photo #8448671

Great story about the disappearance of a Cherokee Village… enjoy.If any of ya'll are ever deep in the heart of the mountains of NC, and love tall tales, legends and unsolved mysteries, hunt down this solitary stone marker, sitting unnoticed, at the intersection of two country roads in Transylvania County (Hwy 276 & Island Ford Road).The marker is dark from years of wind and rain. The bronze plaque is almost unreadable. Get close and you can make out that the plaque was dedicated by the Cherokee Historical Association.This spot is where British troops first found the ancient Indian village of Kana’sta (Conestee) in 1725. Returning in 1777, explorers found nothing - the people and place had simply vanished. No one has seen the Conestee people since the British encounter.But the Cherokee have a legend for what happened and where they went....And this is what i found:Conestee (also known as Kanasta) was the only known Cherokee settlement between villages in the South Carolina foothills and North Carolina mountains further to the west. It is thought the settlement was abandoned around the 1750’s. Cherokee legend has it that two messengers from the Nunnehi, ( little people) a legendary people whose villages were under the mountains, visited the Cherokees living at Kanasta. The visitors brought an invitation for the people of Kanasta to join them under Tsuwatelda, present day Pilot Mountain near Brevard, where they could live in peace. The Kanasta chief called a council of his people and they decided to accept the invitation. Upon reaching Tsuwatelda, a door opened behind a waterfall revealing a land of green pastures, woodlands and a village finer than those left behind. They alone of all the Cherokee Nation escaped the long wars and suffering that followed.