Vicki Rozema - Footsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee Nation

FOOTSTEPS

OF THE

CHEROKEES

Also by Vicki Rozema

Cherokee Voices: Early Accounts of Cherokee Life in the East
Voices from the Trail of Tears

Copyright 2007 by Vicki Rozema

All rights reserved under

International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions

SECOND EDITION, 2007

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council on Library Resources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rozema, Vicki, 1954

A guide to the eastern homelands of the Cherokee Nation / by Vicki Rozema. 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-89587-346-0 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-89587-346-X

1. Cherokee IndiansSouthern States. 2. Indians of North AmericaSouthern States. 3. Southern StatesDescription and travel. I. Title.

E99.C5R93 2007

975.00497557dc22 2007021633

DESIGN BY DEBRA LONG HAMPTON
MAPS DESIGNED BY LIZA LANGRALL AND THE ROBERTS GROUP

To

Chris, Laurel, and Ed

for their love and support

CONTENTS

Some years ago, on a trip to Montana, I met a young man at the Little Big Horn National Monument who was half Cherokee and half Texan. A tourist like myself, he was also on a pilgrimage to learn more about his Native American roots. The young man expressed dismay that the other visitors paid so much attention to the legend of General George Custer and the Seventh Cavalry and very little to the information on Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians who fought at the Little Big Horn.

This man, in his mid-twenties, said he had only recently taken an interest in learning more about his Native American ancestry. His mother was a full-blooded Cherokee from Oklahoma, but he and his brothers were raised in the panhandle of Texas. He had never traveled east of the Mississippi, so I encouraged him to come visit his ancestral homelands in the southern Appalachians. I told him that my home, Chattanooga, was near the Red Clay Council Grounds and New Echota, two of the former capitals of the Cherokee Nation. And the home of John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokees at the time of their removal from the East, was just across the state line in Georgia. From Chattanooga, I advised, it was only a short drive over the mountains to the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina.

Like most people who have grown up in the South, I was aware of the Native Americans who once lived in the area. How could I not be? All over the South, place names like Chickamauga, Hiwassee, Chattahoochee, Unicoi, Tennessee, Oconee, and Tuscaloosa are constant reminders of their presence. There are names like the Sequoyah Caverns, Alabama Boulevard, Ocoee Street, Cherokee Realty, Cherokee Auto Repair, Cherokee Shopping Center, Cherokee Pharmacy, Cherokee Freight, and the Cherokee Area Council of the Boy Scouts. Everywhere one goes in the South, names serve as reminders of the first Americans.

But like most Southerners, my knowledge of the Native Americans and the early history of our region was spotty. I had spent many hours hiking and driving in mountains that bear Native American names. I had visited Red Clay and New Echota and had grown up with the knowledge that my great-great-great-grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee. However, I knew very little about how these people, my ancestors, lived or how they were driven away.

My love of the southern Appalachians has manifested itself in my photography for many years. As most photographers know, the best images are taken by those who know their subject. Thus, my interest in Cherokee history and folklore grew out of a desire to know more about the areas I was photographing. Im not sure when or why I decided to start working on a book about the Cherokee heritage in the southern Appalachians, but I know the idea grew out of a fondness for the land. It grew out of a desire to understand the people, the lore, and the history of the region where I was born and have lived all my life. It was nurtured by a wish that my children will have a better understanding of their ancestry than I do. Finally, I wanted to share the history and the beauty of my homeland with others.

This book began as a short photographic guide to scenic drives and a few select Cherokee historic and cultural sites. While working on the book, I kept discovering new (at least to me) sites and historical information that were so interesting I had to include them.

Although I have spent several hundred hours researching this book, I hope readers will recognize it as a guidebook and not an academic treatise. In my research, I encountered anomalies, anachronisms, disputed sites, and even quarreling local historians. I tried to resolve these problems by locating additional sources or checking references. In some cases, I have presented more than one viewpoint or made a judgment on which source seemed most reliable. Since time constraints prevented me from checking thousands of original land records and papers in state and federal archives, I may not have made the correct choice in every situation. But I hope this book will inspire some readers to learn more about the early history of their communities and to do additional research.

I chose the sites in this book using the following criteria: historical or cultural significance, accessibility, proximity to other sites, beauty, educational opportunities, time restrictions, my personal fondness for the site, and my ability to locate the site. Due to time constraints, I limited my search to an area bounded on the west by the Tennessee River and on the north by the Kentucky and Virginia state lines. However, I made a few exceptions to my self-imposed restrictions, such as Betsy Packs property in Jasper, Tennessee, and Cumberland Gap National Historic Area in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. While I tried to include sites that are more significant in Cherokee history than in Euro-American history, this distinction was often difficult to make. The documented history of the Cherokees is inevitably linked with the history of European settlers. Most of what we know about Cherokee history has been written by Euro-Americans.

One of the problems I encountered in writing this book was the dilemma of which sites are candidates for graverobbing or vandalism. Looting of prehistoric Native American sites is a major problem in the United States, and the Southeast is particularly susceptible because of the number of Woodland- and Mississippian-era sites. I have tried to avoid revealing any burial, bluff shelter, or other prehistoric sites that have not already been published or are not already well known or protected. In a few instances, local authorities asked that I not reveal specific locations, and in each case, I honored that request. I would like to remind readers that all Native American burial sites are protected by state and federal laws. In fact, all private and public lands are protected by law from vandalism, trespassing, and any form of looting. So the best policy to follow when you find Native American artifacts is to report them to on-site authorities, not to pick them up. And please remember that sites on private property should be viewed from the road to avoid trespassing.