Kituwah, Cherokee Mother Town

Bryson City, NC

Tsali was a Cherokee man who resisted the forced removal of his people in 1838, escaping into the mountains from the U.S. troops rounding up the Cherokee for the Trail of Tears. He was captured and executed nearby. His act of defiance became legend, later dramatized in the outdoor drama Unto These Hills.

Bryson City, NC

In the winter of 1864, the mountains of far western North Carolina were a contested frontier of the Civil War. Near Deep Creek, Union forces struck Thomas's Legion — a Confederate command that famously included Cherokee soldiers from the nearby Qualla Boundary. The blow here helped erode Cherokee support for the Confederate cause in the southern Appalachians.

Jackson County, NC

The Qualla Boundary is the homeland of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, descendants of those who remained in the mountains after the removals of the 1830s. This marker notes Soco Gap as the starting point of the 1876 U.S. survey of the reservation, secured largely through the earlier efforts of W.H. Thomas, a white man adopted by the Cherokee who served as their chief and advocate.

Snowbird Community, NC

This mountain grave holds Junaluska, a Cherokee leader who fought alongside Andrew Jackson's forces at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, where — as the inscription recounts — he and his warriors helped turn the fight and were credited with saving Jackson's life. Decades later North Carolina formally recognized him as a citizen, and he was buried here in the Snowbird community with his wife, Nicie. His story runs through one of the most fraught chapters of the early republic, when Cherokee people fought for the United States even as the nation moved toward removing them from their homelands.