Shaconage - The place of the blue smoke. - The first native peoples arrived in the Smokies in about AD 1000. They were believed to have been a breakaway of Iroquois, later to be called the Cherokee, who had moved south from Iroquois lands in New England. The Cherokee Nation stretched from the Ohio River into South Carolina and consisted of sevens clans. The Eastern Band of the Cherokee lived in the Smokies, the sacred ancestral home of the Cherokee Nation. When the first white settlers reached the Great Smoky Mountains in the late 1700s they found themselves in the land of the Cherokee Indians. The tribe, one of the most culturally advanced on the continent, had permanent towns, cultivated croplands, and networks of trails leading to all parts of their territory. In the late eighteenth century, Scotch-Irish, German, English, and other settlers arrived in significant numbers. The Cherokee were friendly at first but fought with settlers when provoked. They battled Carolina settlers in the 1760s but eventually withdrew to the Blue Ridge Mountains. To settle with the newcomers, the Cherokee nation attempted to make treaties and to adapt to European customs. They adopted a written legal code in 1808 and instituted a Supreme Court two years later. White settlers continued to occupy Cherokee land, and by 1819 the Cherokee were forced to cede a portion of their territory, which included the Great Smoky Mountains, to the United States. The discovery of gold in Northern Georgia in 1828 sounded the death knell for the Cherokee Nation. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Removal Act, calling for the removal of all native people east of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. The Cherokee appealed their case to the Supreme Court, and Chief Justice Marshall ruled in their favor. President Andrew Jackson, however, disregarded the Supreme Court decree in the one instance in America History when an U.S. president overtly ignored a Supreme Court decision. The Cherokees had adopted the ways of the whites to the extent of developing a written language, printing their own newspaper, and utilizing the white mans agriculture and architecture. Nevertheless most of them were forcibly removed in the 1830s in a tragic episode known as the Trail of Tears. About one-third of the Cherokee died en route of malnutrition and disease. Altogether, about 100,000 natives, including Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw, survived the march to Oklahoma, but thousands died along the way. A handful of Cherokee disobeyed the government edict, however. Hiding out in the hills between Clingmans Dome and Mount Guyot, they managed to survive. The few who remained are the ancestors of the Cherokees living near the park today. Earlier settlers had lived off the land by hunting the animals, utilizing the timber for buildings and fences, and growing food and pasturing animals in the clearings. As the decades passed, many areas that had once been forest became fields and pastures. People farmed, attended church, and maintained community ties in a typically rural fashion. The agricultural pattern of life in the Great Smoky Mountains changed with the arrival of lumbering in the early 1900s. Within twenty years, the largely self-sufficient economy of the people here was almost replaced, by dependence on manufactured items, store-bought food and cash. At the same time, loggers were rapidly cutting the great primeval forests that remained on these mountains. Unless the course of events could be quickly changed, there would be little left of the regions special character. The forest, at least the 20% that remained uncut within park boundaries were saved. The people, more than 1,200 landowners left the park. Behind them there remained over 70 structures, many farm buildings, schools, mills and churches. The great Smoky Mountains National Park now preserves the largest collection of historic log buildings in the East. Congress established the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934. Land acquisition continued and in 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt officially dedicated the several major highways lead to the Park. The Cherokee Indians called this land Shaconage - The place of the blue smoke. We know it today as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and it is one of Americas great natural treasures.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 10:34:26 +0000
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