Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center

We had a lot of rain and too many cloudy days all throughout January this year.  February is apparently continuing the trend… The good news is that snowfall and really cold weather has so far skipped us by.

We tend to hibernate during the winter months.  It’s too gloomy outside and the daylight hours are too short.  But recently, despite it being a cloudy day, cabin fever took over.  Laurie suggested that we drive out to Townsend Tennessee to visit a museum that we hadn’t been to before and then have an early dinner.  It was a great idea!

It’s a little surprising that having lived in East Tennessee for over 10 years and having driven past The Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center many times, we’d never stopped here.  

This is a private non-profit museum that has a mission to preserve the heritage and culture of the inhabitants of the Great Smoky Mountains.  It is all about the area’s Native Americans and the pioneers who resided in the region’s Appalachian communities.  The center opened in early 2006.  The flags and boulders in front of the Museum comprise the Veterans Honor Garden…

This is one of the engraved boulders in the Center’s Veterans Honor Garden.  I was drawn to it given the 2 names listed at the top left hand column of the boulder as well as at the bottom of that column… Could they be long lost distant relatives?

The Veterans Honor Garden honors members of the military who have served or who are serving our country.  If someone would like to honor a veteran in their life, if they make a donation of $250.00, their veteran’s name will be engraved on one of these boulders.  If you’re interested in honoring your veteran, just call 865-448-0044.

Once inside the Heritage center, we started with a tour of the Native American portion of the museum.  Among the items was this large display of Native American clay pipes that is on loan from a resident of Tellico Village near Loudon Tennessee.  

While most Native American cultures only used ceremonial pipes on special occasions, both the Cherokee and Chickasaw peoples used these clay pipes purely for social smoking.  The pipes were made from aged river clay that was ‘fired’ or hardened in a hot fire.  A small river reed cane was used for the pipe stem.

Cosmology is a culture’s account or theory as to the origin of life, the earth and the cosmos, in other word’s it’s a system of beliefs.  With the Cherokee people, their beliefs were all about balance and harmony.  The items displayed on this wheel, the mask, gorgets, pipes and effigies, are all related to ceremonial rituals marking special occasions.    

Bird figures like this beautiful duck effigy represented the “Upper World” to the Cherokee.  The Upper World is similar to the Christian belief in Heaven.  The Cherokee lived in the “Middle World” and the belief is that if needed, the spirits from the Upper World would come down and restore balance and harmony.  Of course, the “Lower World” is where the ‘bad spirits’ reside, coming to the Middle World to cause disharmony.

Human effigy pots feature heavily stylized human attributes.  Some, such as this head vase or pot are fairly rare.  They may be related to mortuary rites or enemy sacrifice.

Fishing was an important source of food for the area’s Native Peoples.  This fish net would have been used to stretch across a stream to trap fish as they moved down stream.  Many ‘net sinkers’, stones formed so they could be attached to the nets to hold them in place, have been found in archeological digs in the Townsend/Tuckaleechee Cove area, with some of them dating back to about 9,000 BCE.  FYI, the fishhook at the right was formed from a deer’s hoof.

There is a large display of tools used by the area’s Native Americans in their day-to-day lives.  There are knives, spear and arrow points, drills, grinding stones, scrapers and, as shown in the second photo, awls, which were the early needles necessary to make clothing and similar items.

Of course, pottery was another essential to the first Americans.  In this display there are various cooking pots, a large ceremonial effigy pot, bowls and a pigment/paint pot.  One of the signs points out the Native American’s use of shell bits mixed with the clay.  This tempered/strengthened the pots and extended their useful life.

Note: All pre-Colombian/pre-European pottery was formed completely by hand.  The oldest pottery found to date in North America was found on an island in the Savannah River near Augusta Georgia.  Those artifacts dated back to about 2,500 BCE.

Laurie and I love Native American baskets!  Can you guess what the first one shown above was used for?  

The second one is a Cherokee storage basket.  Given that it’s in such good shape and that the vibrant colors are still evident, the fact that it was made ca. 1851, (about 169 years ago!), is proof of its quality.

Of course, utilitarian baskets such as the storage basket were made to be functional or for a specific purpose.  Gathering baskets were used to gather berries, crops or herbs.  Others included baby baskets and ceremonial baskets.  Fancy baskets were primarily used for trade or gift giving.  A well-crafted basket might contain over 100,000 stitches.

Give up on the basket in the first photo? It’s a fish trap.  Given its structure inside the basket, once the fish enters, it can’t find its way out!

This was an exhibit about the music and games played by Native Americans.  A drum, rattle and flute are displayed on the left.  They were used to celebrate life, death and other special occasions. 

The net result of the various games played was the development of the coordination and hunting skills of the young men.  In playing ‘Chunkey’, a stone or other object is rolled across the ground and the players try to anticipate where it will stop.  They throw spears at that spot…in effect leading a running game animal…when hunting.  The spear closest to the stone’s resting place when it stops is the winner.

Then of course, Native Americans invented what we now call Lacrosse…a sport played all around the USA.  They also played a game called ‘Moccasin’.  They would place a small object under 1 of 3 moccasins and the players would try to pick the one the object was under.  Today, it’s usually played with upside down cups or bowls and a nut in its shell…and it’s called a ‘shell game’.  

Like most early peoples, Native Americans developed their own cures for their various physical ailments.  Herbal medicines are still in use by many here and around the world.  Modern medicine has been studying their uses and their potential in dealing with today’s medical challenges.  I included the second photo of ‘Catmint’ or ‘Catnip’ because it’s so commonly used by cat owners just to make their pets ‘happy’.  As you can see, it had another use for the Native Americans. 

