking ahead, it is more likely than not that at some future date, the names familiar to us will be swept off the map and replaced by other names.  

But human beings have inhabited these mountain for millennia. Those past occupants had a need to make reference to specific locations, a need much greater than our own, given their subsistence lifestyle. And so, go back in time, way back in time, when singing was more common than speaking. Is it possible that different melodies represented different places? Could it be that a particular pattern of pitch and rhythm pointed to the mountain where, let’s say, the grapes were sweet and abundant?

Perhaps.

What did it sound like when every place on the landscape was a tune to be hummed or a song to be sung? And how closely would we need to listen to hear the echoes of those melodies still reverberating across these hillsides?

I would like to know.

In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing… It seemed to come from all directions at once … Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard.

- C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew


Singing is an essential element in most Mardudjara ritual performances because the songline follows in most cases the direction of travel of the beings concerned and highlights cryptically their notable as well as mundane activities. Most songs, then, have a geographical as well as mythical referent, so by learning the songline men become familiar with literally thousands of sites even though they have never visited them; all become part of their cognitive map of the desert world.

-Anthropologist Robert Tonkinson describing Mardu songlines in his 1978 monograph The Mardudjara Aborigines - Living The Dream In Australia's Desert.


Songspirals bring Country into existence. In Aboriginal English usage, Country has a particular meaning. Country encompasses the seas, waters, rocks, animals, winds, and all the beings that exist in and make up a place, including people. For Yolŋu people from North East Arnhem Land in northern Australia, songspirals, often called songlines or song cycles, are rich and multilayered articulations passed down through the generations and sung and cried by Aboriginal people to make Country, to make and remake the life-giving connections between people and place…

- Country, B., Burarrwanga, L., Ganambarr, R., Ganambarr-Stubbs, M., Ganambarr, B., Maymuru, D., Lloyd, K., Wright, S., Suchet-Pearson, S., & Daley, L. (2022). Songspirals Bring Country Into Existence: Singing More-Than-Human and Relational Creativity. Qualitative Inquiry, 28(5), 435–447. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004211068192

The Presence of the Past

[From September 8, 2009]

 

It is possible to roam these mountains without feeling the presence of the past. It is not possible for me, though.

Yesterday, I was sitting on a front porch in Webster, North Carolina, the same front porch that was mentioned in the New York Times almost 120 years ago. But that is another story for another time.

In September of 1776, General Griffith Rutherford led a frontier militia of 2,400 men on an expedition against the Cherokees. The army departed from Old Fort on September 1, and followed the Swannanoa River, Hominy Creek and Richland Creek as they made their way west in the following days. They sighted their first Indians on September 6, not long before they crossed Balsam Gap.

Some years later, David Swain wrote about the events that occurred west of the Balsams, on Scott’s Creek:

The latter stream obtains its name from John Scott, a trader among the Cherokees – a negro of whom was shot by Rev. James Hall, the Chaplain [of the expedition], as he ran, mistaking him for an Indian.

One week later, the same Rev. Hall would deliver a sermon from atop the Nuquassee (Nikwasi) mound in present-day Franklin.

September 7, 2009 was a quiet and pleasant day in Webster. Had I been occupying the same spot on September 7, 1776, I would have seen something remarkable. One thousand of Rutherford’s soldiers marched through what is now Webster. They forded the Tuckasegee and continued up Savannah Creek. As they ascended the Cowee Mountains, they encountered a small party of Cherokees waiting in ambush.

In his diary, Lieutenant William Lenoir recorded:

[We] marcht to a little Town on Tuckeyseagey River [and] 8 miles from thence towards watauger [Watauga] saw some indians walking up a mountain & we was attacked by about 20 indians on the top of the mountain at 3 o’clock within about 7 miles of said Town. William Alexander was wounded in the foot and no visible Dammage done to the Indians only a few kettles taken & c. then marcht within 2 miles of the said Town and lay on a small Emanance – 20 [miles marched that day].

The village and mound of Watauga were located along the Little Tennessee River near where you would find Lake Emory today. But when the militia arrived there September 8, the town was already deserted. The systematic destruction of Cherokee villages on the Little Tennessee was about to begin.

On September 10, the violence intensified:

A detachment of 300 men was sent to destroy a town called Sugartown immediately above the junction of the [Little] Tennessee & Sugartown [Cullasaja] rivers. The ground on which the town was situated was flanked on 2 sides by the rivers in the form of a triangle, & the remaining angle on the third side was enclosed by a strong work of brush and timber. When the soldiers had finally entered the town a fire was opened upon them by the indians from the riverbanks and the brush works, & finding themselves surrounded by a invisible foe they took shelter in the cabins and remained there for about 3 hours, at which time they were relieved by a strong detachment from the main army from about 4 miles below, where the firing of the small army had been distantly heard. The detachment lost 18 men killed and 22 wounded. The indians did not sustain any loss that was discovered.

A prisoner, whom they had taken, upon the promise of his life, proposed to lead the army to what was called the hidden town, where their women, children, & a large number of cattle were collected. This was 7 miles distant from Nuquassee in a narrow valley on the Sugartown river and surrounded at all points by mountains and was very difficult to approach from the fact that the mountains jutted in abruptly upon the river, in many places leaving scarcely room for a foot path.

However, on reaching the town there was not an indian to be found save a few very old & decreped men and women, the other indians being discovered some hundreds of feet above them on the crests of the mountains apparently looking down & taking a calm survey of them from their secure situations. They achieved nothing but the destruction of this town & some few beef cattle by that day’s adventures.

[This account of the Sugartown excursion was based on an 1850 letter from Silas McDowell, who lived in the Cullasaja Valley just down river from the gorge. The details he had heard and subsequently shared in his letter contradict other reports. According to some histories of the Rutherford expedition, the militia suffered only a few casualties.]