Nikwasi Indian Mound - remnant of a Cherokee town, now downtown Franklin, NC, USA

Nice picture,too - greetings from germany!!!

Thank you, 14MANO2, and greetings to you in Germany! Thank for your nice visit to my gallery, I appreciate it. Hooray Panoramio!

Jean

Once the center of a thriving Cherokee village, the Nikwasi Mound now stands at the center of the town of Franklin. Not only has it escaped destruction by excavation, farming, and development, Nikwasi Mound remains something like its original size. Its stature can not be appreciated driving by on the street, because the level around the mound has been filled for modern construction. Only when one stands at its base can one appreciate the sheer bulk and graceful lines of this earthen construction, which was once even larger. Originally crowned with a large townhouse, this mound held the ever-burning sacred fire, and was the dwelling place of the immortal spirit-beings, the nunnehi. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians asks that visitors not climb the mound or walk on its top, in order to help preserve it.

Because the mound has not been excavated, no one knows its age, but its location among the Middle Towns makes it typical of sites from perhaps a thousand years ago or more. One of more than a dozen such villages strung along the banks of the Little Tennessee, Nikwasi was home to generations of Cherokee people, whose fields and orchards filled the bottom land around it.

It took me three hours tromping through the brush to find the Cowee Mound in the Upper Burningtown Area. It's three times the size of the Nikwasi Mound. Go to my uploads and see for yourself.