Cherokee reclaim landmarks of ancient Asheville

ASHEVILLE – Where paddlers float in polyurethane kayaks around the bend of the French Broad River Park today, Cherokee ancestors may have raced dug-out canoes crafted from felled poplar trees a thousand years ago.

Where polyester-clad runners start 5K races at Carrier Park, the first inhabitants in buckskin may have held their own races and sports.

Long before there was an Asheville, here at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers was Untokiasdiyi or "Where they race."

Few know that hundreds and even thousands of years ago, people were likely cooking, eating, playing on the river within view of Asheville's downtown, said Barbara Duncan, education director for the Museum of the Cherokee Indian.

Now Cherokee trail guides hope to share that untold story as part of a tribal tradition stretching back 10,000 years.

Duncan is training volunteers from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to share the legends and history surrounding 100 different Cherokee sites stretching through three states — North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.

Her work is funded by a $10,000 grant from the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area partnership.

Duncan and about a dozen members of the museum's Cherokee Friends program from the Qualla Boundary were on a scouting mission last week for ancient landmarks in River Arts District, downtown Asheville and recently excavated prehistoric sites on the Biltmore Estate.

Modern day Cherokee see those ancient people who raced on the river as their direct ancestors. Downtown Asheville was likely founded on the bones of their kin.

Duncan uncovered a 1922 guidebook to Buncombe County that offers a brief mention of an Indian landmark that was visible in 1791, when the county was founded: "The oldest graves in Asheville were the 'Indian Graves' on Patton Avenue, immediately west of Lexington Avenue."

Armed with a copy of the guidebook, Duncan stood last week at the corner, swarming with summer visitors. A pocket park opposite the Kress Building likely covers that final resting ground.

Looking down North Lexington, she could trace the route of the old Indian trading path that became the Buncombe Turnpike running along Reid Creek toward the French Broad. Facing south, she could see the road heading down to Biltmore Village and the Swannanoa River, which flows into the fields of the Biltmore Estate.

Biltmore's first people

Long before George Vanderbilt erected his 250-room French Renaissance chateau in 1889, the river bottoms of the Biltmore Estate had been home to indigenous people for the past 10,000 years. Vanderbilt's landscape architect Frederick Olmstead was aware of the site in his sketches for the estate.

Biltmore's landscape historian Bill Alexander and archaeologist Scott Shumate, principal investigator for Blue Ridge Archaeological Consultants in Arden, gave the Cherokee visitors a guided tour of several ancient sites on the 8,000-acre estate last week.

"From what we've found, we have early Archaic sites that indicate people have been living here as far back as 8,000 B.C.," Alexander said. "This is a treasure trove of prehistoric sites that it will take several lifetimes of other people to full explore."

In the grassy field below the Biltmore ticket office, an inconspicuous rise of land covers an ancient site for feasting and ceremony.

The Biltmore Mound was discovered in 1984 by state archaeologist David Moore, now a professor at Warren Wilson College.

Starting in 2000, researchers from Appalachian State University began a painstaking excavation.

They determined the mound was built between 200 and 500 A.D., what scientists label the Connestee phase of the Middle Woodland period. Careful digs unearthed tools, flint-napped blades, arrowheads and points, and shards of pottery. There were also signs of copper that may have been traded from as far away in the Ohio River Valley. And cutouts from mica that may have been mined originally in Macon County.

Another site about a quarter mile away dates to the Pisgah period of the later Woodland Period, probably inhabited around 1250 A.D.

Since Biltmore discovered the village sites, the company has pulled those fields out of cultivation to protect them from any erosion or disturbance, Alexander explained.

Archaeologists are sensitive to disturbing burial sites that can be found in prehistoric villages, Shumate said. The mounds themselves served as ceremonial centers rather than gravesites. Early Native Americans were likely buried closer to their individual houses in a village.

Construction plans were altered for the Harrah's Casino in Cherokee when researchers determined the foundation would likely dig into ancient graves, Shumate said. The casino building and parking lot areas were swapped to avoid disturbing any burial sites.

While archaeologists have found evidence of early Woodland periods at Biltmore, Shumate said they have found less pottery and tools from the Qualla period, or the historical Cherokee from the past 500 years.

Science versus tradition

But archaeologists and tribes have not always seen eye to eye on native history.

"Why do you call these Connestee villages instead of Cherokee villages?" J.D. Arch, a Cherokee Friend, asked Shumate.

Shumate used the technical labels of Archaic, Woodland, Connestee, Pisgah and other terminology to describe the discoveries scientists have made locally.

Archaeologists can only dig for the technology, not for language or culture, Duncan interrupted. "Its like 'CSI' on TV. They are looking for a physical chain of evidence."

