Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

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Beginning of history in the Great Smoky Mountains

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  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-11280.jpg
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  • marked on Soyce*s map of the Cherokee cessions. Horses would require the best traveled trail in existence, ihleh certainly could have been none too good, as anyone who knows our laurel covered mountains today will readily appreciate. Five days alona this main traveled route from Keowee would have Brought them to or beyond the present site of Rutherfordton, most likely utijoni it on on© of the forks of Broad River. Biedma says that the province of Xuala was a rough mountain counti^r, thinly populated and poor In provisions, Garcilaso describes the town Itself as situated close under a mountain beside a HEftll but rapid stream. This may have been • point oa Broad River east of Chimney Rock, or it may have been a bit farther north, D© Soto** secretery, Ranjel, states that the same day after leaving Xuala they crossed "una sierra muy alta* (a very high mountain ridge), and that the next day they descended to a "saTana** (wide meadow bottom) through which a river flowed in the opposite direction from those they had previously followed. From this change of course in the watershed they guessed that they were on a branch of the great river Sspirltu Santo, as they called the Mississippi. This sounds as though they may have crossed the Blue Ridge through Hickorynut Gap, went down the Cane Creek Savannah to the French Broad, and here found a river runnina north. Such is Moeney*s opinion* But I have doubts as to the practicability of such a route. Remember that the Spaniards had about SO© horses. Their way up the French Broad might have been comparatively easy as far as Rosmaaj but from that point onward they would have been in a maze of wild and exceedingly rough mountains, with thick laurel and precipitous stream
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).