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Egwanulti
The Cherokee held these waters sacred and told of a place where bears heal
The Cherokee considered the waters of the Oconaluftee sacred. The name comes from the village name Egwanulti, which means by the river. The only known permanent Cherokee settlement inside the park stood here. It was likely destroyed in 1776 by the army of General Griffith Rutherford.
“It was a deeper part of the river, where all the animals came to wash and heal their wounds when they had been hurt by hunters.”
Dora Woodruff Cope, repeating a story her Cherokee neighbors told
The first settlers
John Jacob Mingus came in the 1790s, and a neighbor looked like Lincoln
John Jacob Mingus arrived in the 1790s as the first Euro-American settler in the valley. Abraham Enloe settled downstream and resembled Abraham Lincoln, and many locals believed he was the president's father. In 1831 Enloe and William Holland Thomas formed a turnpike company that widened the Indian Gap Trail for wagons.
The museum
Log buildings from across the park were gathered here in the 1950s
In the 1950s several log structures were moved next to the visitor center to depict a typical pioneer mountain farm. The Enloe Barn is the only one that stood in Oconaluftee, moved 200 yards. Will Messer's applehouse came from Cataloochee and a blacksmith shop from Cades Cove.
16,000hand-split shingles on the Enloe Barn roof
The treaty
A treaty ordered the Cherokee out, and one man argued it did not apply
William Holland Thomas was adopted by the Cherokee peace chief Yonaguska and took control of Cherokee business affairs in the 1830s. After the 1835 Treaty of New Echota ordered removal from all eastern lands, Thomas went to Washington and argued it did not apply to the Oconaluftee Cherokees. In 1868 the Eastern Band was recognized as a separate tribe.
Day 2, evening
It comes after Mingus Mill.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Oconaluftee (Great Smoky Mountains), and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.