Cosby Campground and
Porters Creek Revisited, Oct. 19-20, 2011
November 23, 2011 by Margie Hunter
As the foliage drops, evidence of settlement
like this wonderful zig-zag rock wall, becomes more obvious
rock wall built by
pre-park residents
the Ownby Cemetery
The Old Settlers
Trail
Narrative and photos contributed by
Gary Acquaviva
In this issue, meet the managers of Cultural Resources. The area where Great Smoky Mountains National Park is now has a rich prehistoric, historic, and ongoing culture. It is the park’s job to preserve and share the stories of changing human life on this land.
Mossy
rock walls edge many old homesites in the park.
NPS photo.
For thousands of years prior to
European settlement, these smoky mountains were the home of people who fished the swift rivers, hunted on high
grassy meadows, and gathered food in forested coves. These people—the Tsalagi
or Aniyvwiyai, as they called themselves, or the Cherokee, as they are known
now—mark their place of origin as a valley tucked between the river and the
shrugging shoulders of hills outside Bryson City.
In the
1800s, settlers of European descent began displacing the Cherokee, culminating
in the 1838 Trail of Tears, a grueling, forced journey that forced most
Cherokee to relocate—on foot—to reservations in Oklahoma and Arkansas. The few
remaining Cherokee gathered in what became the town of Cherokee, North
Carolina, the community at what is now the south entrance to the park. The
settlers of European descent farmed in the valleys and long coves throughout
the rest of the Smoky Mountains.
The faces on the land changed yet again in the
early 1930s, when ownership passed from private hands to
those of the nation. In 1934, President Roosevelt dedicated the park to the
people of the United States, which meant that families living within the new
park boundaries had to leave.
Although the people have moved, many traces of their lives remain in these mountains. Walk through the woods and you may see old millstones, mossy lines of old stone walls, or daffodils bursting yellow at someone’s long-gone doorstep. You may not see what lies under the ground: sherds of pottery, chips from stone tools, and even evidence of posts from centuries-old Cherokee houses. All of these cultural resources—seen and unseen—need our protection, because they represent a lifestyle long past.
Although the people have moved, many traces of their lives remain in these mountains. Walk through the woods and you may see old millstones, mossy lines of old stone walls, or daffodils bursting yellow at someone’s long-gone doorstep. You may not see what lies under the ground: sherds of pottery, chips from stone tools, and even evidence of posts from centuries-old Cherokee houses. All of these cultural resources—seen and unseen—need our protection, because they represent a lifestyle long past.
Cultural resource managers in the Smoky
Mountains maintain five types of culturally significant resources:
Road Turn Branch -
"moonshine" rock cave on the way to Quilliams Cave and CH rock. http://gosmokies.knoxnews.com/profiles/blogs/thanks-to-all
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