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WCU - Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America

Origin of the name: Great Smoky Mountains

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Item 1 - Origin of the name: Great Smoky Mountains
wcu_great_smoky_mtns-11366.jp2

Origin of the name: Great Smoky Mountains

GSMNP_10184_18_01_01
Item 2 - Origin of the name: Great Smoky Mountains
wcu_great_smoky_mtns-11367.jp2

Origin of the name: Great Smoky Mountains

GSMNP_10184_18_01_02
Item 3 - Origin of the name: Great Smoky Mountains
wcu_great_smoky_mtns-11368.jp2

Origin of the name: Great Smoky Mountains

GSMNP_10184_18_01_03
wcu_great_smoky_mtns-11369.jp2

Origin of the name: Great Smoky Mountains

GSMNP_10184_18_01_04
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  • 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 saw the Great Smoky Mountains. Of course, I am aware that Professor Bolton thinks that Be Soto, in 1540, went up the Oeonaluftee River and ovsr the Smokies into Tennesseet also that the late William E. Msyer, in his painstaking study of the Indian trails of the Southeast, states that B® Soto vlstted an Indian town ^situated at or near the junction of the Oconalwfty and Tuckasegee rivers, in Swain County, I. C." This would be of intense loml interest to tas who live in that neighborhood, if it should prow true* But, unfortunately, neither of these historians cites any authority for hi® opinion. Some time ago I wrote to Professor Bolton asking upon what evidence he based his statements hut I have received no reply. In the case of Mr. Meyer, it Is plain fro© his own words that he mistook the town of Juala, mentioned by Be Soto's ehroniolere, whieh was east of the Blue Ridge, probahly on the upper Broad River, for a suppositlotiesu settlement called Qualla, on the Okonaluftee, being struck by a fancied similarity of names. But the modern Qualla Town was named after an old Cherokee woman whom the whites ealled Polly, and Qualla (properly Kwali) is merely the Cherokee pronunciation of Polly. All xfete this is thoroughly explained in James Mooney's historical introduction and notes to his monumental work on "Myths khx of the Cherokee." In the year 1690, Cornelius Dougherty, an Irishman from Virginia, settled among the Cherokees as a trader, married inte their tribe, and spent the rest of his days with them. Other traders from the English settlements followed hi® example. These permanent or semi-permanent residents were the first white men who really did learn the topography of the southern mountainsi but none of them left records of their discoveries. We eoae now to x* a great gap in whieh there is little authentic geographical material relating to the Smokies and their neighboring ranges, lot until 1761 do w© find any contribution of note to ths description of that region. It was then that a young and adventurous Virginian, Lieutenant Henry Timherlake, visited the
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Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America

This digital collection was created to contribute to the public's understanding of the forces and ideas that led to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934. The most vi...

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