Now that we’ve read about the history of this area from thousands of years ago until now, let’s look at this history in pictures at one of the welcome centers just outside of the town of Cherokee. We’ll start with the natives who first lived here and continue with the European settlers before industry started changing the land and the people.
We entered through the park’s southern central part and drove north toward Cherokee. Out goal was to see the highest part of the park, Clingmans Dome. What we didn’t realize that some of the other park areas highlight how the early settlers lived. Next time we come here we’ll get to visit those places.
Corn, beans, and squash were grown together (called the three sisters), protected by birdhouses made of gourds since the birds would eat harmful insects. Cherokee also grew potatoes and fruits, collected wild berries and nuts, and gathered wild herbs for medicines.
Cherokee were born into one of seven clans, the clan of the mother, and would remain in that clan their entire lives and would only marry someone from another clan. Clans today can still trace their heritage through the mothers. Why? Probably because fathers would often die when hunting or fighting.
The Cherokee hunted or trapped such animals as deer, elk, and beaver. The earliest Cherokee hunted with an atlati, a spear thrower (we saw this type of hunting when we learned about early hunting by the natives in North Dakota).
After meeting Americans who were starting to move into the mountains, in 1821, Sequoyah, a silversmith, created a syllabary (a set of written characters representing syllables; in some languages or stages of writing, they served the purpose of an alphabet) so the Cherokee could read and write in their own language. This written language helped them preserve their customs and history. In the previous post, we read that within two years all of the Cherokee had learned to read and write; they must have really wanted to improve their own lives.
Over the years as the Cherokee thinned trees, planted crops, and built homes (we’ll see examples of such homes in a future post), they changed their landscape to a more open forest with trails that connected villages. Their work probably helped create or maintain the balds, or grassy pastures, on the mountains for grazing their animals.
During the American Revolution, tribes aligned themselves with either the British or the Americans; the Cherokee chose the Americans. During this war, many of them died, and every Cherokee town was destroyed at least once.
The beads in the following picture are one of the items traded.
About 3000 years ago American tribes began to settle in river valleys to raise crops and make pottery such as this pot.
European settlers
First settler families built their farms in the river valleys where the soil was the richest and started farming by the smaller streams. The best land was soon filled with large farms.
Farms outside the valleys were smaller and relied mostly on family labor. The previous illustration shows a hillside farm. Early settlers had to work hard on their farms. Luckily, the Cherokee had already cleared much of the land.
trade among the settlers
By the end of the 1800s, new and better roads provided access to once-distant markets. Mountain families found they had more opportunities to earn cash in various wash. One was by letting cows graze freely in the mountains until the fall cattle drive. Other resources like nuts, herbs, and wood product were taken from the forest and sold. Some families even started commercial orchards.
turning grains into food
Gristmills started popping up all over the Smokies. Corn was the most important crop here since it grew well and was a diet staple. Water power was easy to find. Nearly every river and stream had a water-powered gristmill to grind corn into meal.
For every bushel of grain, a gallon (1/8) was left in a large toll box, probably for the gristmill owner. At the larger mills, people would gather to visit with each other while waiting for their corn to be ground.
The largest mill in the Smokies was the Mingus Mill that was completed in 1886 (we missed seeing this mill, phooey). A water-powered, metal water turbine ran the mill instead of the traditional wooden waterwheel. More than 350 pounds (6 bushels) of corn could be ground here in an hour.
Tub mills (bottom right in the previous picture) were found on small waterways throughout the Smokies. They used water from shallow, fast-flowing streams to power a horizontal waterwheel. These mills could produce about a bushel of meal a day.
Why the name “tub” mill? These mills used fan-like blades that were carved from the same piece of wood that was used for the vertical shaft. The capacity of such mills was quite small–about a bushel, or a tub full. Hence, the name “tub” mill.
The small, rough-cut tub mills also needed specialists to make the mill stones like these. They were usually sharpened by hand each year.
plows
cloth and clothing
Early mountain families had to spin cotton and wool into thread and yard to weave into cloth for clothing. By the late 1800s, however, very few families still wove cloth. Instead, most families bought cloth and made their own clothes. Sometimes they bought clothes at their local stores or ordered it from catalogues.
In the early 1900s, women began losing the skills needed to spin, weave, and even quilt. Special schools were started to revive these crafts so local economy could be helped. Many women began weaving decorative coverlets to sell to tourists.
The hand cards were used to brush the cotton so fibers were straightened and aligned. As fibers were spun into yarn, it would then be wound onto a bobbin. The yarn was wound into skeins on a “niddy-noddy” (an essential piece of spinning equipment used for winding yarn into skeins). When a woman was ready to weave cloth, a shuttle was used to pass the filler yard (or weft) between the warp threads fixed to the loom.
Since early homes were hard to heat during the cold winters, families piled multiple quilts on their beds to keep warm. Later they learned that they could sell their homemade quilts to tourists.
Quilts were a great way to “recycle” material from clothing that had worn out and couldn’t be reused any longer. (I remember my grandmother making a quilt from clothing that my family had worn that mom provided.) Women would get together in a quilting bee to make their quilts and catch up on local news. The art of quilt-making is often shown in craft fairs today.
Now that we’ve looked at the early years here in the Smokies, let’s continue looking at the growth that started with improved roads that allowed the logging industry to come in. On to the “history of the Great Smokey Mountains in pictures, part 3.”
