When the Eastern Band of Cherokee last month received the deed to Noquisiyi Mound – a nearly 1,000-year-old mound in Macon County – they made history. The sacred space is one of only a few mounds officially returned to an Indigenous tribe in the country – and the first ever in North Carolina. The Eastern Band (EBCI) is the only tribe in the state that owns Indigenous mounds that were built by their ancestors, according to the state archeology office.
The process of restoring the Noquisiyi Mound, formerly known as Nikwasi, to the tribe took more than 200 years. The town of Franklin’s unanimous vote to officially transfer the property marks one of only a few in the state that have returned to Indigenous ownership.
“This was part of the heart of Cherokee territory, this area. And so as we think about the burden of bringing this mound back, it's not just a piece of land. It's part of us,” Principal Chief Michell Hicks said at the deed transfer.
“At the end of the day, though there are ridge lines that separate our communities, and though our paths have not always run together, we are all mountain people. People who love this place, people who were shaped by these hills, people who know that land is not a commodity, it's a legacy,” Franklin Mayor Stacy Guffey said.
What are mounds? Who owns them?
Throughout history, some Indigenous cultures built mounds for community and spiritual purposes. Across the state, there are 53 registered mounds with 25 of those confirmed sites in Western North Carolina. These mounds represent the towns, meeting places and sacred spaces of Indigenous people, including the Cherokee and others.
“There were many, many more, but they were eroded over time by natural causes or destroyed by humans,” Dylan Clark, deputy state archaeologist for North Carolina, said. Clark said the number of sites changes all the time as more sites are registered.
Forty-five mounds are on private property. Two are on state property (including Town Creek Mound and another that is submerged in a lake) and another is on federal property. The remainder are owned by the Eastern Band of Cherokee.
While the Noquisiyi Mound was returned without cost, the other mounds now owned by the tribe were purchased, an endeavor made possible by the financial success of the two casinos owned by the tribe.
How are the mounds protected?
Mounds across the region are managed and protected in different ways depending on their location.
Most of the spaces, even those that are privately-held, are under conservation easements, according to Ben Steere, chair of the archeology department at Western Carolina University.
“It's definitely safe to say that the number that are in some kind of protection or some kind of conservation has increased over the last 20 years,” Steere said.
In 1996, ECBI Principal Chief Joyce Dugan led an effort to buy back Kituwah Mound, the 309-acre area previously known as Ferguson’s Fields. But it wasn’t until 2021 that the tribe was able to add the place they call the Mother Town of the Cherokee to tribal trust land, part of the tribe's sovereign territory.
If land is privately owned, state officials only get involved if asked to do so. Even on private land, laws around cemeteries and graves still apply.
“Private property is private property. So it's up to them to conserve and protect resources that are on their land, but if they are interested in advice or our assistance, we always try to help and be responsive if people have questions about their property,” Clark said.
The Tribal Historic Preservation Office for the EBCI might be called to consult as well.
“A lot of people do reach out to us for guidance, if you will, on how to maintain and protect what they have,” Johi Griffin, tribal historic sites keeper for the office, said.
Griffin primarily manages the Kituwah Mound, which is more than 10,000 years old and known as the Cherokee Mother Town.
Griffin wants people to know and understand the importance of the mounds.
“The more public it is, readily visible by the public, the safer it is because there's good people in the world that will report vandalism or looting. So, the more eyes the better,” Griffin said.
The Kituwah area is used as active farmland and as a recreational place for the community.
“There's very little farmland left, so for those people that want to farm, this is an opportunity for them to have some more to farm. So, it's agriculturally driven for food sovereignty,” Griffin said.
He also manages the Cowee and Watauga mounds. Griffin explained the balance between wanting access to the mounds and wanting to preserve them and protect their contents, including Indigenous artifacts.
For example, Mainspring Conservation Trust worked on the conservation of the Cowee Mound, which is owned by the tribe in Macon County. The trust installed an educational kiosk about the mound on the banks of the Little Tennessee River. Visitors to the kiosk can see the mound in the distance on the other side of the river.
“The separation provides security,” Griffin explained. Although it is remote, it protects it from readily being accessible to be looted.”
While the state archeology office does not provide mound site locations for security, some of the mounds are well-known.
The Noquisiyi Mound is located in downtown Franklin next to a cafe, dance school and gas station. Educational signage placed by the Noquisi Initiative and the Women’s History Trail marks the spot.
“It's like one of probably the most perfect places of all of our mound sites for us to be able to place an interpretive center or something like that there,” Angelina Jumper, cultural resources officer for the EBCI, said.
The tribes owns a building next to the mound (known as Dan's Auto) that has been considered as the location for an interpretive center. (That's the red roof in the photo above.)
At the time of the mound transfer ceremony, the building was under construction. The approval for this project would be the responsibility of tribal council, the governing body of the EBCI.
When does the state office of archeology get involved in a project?
Some protection of historical sites, like the mounds, is provided by the North Carolina state government.
The office of state archaeology focuses on the impacts to underground archaeological sites based on “ground disturbing activities” like construction and development projects, Clark explained.
“We look at all archaeological sites equally in terms of their historic value, but Native American mound sites, we know are sacred sites, and the potential for there to be, either sensitive or sacred resources that are in and around those mound sites,” Clark said.
Clark, who is based in Asheville, is in charge of all the terrestrial archaeological projects in the state. The office collaborates with federal officials on managing environmental reviews and other consultations.
While much of the information about mounds is available to the public, federal confidentiality laws limit some details about archaeological locations to protect these sites.
What if the site contains graves?
If remains are exposed, the Chief Medical Examiner’s office determines if the remains are historic or modern before turning over the process to the state archaeologist if they are historic and need to be repatriated.
If graves are found on sites, then a 1990 federal law called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) would apply. This law was intended to stop the desecration of Native gravesites and to ensure that human remains "must at all times be treated with dignity and respect." It also requires that the remains of Native Americans be returned to affiliated tribes.
Griffin said he travels about 20 times a year to surrounding states just for repatriation, often through NAGPRA.
“What the Eastern Band has been really consistent with now for many, many, many years is that mounds and townhouses are really important sacred places,” Steere said. “They contain the graves of ancestors. There are places where important ceremonies took place. And so part of respecting those cultural beliefs is not disturbing those places and not digging into those places and not disturbing graves.”
Are there mounds now hidden?
Western Carolina University’s central campus was built on Tali Tsisgwayahi, the former site of a Cherokee town.
“In the last, you know, 20 years in particular, Western's really tried to - there's no undoing something like that - but we're trying to acknowledge it and to do a much better job of doing our capacity on our campus so that we don't find ourselves in that kind of situation again,” Steere said.
The site, first excavated in 1898, was leveled in 1956 before the passage of NAGPRA.
( Hunter Library Special Collections Library) In the same circumstance today, state law would have triggered the involvement of the state archaeology office and repatriation of ancestors and funerary objects that were found.
In 2021, the school recognized this history with an official land acknowledgment for the first time.
Some other mounds in the region that are no longer visible include Peachtree in Cherokee County, Garden Creek in Haywood County and Coweeta Creek in Macon County.
This article first appeared on NCLocal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