Europeans have theorized about the origins of the native people they encountered soon after arriving in the Americas. In 1775, James Adair, an early explorer, published a book arguing that the Cherokee were descendants of the Lost Tribe of Israel in the Bible.

In 1900, James Mooney recorded much of the culture on the Qualla Boundary in "History, Myths and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee."

Relying on the reports of early missionaries, Mooney reported the still current theory that the Cherokee were an offshoot of the Iroquois tribe, sharing similar language. They may have migrated through Virginia into the Southern Appalachians, possibly displacing other tribes who had built the earthen mounds earlier.

But from the stories handed down by their elders, Cherokee consider their history to extend to the earliest inhabitants of these mountains.

Last Bear Wilnoty and his wife Dakota stood at a respectful distance from the mound. Wilnoty mixed the traditional and the contemporary, wearing long polished bones piercing his ears, along with a Batman T-shirt.

"They could have just asked us," said Last Bear Wilnoty. Instead scientists tend to discount the oral stories, "And they just go dig."

Mounds were sacred to their ancestors, where the town council houses stood some 30 feet above the houses and fields of corn centuries ago. Inside the mound would burn a sacred fire made from seven different woods, according to Mooney.

Mike Crowe, manager of the Cherokee Friends program, was less ambivalent about the archaeology.

"I understand where they're coming from," he said. "This is a great opportunity for us to educate ourselves further and see where the academics line up with our traditional stories," Crowe said.

But respects had to be paid first.

Crowe approached the mound with his friend Sonny Ledford. Both Crowe and Ledford sported the traditional scalplock of their ancestors with the top of their heads shaved.

They shared a pinch of tobacco, not for their own use, but as an offering to be sprinkled on the site.

"The Cherokee are known as the fire people," explained Crowe.

"That fire was essential, the embodiment of life on earth and inside each of us. When Cherokee wanted to know what town are you from, they would ask 'Where is your fire?'"

Hidden history

A poet and songwriter as well as an academic, Duncan can tread the line between science and tradition. She edited the 1998 anthology "Living Stories of the Cherokee" and published "The Cherokee Heritage Trails Guidebook" in 2003.

Carbon-dated potsherds and chipped projectiles may only tell a part of the story that folklore and tradition can fill in.

She makes the analogy that our own culture could be interpreted in surprising ways by future archaeologists 500 years from now. "If they dug in my grandmother's house preserved from the 1930s, they would say, 'here are the Mason-Jar people.'" Duncan laughed. "Then they could say that the Mason-Jar People disappeared with the advent of the Cellphone People. They would miss that these were grandparents and grandchildren."

As a folklorist, Duncan believes that the stories functioned as a kind of map among the Cherokee.

Legends handed down by elders point to specific landmarks in the Appalachian landscape. An Aesop-like fable about a race between the turtle and the rabbit points to four specific ridges along "Black Mountain" or what the Cherokee called Mt. Mitchell.

Sharing those stories with visitors is a worthwhile mission, said Angie Chandler, executive director of the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, which seeks to preserve and promote the mountain's natural beauty along with Appalachian and Cherokee culture.

"Our visitors and local residents love to hear those stories shared by the Cherokee. Not just the facts on a sign, but the stories connected with a place," Chandler said.

For many Americans, the Cherokee story has been defined by the Trail of Tears, when U.S. troops evicted Cherokee along with other Southeastern tribes from their lands to Oklahoma in the 1830s.

The Cherokee Heritage Trails project is more than just expanding and enriching our understanding of local history, Duncan said. "This is a radical project where we are getting back to the roots. We're reclaiming intellectually and spiritually these Cherokee places."

Duncan said there was a geographical and ceremonial blueprint for ancient Cherokee towns along the rivers of Western North Carolina.

Walking along the greenways from Carrier Park down Amboy Road to the French Broad River Park last week, Duncan scouted for an eastern view around the confluence of the two rivers.

The Cherokee would have said their prayers each morning in the "coming to water" ceremony. They would need a clear access to the river and a view of the eastern horizon to see the sunrise.

Down at the French Broad River Park, Duncan walked out of the shade of tall trees to the cool water's edge. Due east, between the piers of the Amboy Road Bridge, she could see the confluence of the French Broad and the Swannanoa rivers.

"This feels about right. This could be it," Duncan said, glancing back over her shoulder at the flat fields along the river bend. She could imagine the past of a place called Untokiasdiyi.

"This is the hidden history. The Cherokee say that they have always been here, that the Creator put them here," she smiled. "And the story is not sad in the end. The Cherokee are still here."