Mapping Ancient Cherokee Trails

Trail Trees at Wiggins CreekFor at least a thousand years – and perhaps as many as 10,000 – the Cherokee have been masters of the mountains, using trails that often went straight uphill to move between sacred sites, commercial centers and other places in their vast homeland. Two years ago, with the first of two Cherokee Preservation Foundation grants and guidance from the Tribal Heritage Preservation Office of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), Wild South and its partners, Mountain Stewards and the Southeastern Anthropological Institute, started taking a journey across time. Their goal was to refind, restore and reemphasize the trail and road system of the Cherokee Nation in Western North Carolina and surrounding territory.

The Cherokee Trails Project covers approximately 150 linear miles and 47,000 acres in the Pisgah, Nantahala and Cherokee National Forests containing Cherokee historical sites. Wild South Cultural Preservation Director Lamar Marshall says that what has unfolded is “clear evidence that the main arteries of our 20th century road system in the Southeast were built directly on Cherokee trails and corridors – the Cherokee developed the circuitry for modern transportation.”

Fifteen major trails in the Great Smoky, Nantahala, Cowee and Snowbird Mountains have been documented and mapped. The majority of them have survived as unpaved U.S. Forest Service roads, modern paved roads and even major highways, but some have been overrun by rhododendron and mountain laurel. Researching and documenting the trails have required an extensive knowledge of cross country navigation, surveying skills, historical map collections, and state and federal archives.

Cultural road markers and signs are still to be found along the old travel ways. Mountain Stewards  has been finding and documenting trail markers known as thong trees. The Cherokee bent these trees and pinned them to the ground to produce a permanent 90o angle in the trees so they could serve as a permanent marker.

When the Cherokee Trails Project is completed, much of the information from it will be available for use by Cherokee Central Schools students and teachers, members of the EBCI, travelers visiting western North Carolina and others. Cherokee children will be able learn about Cherokee geography, in part by using Google Earth to zoom in on each trail, which will be hyperlinked to photographs and video clips of trail segments, audio clips of oral histories as told by EBCI elders, and digital images of original historical documents. When the user – either a student or a member of the general public – zooms out, the program will simulate a flyover of the landscape with Cherokee trails identified on the Google Earth map.

The Cherokee Trail Project will also be used to get children and adults outdoors and experiencing the trails for themselves. The EBCI’s Travel & Promotion Department will use publicly available information from the project to promote visitation to the Qualla Boundary and surrounding counties.

Sensitive information such as the location of former homes or sacred sites along the byways will not be public and will be used by the EBCI’s Tribal Heritage Preservation Office when it plans a project like building a new road. The project will provide the Tribe with access to many cultural sites and artifacts that might otherwise be destroyed, lost or undiscovered. Key elements of Cherokee culture and heritage will be preserved for future generations. The completed project will become the property of the EBCI.

Land containing ancient Cherokee trails and cultural sites will be designated, managed and permanently protected by the U.S. Forest Service. The Forest Service, which is providing funds for the Cherokee Trail Project, is required to protect historical sites by implemented special management prescriptions that preserve cultural heritage sites and the ecosystems found within a half mile corridor of each site.

Lamar Marshall recalls a favorite experience during the project.  With three Cherokee companions, he was riding a horse at dusk down a remote and high mountain trail deep in the Smoky Mountains. “I had a distinct feeling that the moment could have been in the year 1700 and that we would soon smell the smoke of a hundred fires from a Cherokee village in the valley below,” he said. “Along these trails are the blood, sweat and tears of those who lived, laughed and died here. The trails were the travel arteries of the land, and they connect this generation with the history of the land.”