In her book Heart Pine, McDowell County historian Anne Swann writes of the Cherokee people’s ancestors, “…it was they who were the first to climb the peaks and drink from the streams that still exist here. It was their feet that found their way into this magical little place, their eyes which first looked upon its quiet splendor. They are the ones who accomplished the thing of which we can only dream. They were the first.”
In the video above, Anne talks more about the earliest inhabitants of what is now McDowell County and reflects upon the Cherokee way of looking at the world.
Anne continues the story in this next segment. She focuses on the Cherokee trails and trading paths that ran through the area, the relationship between the Native Americans and the earliest white settlers, and the forts that sprang up due to the conflict. She also relates the story of Lydia Birchfield, who was scalped during a Cherokee raid but survived.
