Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Nomenclature of Appalachian Mountains

  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-11378.jp2
8 / 9
Item
  • (5) between the Indian towns of -orwee and Old Chota, thence alon& the main ridge of ths said mountain, to the southern boundary of this Stats ... " (Stats Reeords of North Carolina, XXV., 4) This is the earliest use of the name Smoky, as applied to tho Great Smoky Mountains, that I have discovered* In 1797 the Secretary of War appointed commissioners to run a boundary lino between the tfaited States and -She Indian nations south of the Ohio River. On maps of this survey the term 2. Smoky is not used, but only Great Iron Mountain. So also in tho treaty with the Cherokees of October 2, 1798. In the summer of 1799 an attempt was made to run the boundary between North Carolina and the new State of Tennessee, which had been admitted to the Union three years before. The commissioners for this survey were McDowell, Vance and Mathews* Their expedition proceeded from the Virginia line as far as the Big Pigeon River, and a bit farther* It here found itself in such rough country that it quit and want home* About a year ago I found in the archives of the North Carolina Historical Commission, at Raleigh, a time-stained oopy of the original map made by this survey in 1799. It is an enormous sheet, drawn on a large scale. The state line, where the surveyors quit, ends, on the westward, at a point marked as "high pinaele of the Smokey mn,,n four miles west of the Pigeon River* This is easily identified as .Sharp Top, a conspicuous landmark on the main divide northeast of Mt* C-uyot* Early in the 19th century the name great Smoky began to displace that of Great iron Mountain, although the latter aame continued to bo mentioned as an alternative or older designation down to at least 1833* In the summer of 1821 the Stats of North Carolina appointed William Davenport to run the State line, from where the McDowell commission abandoned their effort, and go on-through to the Georgia line* This he did* For a long time the field-book in which Davenport kept his records was lost} but la November, 1910, it was found in a secret drawer of an old sideboard that formerly belonged to him, at hie homo in Caldwell County, N. C« I have an exact oopy of that field-book. Davenport marked his starting point with a rock marked on one side "N.C, 1821" and on the other "TEN 1821", This rock is still in plaoe, close beside the rough road that crosses the Smokies above Mt. Sterling postoffieo on the way to Hartford, Tenn, Davenport recorded in his field-book that at 3 miles 130 poles beyond this starting point the came "to the top of the Smoky Mountains at a spring on tho extreme height of the Mountain." Thereafter he mentions the range once ae "the main Smokey or Iron Mountain," once again as Smokey Mts*", and once as "the Big Smokies Mountain*" In no instance does he give a distinct name to any peak or ridge. At the time of tho removal of the Cherokees ths War Department directed Philip Harry to map a part of tho Cherokee territory. Harry's map, of excellent topography for the time, is dated 1837-38. It was never published, but the original is in the library of the Chief of Engineers, U.S*A«, in Washington, It does not include the Smokies* but on one margin is the lsgend "Great Iron or Smoky Mountains*" It should be understood that very few whites lived in the Great Smoky Mountains until about the time of the Civil War* and that to this day a great part of the area is quite uninhabited* The first really soientifie exploration of this region was mads in 1861 hy Prof* Arnold Guyot of Princeton College, N. J, Rather amateurish attempts had previously been made by Clingraan and Buckley, but the results were inconclusive* Guvot called the ranee, extending from the Bia Pigeon River to tho Little Tennessee.
Object