From the beginning of the eighteenth century until the American Revolution, Cherokee hunters and trappers traded tens of thousands of animal pelts for manufactured goods imported by licensed British traders. The first resident trader in the Overhill Towns settled at Tanasee (Tennessee) in 1711.Unchecked harvesting of animals for commercial purposes severely depleted the Cherokees’ main sources of meat, especially white-tailed deer. In-coming trade good transformed or replaced many traditional Cherokee crafts. This “deerskin trade” soon made the Cherokees economically dependent on foreigners. It also made fortunes for middlemen and entrepreneurs in the port city of Charleston (now South Carolina), and in England, where this new wealth helped spark the Industrial Revolution.
( Inscription under the photo in the upper right)
On one day, July 14, 1716, Commissioners of the Indian Trade recorded that 21 Cherokee burden bearers brought in 418 beaverskins which were exchanged for “400 weight of gun powder, 200 and a half of shot, and 7 pieces of strouds, 1000 flints, 7 brass kettles, 20 years of half thicks.”
Ango-American trade objects from Overhill Cherokee sites: 1. Iron knife; 2. Iron ax; 3. And 4. Glass beads; 5. Bass bell; 6. Iron scissors; 7. Iron Jew’s harp; 8. Iron hoe.-Photograph from Chapman, Tellico Archeology, 1985
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This site is part of the Tennessee Overhill Heritage Trail and is an official Tennessee 200 Bicentennial Project. Interpretive signs, museums, historic sites and a guidebook tell the story of the industrial Revolution as it happened in McMinn, Monroe, and Polk Counties. For more information concerning other sites, contact the Tennessee Overhill Heritage Association at 423-263-7232
The Tennessee Overhill Experience: From Furs to Factories was funded by the Tennessee Department of Transportation; Tennessee 200, Inc; East Tennessee Foundation; and the counties of McMinn, Monroe, and Polk.
(Colonial Era • Native Americans) Includes location, directions, 5 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
The path now known as the Unicoi Turnpike Trail has existed for over 1,000 year. The earliest European maps of the area note the trail as a connector between Cherokee Territories and the coastal ports of Charleston and Savannah. In 1756 British soldiers hauled weapons and supplies across the trail to establish Fort Loudoun. In the early 1800’s the trail was converted into a roll road and turnpike. In 1838 over 3,000 Cherokees traveled over the Unicoi Turnpike during the Trail of Tears.
Cherokee Heritage Trails (Tsalagi Usdi Nvnohi) wind through the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, in the heart of Cherokee homelands that once encompassed more than 140,000 square miles. Here, where Cherokee people have lived for thousands of years, visitors can explore places of myth and legend sites of villages, memorials, museums, and other places of significance in the Cherokee story.
Cherokee villages and mounds 1/3 mile west a key site for archaeologists. Occupied from 8000 B.C. to 1600s A.D.
From Home to Hospital
The first Locust Old Fields Baptist Church was established here in 1803. It was among the first churches established west of Asheville. Although the original building no longer stands, it served the small community here for many years as a house of worship and a place of education. During the Civil War, it was a muster site for the local 112th Beaverdam Militia Regiment and a campground, according to local tradition.
Near the end of the Civil War in 1865, Confederate Battery Porter was positioned uphill to your right on Stony Hill, at that time the highest point in Asheville. The battery included four 12-pounder field pieces known as Napoleons, a model 1857 howitzer named for the French emperor Louis Napoleon, who had promoted its development. The smoothbore cannon could fire a solid or exploding shell almost a mile. It was the workhorse artillery piece for both the Union and Confederate armies.
When the war began, more than 15 percent of Buncombe County’s residents were enslaved people. James Patton housed slaves behind his Eagle Hotel (straight ahead), where they worked as waiter, maids, grooms, cooks, and trail guides. Three blocks to your right, enslaved people lived and worked in James Smith’s Buck Hotel, store, stable, tannery, and blacksmith shop. Slaves worked in the Confederate rifle factory that stood to your right.
This house was the birthplace of two men who fought on opposing sides during the Civil War: Edward Stanly, the Unionist military governor of North Carolina, and Confederate Gen. Lewis Addison Armistead, who was mortally wounded during the Battle of Gettysburg. Stanly, born here in 1810, accepted the post of military governor from President Abraham Lincoln in May 1862, in the hope that he might lead his hometown and state back into the Union. He was unsuccessful and resigned in March 1863. Armistead, Stanley’s nephew, was born here in 1817. He fell at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, during Gen. James Longstreet’s attack on the Federal position atop Cemetery Ridge (“Pickett’s Charge”) and died two days later.
This house was built about 1809 for John Jones, owner of a local turpentine distillery, and the west wing was added about 1820. After the U.S. Army defeated Confederate troops in the Battle of New Bern on March 14, 1862, and occupied the town, military authorities used the house as a jail for Confederate Sympathizers. According to local tradition, Union soldiers confined the notorious Confederate spy Emeline Pigott here. An ardent supporter of the Confederate cause who had served as a nurse, Pigott smuggled confidential military information, personal letters, clothing, food, and other items through Union lines by hiding them underneath her hoop skirts. When arrested, she carried a heavy load of contraband, but Federal officials never convicted her of a crime. She was released from jail and lived out the remainder of her life at her home in Carteret County, near Beaufort.
You are standing on land that has been part of a town for about three thousand years. This mound was the spiritual, political, and physical center of the Cherokee town of Nikwasi. A council house or town house on top of the mound held the sacred fire, and everyone gathered there to hear news, make decisions, dance, and participate in ceremonies. Surrounding the mound were about one hundred houses, a field for playing stickball, and a dance ground, as well as hundreds of acres of crops, orchards, and gardens.
After John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, new militia companies were formed in the South. Businessman William W. McDowell, whose wife acquired this house from her father’s and brother’s estates, raised a company called the Buncombe Riflemen. After the war began in 1861, the unit entered Confederate service as Co. E, 1st North Carolina Infantry, under Col. Daniel H. Hill. McDowell led his company during the first land engagement of the conflict in present-day Virginia, the Battle of Big Bethel, on June 10, 1861. The 1st North Carolina played a key role in repulsing the 5th New York Infantry’s attack on the Confederate left flank and was largely credited with the victory.
George Avery, a 19-year-old enslaved blacksmith, joined Co. D, 40th United States Colored Troops, in Greeneville, Tennessee, in 1865. According to local tradition, his master, Confederate Maj. William W. McDowell, sent Avery to enlist for a post-war pension. Avery’s enlistment, however, corresponded with the arrival of Union Gen. George Stoneman’s raiders, who liberated Asheville’s enslaved population in April 1865. They recruited about forty “Negroes who were following the column” and took them to Greeneville.