I looked up sage on the WebMD site to find out its possible uses in today’s society as a medicinal product.  As per their website, sage can be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease, improve mental acuity, fight diabetes, lower cholesterol and enhance memory.  You can check it out yourself at https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-504/sage.  Other herbs are discussed on the same site.  

There were a few small dioramas showing life among the Native Americans.  The focus was on their homes.  This is a home from the Mississippian Period (1000 – 1600 CE aka. AD).  During this period of time most homes were rectangular.  Inside they had a cooking hearth and storage pits.

This is a 'summer' Cherokee House.  People who lived in Tuckaleechee Cove, (the valley where Townsend is located), from 1600 to 1800 lived year around in farming villages.  In the cold months they lived in a round house with a central hearth but in the heat of summer, they had square or rectangular open houses like this model.

This display shows the ceremonial masks of the Seven Cherokee Clans.  These clans are the traditional social organizations of Cherokee society.  They are hereditary and matrilineal…children are considered to belong to the mother’s clan.  Men didn’t have clans.  You couldn’t marry within your clan.  It was considered incest…punishable by death. 

Traditionally, women were the head of household.  If she separated from her husband, the home and children belonged to her!  In addition, when they were married the couple moved in with or near the bride’s family.  FYI, if a woman divorced her husband, she’d just pack his clothes and set them outside the door.  It was that simple.

From the left side of the photo - The Blue Clan were the gatherers and ‘pharmacists’ for medicines.  The Long Hairs Clan were the peacemakers. The Bird Clan were responsible for caring for the birds and they were the only ones who could gather eagle feathers.  The Paint or Red Paint Clan were the medicine people.  The Deer Clan were the runners and hunters.  The Wild Potato Clan were the gatherers and keepers of the land. (Wild potatoes were a food staple) Finally, the Wolf Clan were the protectors from which War Chiefs were selected.  This was the most important and largest of all the clans.

Note: In 1810, the Cherokee National Council passed revisions to their traditional laws and customs that included repudiation of matrilineal inheritance.  Also, moving forward, husbands and fathers were named the heads of household.

Now onto the second portion of the indoor exhibits at the Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center.  The transition from the Native American portion of these exhibits to the settlers section is through a log cabin structure.  Love that classic corner cupboard!  It would have been used to hold foods stores in stoneware crocks and homemade gourd containers.

The primary food staples of regional cooking were pork and corn.  By 1849, Tennessee was known as the “Hog and Hominy State”!  Cured/smoked pork was easier to store than beef and corn was the food that often meant the difference during hard times.  Seasonal items such as walnuts, berries and wild onions supplemented the settler’s diets.

The settler’s portion of the indoor display at the Heritage Center is less complex than that of the Native Americans.  However, as you’ll see in a soon to be published post to my blog site, the outdoor portion of the Center is all about settlers in the Smoky Mountains and Appalachia. 

One display in the settler’s section focused on weaving…basically the process from sheep to clothing, blankets, quilts, rugs, curtains, coverlets and more.  As the saying goes, “clothes make the man” but it is really all about the women that made the clothes…

My mother was a weaver so I’ve seen the process up close and personal.  She made a few items of clothing but decorative wall hangings and rugs were her preference.  She spun some of the wool and, like the early settlers, created her own natural dyes.  I will never forget trying to remove the stains caused by shelling fresh walnuts so mom could make dye for her projects.

Another exhibit was all about tools used by early settlers.  A plethora of different tools were used by these early pioneers.  They included such items as axes, funnels, files, augers, chisels, and scythes, cross saws, hammers, drawknives, squares and bevels.  This photo also features a hayfork/pitchfork, a hoe, kettles, bellows and a harness maker’s bench.

One use for the big kettles was the processing of apples.  Apple butter and applesauce were just 2 of the uses for this most abundant fruit in the mountains.  Some apples would keep all winter in the root cellars and others were sliced and dried for use during the coldest months.  It is estimated that between 1,400 and 1,600 different apple varieties were raised in the Southern Appalachian Mountains in the 1800s.

One item in the tools display that we hadn’t seen before was a beehive made from a section of a tree, actually a black gum log.  Very creative…and definitely a sign of making do with what was available.  I have to wonder if Uncle Dan is another distant relative… We share the last name and we both have beards.  Beekeepers in the area produced large quantities of honey and beeswax for sale in nearby markets.

Even before 1830 schools were part of the settler’s life in Cades Cove and Tuckaleechee Cove.  The schools in those early days consisted of a rough log structure with a dirt floor, a fire pit, a hole in the roof to let the smoke out and a couple of glassless windows… As a matter of necessity, children were needed to help the families survive on the farm so early schooling was purely a wintertime activity.  Many teachers didn’t even have a high school education…

Other exhibits in the settler’s portion of the museum include Religion, Toys and Mountain Music.  I took a photo of this mandolin just because it was so attractive.  Early musicians played on handmade fiddles, dulcimers, zithers and mandolins.  The instruments were passed down from one generation to the next.  The tunes and musical traditions were a melding of English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish ballads.  Over the years this sound eventually morphed into bluegrass and country music.

I’m not sure how this Engine Order Telegraph relates to either the Native American exhibit or the Settler’s exhibit.  Nevertheless, it was interesting enough that I took a photo.  Two of these communication devices would be used on a ship, one on the bridge for the pilot and one in the engine room for the engineer.  With all the noise from the engines, the engineer couldn’t hear verbal commands. 

When the pilot wanted to go from “full ahead” to “dead slow”, he would move the needle dial to the new setting.  A bell would ring in the engine room and it wouldn’t stop ringing until the engineer reset his Engine Order Telegraph to match the pilots.  This EOT was built in the late 1800s or early 1900s in London England by Siemen’s Brothers.

That’s all for now.  A subsequent post will cover the settler’s buildings on display at the Heritage Center.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by to see what we’ve been up to!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave