Cherokees debate future of historic land

BRYSON CITY, N.C. (AP) -- Members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians are divided over proposals to develop a 309-acre tract in Swain County considered the birthplace of the Cherokee. <br><br>The

Thursday, April 6th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BRYSON CITY, N.C. (AP) -- Members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians are divided over proposals to develop a 309-acre tract in Swain County considered the birthplace of the Cherokee.

The site's fate is also of great interest to the only other twof ederally recognized Cherokee Indian tribes, the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band, both in Oklahoma.

Kituwah, often called Ferguson Fields, was once the center of Cherokee politics and religion, and the site of the main tribal fire. Tradition holds that priests from Kituwah traveled to Clingman's Dome and received a set of divinely ordained clan law and moral codes from the spirits.

The priests returned to Kituwah and gave the codes to the people, which became known as the "Kituwah Way."

The Cherokees lost control of Kituwah during the 1820s, after which the land became a dairy farm with a grass airstrip, but purchased the land in 1996 for more than $3 million.

Now, some members of the tribe want to develop the land, but others want to preserve it.

Tribal planning director Susie Jones planned to submit are solution to the Tribal Council on Thursday asking that developers or tribal members be allowed to submit proposals for projects that would not improperly disturb the site.

"It may turn out that the best thing you can do is put a barbed wire fence around it," Jones said. "But we need to come up with a plan. It doesn't mean we're going to implement it."

Tribal members who want the site protected will gather Saturday at Kituwah for a celebration of the tribe's "mother town."

"This land is the site of our original, very first town," said Tom Belt of Cherokee.

In a 1997 archaeological survey of Kituwah, archaeologist Brett Riggs of the University of Tennessee found an early 18th-century village site covering 65 acres with a significant density of artifacts. Riggs said the density indicates a long period of settlement and the virtual certainty of human burials. Last month, a groundhog unearthed remains that archaeologists identified as human.

Jim Henson, chief of the 6,000-member United Keetoowah Band, has visited the site and hopes the Eastern Band will decide to preserve it.

"When you look at the historical significance of the three tribes, we probably all have roots back to the same area," he said. "We were probably all Keetoowah."