What the Cherokee Said Was Living Beneath the Appalachians

Deep in the Appalachian balds of western North Carolina, the Cherokee described a people who lived under the mountains and never died. This is the story of the Nunnehi, drawn from the oldest written record we have of Cherokee mythology: the 1902 collection Myths of the Cherokee, written down by ethnographer James Mooney from elders who still told these stories firsthand. The Nunnehi were said to live under the mound at Nikwasi, in Franklin North Carolina, beneath a sacred fire the Cherokee kept burning for centuries. Cherokee history records the morning that mound opened and an invisible army poured out of it. That part is folklore. The mound itself is not. It stands on the National Register today, one of the least understood sites in all of Cherokee history, and in a thousand years it has been opened exactly once. Ground-penetrating radar could tell us what is inside without moving a single stone, and the Cherokee have asked that no one ever does. This is the kind of native american history most people were never taught, the sort of hidden history and forgotten history that stays buried because the people who own it want it left alone. If you followed our other deep dives into native american legends, cherokee folklore, and the corners of appalachian history nobody printed in the textbook, this one stays with you after it ends. #Cherokee #NativeAmericanHistory #appalachianfolklore #Appalachia