Ani-Kituhwa-gi, A Nation within a Nation ( Part 1 ).

Days pass, seasons change and years come and go all to fast. People live their lives on a daily routine and most of them never notice the changes that have taken place around them. Though many of us can see these changes happening in todays society it was the changes of long ago that actually created the lands we all call home. Over 11,000 years ago in the hills of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee lived a nation of people within a nation. At the end of the Ice Age, their ancestors hunted the great mastodons with spears in those very mountains that we now call The Great Smoky Mountains. Over the years the " Ani-Kituhwa-gi " or Cherokee people flourished throughout the mountains creating towns and villages. The men hunted and fished, helped in the fields and pursued trade, diplomacy, and war required to maintain an empire that included 36,000 people within 140,000 square miles covering eight present-day southern states. The women enjoyed respect and honor, running the household and working the land while the men cultivated friendships. Generosity was a cardinal virtue, meaning that anyone hungry was fed, anyone traveling was housed and for the first 200 years of contact with the European settlers, starting with De Soto in 1540, the Cherokees offered hospitality to newcomers who needed help. The Cherokee people became literate only months after Sequoyah developed a written language of the Cherokee alphabet and presented it to the Cherokee National Council in 1821. This written language of the Cherokee people was called " Talking Leaves ".By 1838 the Cherokee people had proven themselves to be neighborly, industrious and open to outside ideas but with the onrushing settlers and the U.S. government , the Cherokee people were forcably removed from their lands and into the east to Oklahoma, which was known in our history books as The Trail of Tears. One quarter to half of the Cherokee people who began this long journey to Oklahoma died of exposure, disease and shock of exile. Today, from those who hid in the hills ,defying removal and from those who returned, many on foot, live the 14,000 Cherokee of the Eastern band in North Carolina on a 100 square mile tract called the Qualla Boundary.

The Land That Talked to Me.

Greens to yellows, reds and golds, the cool, cold air brings on the changing of the seasons. As I drive along the roads and highways looking at the many trees throughout our lands and the sheer beauty each leaf holds, I realize that God has indeed blessed us all with a beautiful earth that we are slowly destroying. Hundreds of thousands of acres of trees, grasses, bushes, rocks, hillsides, pastures, streams, rivers, lakes and even our oceans turning into concrete and wood dwellings. Even the wildlife is being run out of their homes and killed out by people who just don't care for anything other than making money from our lands. Well this past week my wife and I had our 20th year wedding anniversary and we chose to head for one place where man has yet and will never begin to destroy--- The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The three hour drive to get there was all worth it as we entered the park hills and began the climb following the slow moving traffic. The woods and streams seemed to have an air about it that just reached out and grabbed you. Shadows cast by the trees and rocks seemed to speak to you as if they had a story they wanted to tell. Folks stopping by the sides of the roads everywhere taking pictures and looking but not a single one of them listening to the many stories being told. By the time our vacation trip was over I'd found the story I was looking for. A story of a land and the people that live there. Though this story is much to long to put into one post it is one that will be told in it's entirety in my next few postings. This story is of the Cherokee people and the land called The Smoky Mountains.