Near the Great Divide, between the waters of Pigeon river and French Broad, is situated the Devil’s Court-house, which rises to an altitude of 6,049 feet. Near it is Court-house mountain. At both places his Satanic majesty was believed to sit in judgment, and doom to punishment all who had been wayward in courage, or had departed from a strict code of virtue, though bravery in war atoned for a multitude of sins.
The devil had besides these a supreme court-house, where finally all mankind would be summoned for trial. This was one of the great precipices of the Whiteside mountain, situated in Jackson county, at the southern terminus of the Cowee range. There is no wonder that the simple minded pagans supposed that nature had dedicated this structure to supernatural use, for it excels in grandeur the most stupendous works of human hands. It consists of a perpendicular wall of granite, so curved as to form an arc more than a mile long, and rises 1,800 feet from the moss-blanketed rocks which form the pavement of an enclosed court. About half way up there is a shelf-like projection, not more than two feet wide, which leads from one side to a cave. This was supposed to be the inner room of the great temple, whence the judge of human conduct would come to pronounce sentence at the end of the world. That this important business should be entrusted to Satan is a mythological incongruity. A certain sorcerer, or medicine-man, taking advantage of the popular superstition about the place, made the cave his home, going in and out by the narrow shelf. He announced that he was in league with the spirits of the next world, and consequently could go in and out with perfect safety, which fact caused him to be recognized as a great man. There have been found, in the vicinity of Whiteside, Indian ladders—that is, trees with the limbs trimmed so as to form steps. What they could have been used for we are unable to conjecture; certainly not to scale the mountain sides, for such a thing would be impossible.
Old Field mountain, in the Balsam range, derives its name from the tradition that it was Satan’s bed-chamber. The Cherokees of a recent generation affirm that his royal majesty was often seen by their forefathers, and even some of the first white settlers had knowledge of his presence. On the top of the mountain there is a prairie-like tract, almost level, reached by steep slopes covered with thickets of balsam and rhododendron, which seem to garrison the reputed sacred domain. It was understood among the Indians to be forbidden territory, but a party one day permitted their curiosity to tempt them. They forced a way through the entangled thickets, and with merriment entered the open ground. Aroused from sleep and enraged by their audacious intrusion, the devil, taking the form of an immense snake, assaulted the party and swallowed 50 of them before the thicket could be regained.
Among the first whites who settled among the Indians and traded with them, was a party of hunters who used this superstition to escape punishment for their reprehensible conduct. They reported that they were in league with the great spirit of evil, and to prove that they were, frequented this “old field.” They described his bed, under a large overhanging rock, as a model of neatness. They had frequently thrown into it stones and brushwood during the day, while the master was out, but the place was invariably as clean the next morning “as if it had been brushed with a bunch of feathers.”
But there is another legend of the Balsams more significant than any of these. It is the Paradise Gained of Cherokee mythology, and bears some distant resemblance to the Christian doctrine of mediation. The Indians believed that they were originally mortal in spirit as well as body, but above the blue vault of heaven there was, inhabited by a celestial race, a forest into which the highest mountains lifted their dark summits. It is a fact worth noticing that, while the priests of the orient described heaven as a great city with streets of gold and gates of pearl and fine gems, the tribes of the western continent aspired to nothing beyond the perpetual enjoyment of wild nature.
The mediator, by whom eternal life was secured for the Indian mountaineers, was a maiden of their own tribe. Allured by the haunting sound and diamond sparkle of a mountain stream, she wandered far up into a solitary glen, where the azalea, the kalmia, and the rhododendron brilliantly embellished the deep, shaded slopes, and filled the air with their delicate perfume. The crystal stream wound its crooked way between moss covered rocks over which tall ferns bowed their graceful stems. Enchanted by the scene she seated herself upon the soft moss and overcome by fatigue was soon asleep. The dream picture of a fairyland was presently broken by the soft touch of a strange hand. The spirit of her dream occupied a place at her side, and wooing, won her for his bride.
Her supposed abduction caused great excitement among her people, who made diligent search for her recovery in their own villages. Being unsuccessful, they made war upon the neighboring tribes in the hope of finding the place of her concealment. Grieved because of so much bloodshed and sorrow, she besought the great chief of the eternal hunting grounds to make retribution. She was accordingly appointed to call a council of her people at the forks of the Wayeh (Pigeon) river. She appeared unto the chiefs in a dream, and charged them to meet the spirits of the hunting ground with fear and reverence.
At the hour appointed the head men of the Cherokees assembled. The high Balsam peaks were shaken by thunder and aglare with lightning. The cloud, as black as midnight, settled over the valley; then lifted, leaving upon a large rock a cluster of strange men, armed and painted as for war. An enraged brother of the abducted maiden swung his tomahawk, and raised the war whoop; but a swift thunderbolt dispatched him before the echo had died in the hills. The chiefs, terror-stricken, fled to their towns.
The bride, grieved by the death of her brother and the failure of the council, prepared to abandon her new home and return to her kindred in the valleys. To reconcile her the promise was granted that all brave warriors and their faithful women should have an eternal home in the happy hunting ground above, after death. The great chief of the forest beyond the clouds became the guardian spirit of the Cherokees. All deaths, either from wounds in battle or disease, were attributed to his desire to make additions to the celestial hunting ground, or on the other hand, to his wrath which might cause their unfortunate spirits to be turned over to the disposition of the evil genius of the mountain tops. Plagues and epidemics were sometimes supposed to be the work of sorcerers, witches and monsters, human and superhuman. Once during an epidemic of smallpox, so says a traditional tale, a devil in human form was tracked to the headwaters of Tusquittee, where he was apprehended in a cave. They saluted him with a volley of poisoned arrows, which he tossed back with derisive laughter. After several repetitions with the same result, a bird spoke to the disheartened warriors, telling them that their enemy was invulnerable, except one finger which, if hit, would cause his instant death. As in the case of Achilles, of Troy, the vulnerable spot received a fatal shot, and the plague ceased its ravages. The bird was of the variety of little yellow songsters—a variety protected as sacred down to within the memory of the man from whom the writer received this legend.
We return now to the discussion of Indian names, with which the narration of incidents, connected with the geographical nomenclature of the Balsam mountains has slightly interfered. The Indian names of the French Broad have already been given. The present name has an historical signification to commend its continued use, if nothing more. Prior to the treaty made between England and France in 1763, the latter nation claimed all the country drained by the Mississippi, the ground of this claim being actual settlement near the mouth of that river and at several places along its course. International customs gave the claim validity, though the English never admitted it. Adair, an early historian, says: “Louisiana stretched to the head-springs of the Alleghany and Monongahela, of the Kenawha and Tennessee. Half a mile from the southern branch of the Savannah is Herbert’s spring, which flows into the Mississippi. Strangers who drank of it, would say they had tasted of French waters.” In like manner, traders and hunters from the Atlantic settlements, in passing from the headwaters of Broad river over the Blue Ridge, and coming to the streams with which they inosculate, would hear, as Adair did, of the French claim, and call it most naturally “French Broad.”