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Guyot's geographic notes on the southern Appalachians

  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-10765.jpg
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  • -6- Great Iron Mountain included not only the present Iron Mountain, on the border of Mitchell County, K. C, but also the northern Hhaka, Bald and Great Smoky Mountains. That such was the usage of the time is clear from citations hereafter given. We now reach a aignifioent datet that of the earliest use of the term Smoky, as applied to the Great Smoky Mountains, that I have so far disoovered.- In November 1789, the General Assembly of Horth Carolina offered to cede the aforesaid Washington County (the future st:te of Tennessee) to the United States. The Act of Cession, after delimiting the boundary from the intersection of the Virginia Line with Stone Mountain and thence on to the Painted Rock on French Broad River, continues in these wordst " ... thenoe along the highest ridge of the said mountain, to the place where it is called the Great Iron or Smoaky Mountain, thenoe along the extreme height of the said mountain, to the place where it is called Ohicoy, or Unaka Mountain, between the Indian towns of Cowee and Old Chota, thenoe along the main ridge of the said mountain, to the southern boundary of this state ..." It is plain, from the foregoing and from what here follows, that up to the end of the 10th century a the range now known as the Great Smoky Mountains was officially and legally known as the Great Iron Moimtain, and that the alternative name Smoky was seldom used. For example? in 1797 the Secretary of Tar appointed commissioners to run a boundary line between the United States and the Indian nations south of the Ohio River. On maps of this survey the term Smoky is not used, but only Great Iron Mountain. So, also, in the treaty with the Cherokeee of October 2, 1798, and its accompanying map. I have found one exception. In the summer of 1799 an attempt was made to run the boundary line between Horth Carolina and the new State of Tennessee, whioh had been admitted to the Union three years before. The commissioners for this Horth Carolina survey were McDowell, Vance and Mathews. Their expedition succeeded In going from Virginia as far as the Big Pigeon River, or a bit farther, and then found itself in such rough country that it quit and went home. Arthur, in his "Western N Horth Carolina," givea an amusing account of ths vioissitudes suffered by the surveyors, what with laurel thickets, cliffs, rainstorms, thunder and lightning.
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