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Nomenclature notes: Great Smoky Mountains: Origin of the name

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  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-10889.jpg
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  • France and had gone over to the Indians, seeking connection with the English. Couture seems to have gone up the Tennessee River to its source in the Cherokee country. He may have ..been the first white man who ever oa. the Great Smoky Mountains, Of course, I am aware that Professor Bolton thinks that De Soto, in 1540, went up the Ooonaluftee River and over the Smokies into Tennessee; also that the late William ". Meyer, in hio painstaking study of the Indian trails of the Southeast, states that De Soto visited an Indian town "situated at or near the junction of the Oconalufty and Tuckasegee rivers, in Swain County, N. C." This-would be of intense local interest'to.us who live in that neighborhood, If it should prove true. But, unfortunately, neither of these historians cites any authority for his opinion. Some ti? o I wrote to Professor Bolton asking upon what evidence he ted his statement; but I have received no reply. In %ha case of Mr. Meyer, it is plain fyoa his own words that he Mistook the town of Xuala, mentioned by De Soto's chroniclers, which was east of the Blue Ridge, probably on the pejp Broad River, for a supposititious settlement called k .11a, on tho Okonaluf*ee, W£m% struck by a fancied similarity of names. But the modern Qualla Town wa* named after an old WT-—rmroirt1 i rmn-.TW Cherokee woman whoa the whites c . Polly, and- Qualla 'operly Kwali) is merely the Cherokee pronunciation of Polly. All this is thoroughly explained in James Mooney's historical introduction and notes to his monumental work on "Myths of the Cherokee."
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