Cracking riddles was a popular pastime on nights here in these hills. It was a superfine exercise for stretching the mind and whetting a body’s wit. Like so many of the old traditions, cracking riddles has become a lost art. Riddles rank with myths, fables, folktales and proverbs as one of the earliest and most wide spread types of formulated thought.
Ones like…
There was a little green house,
And in the little green house,
There was a little brown house,
And in the little brown house,
There was a little yellow house,
And in the little yellow house,
There was a little white house
And in the little white house
There was a little heart
The answer is “a nut”
Or this one:
Round the house and round the house,
And there lies a white glove in the window
The answer is “snow
Or this one:
A hill full, a hole full, but you cannot catch a bowlful
The answer is “smoke”
And then there is this one:
From house to house he goes,
So sure and yet so slight,
And whether it rains or snows,
He sleeps outside all night.
Can you guess…it’s a path.
How about…
What flies forever
And never rests?
The answer: the wind.
It can run and can’t walk,
It has a tongue and can’t talk
Give up…a wagon.
Going back to a time when nights were spent around a fire with a riddle cracking session, it seems a shame that they have disappeared. For they were the times when cracking riddles stretched a body’s mind and whetted a body’s wit.
A couple of town builders out in Kansas dreamed it up, but fate picked the site. The year was 1875, and this was nothing more than a lofty plateau, lonely and isolated, a wilderness of rhododendron, laurel and fir, home only to the owl, the squirrel, the bear and the wild cat.
Out in Kansas, a January wind whistled through the newborn town of Hutchinson, rattling the windows and doors of a house where to men bent over a map spread out on a table.
The two men were Samuel T. Kelsey and Charles Hutchinson. As they studied the chart – a map of the United States – Kelsey took a pencil and drew a heavy black line from north to south across its face. The line ran from Chicago to Savannah, and then he drew another, starting at New Orleans and moving northeast to Baltimore.
“We will build our town there”, Kelsey said, pointing to the spot where the lines intersected. “That’s where it will be”. As well as the two men could make out, the lines converged at a point where the states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia came together, but wholly in North Carolina.
With their eyes on the main chance. Kelsey and Hutchinson figured the point of intersection would become the exact center of population between the great population centers of the east.
“It will be like the hub of a wheel,” Kelsey said. “We build a town there and people eventually will come through it to reach every point in that part of North Carolina, in northwestern South Carolina, and points in Georgia.”
They put away their map, and then started making their plans, for they were in a hurry.
Leaving homes and families behind, they set out for Western North Carolina to find the site fate had picked for their town. They arrived in Atlanta late in January. From there they headed northeast by mule-back into the rugged hill country. After wandering around through the region for days they finally climbed out of the Georgia hills and came to an elevated mountain plateau in North Carolina.
By the calendar it was February, 1875. They were deep in great wilderness. But they decided that this was the spot where their town should be built.
They did some scouting around and discovered a trail. They followed it off the plateau and down into a cover where they found their first sign of life. They came to a house and learned they were in Horse Cove and that a sizable settlement called Cashiers was nearby.
The two men from Kansas proceeded to find out who owned the land they wanted for their town site. They were told it belonged to a man named Dobson. They found a made a deal for 800 acres on the west plateau of Satulah Mountain.
About this time they ran into Charles N. Jenks, a noted explorer and miner, who happened to be in the area on a hunting and fishing expedition.
Jenks had a pocket compass. So they persuaded him to help them lay out the town. Once the survey was made, they cut a street through the center of the town to be, running east to west.
Hutchinson was given the choice of a 42 acre tract on either side of Main Street. He picked the south side. Kelsey took the north side. Both knew a trick or so about speculation and promotion. First they erected their own homes. They used massive, hand squared pine logs. They placed them upright, taking a cue from the western stockades. They were weather-boarded on the inside and clapboarded on the outside. With their homes up, they could boast that they had a town started.
It was then that they began to send circulars and advertisements to the ague-shaken folks of Kansas and adjacent states, as well as bombarding the New England states. They called their town Highlands. The response was enough to make Kelsey and Hutchinson realize they hadn’t been wrong in the gamble.
Within two years more than a dozen families had moved in and built homes. Among the first settlers was T. Baxter White. He came down from Massachusetts. He was Highland’s first postmaster. Judson M. Cobb came with his family from Wisconsin and brought the first Jersey cattle to Highlands.
All these early settlers made the journey to Highlands over the Walhalla road, then the only exit from Highlands. It ran through Horse Cove and Franklin, a full day’s journey. So Kelsey and Hutchinson began a campaign for roads, and they got the folks to chip in and build them themselves.
Meanwhile, Kelsey and Hutchinson realized they had to have a school and a church if the town was to prosper and grown. So they build a schoolhouse in 1878. And while it was under construction, a log cabin known as the “Law House” was used for church, Sunday school, magistrate’s court and school.
A few years after the town was built, Hutchinson moved his family back to Kansas and the town he had built that bore his name. But Kelsey stayed around for quite a number of years and went on to build another town in Western North Carolina – one called Linville.
When you come into Hayesville from the East over U.S. 64, you cross Chunky Gal Mountain and pass through Shooting Creek. To the north rise the Tusquittees, aloof and mysterious and unapproachable. To the southeast looms the legendary Standing Indian. And to the west, beyond the lush valley of the Hiawassee stands Brasstown Bald.
All of which is by way of an introduction to place-names and the little known stories behind them. Let’s start with Chunky Gal. She’s a favorite among mountain place names. Maybe it’s because the name suggests a rollicking, foot-tapping fiddle tune. The facts, however, call for a lonesome tune, a ballad of young love nipped in the bud.
It all began when this was brooding wilderness and the land was home to the Cherokees.
There was an Indian maiden living on Shooting Creek. She was dark-eyed and buxom, the envy of her more skinny tribal sisters. And she had a handsome brave from the Wayahs for a beau.
After months of steady courting, the young lovers announced they were going to get married. But, for some unexplained reason, the girl’s father opposed the marriage.
So they ran away. They headed for the young brave’s home beyond the high mountains to the east. But the way was steep and long, the going slow. Time and again, in their climb to the sky, they had to stop and rest.
Meanwhile, the girl’s father discovered she had fled the village. He organized a party of fleet-footed warriors and took out in pursuit. He caught the fleeing lovers at the big spring in the gap of the mountain where they had paused to drink and catch their breath.
The irate father grabbed his daughter and warned the young brave he would be skinned alive if he ever showed up in the Shooting Creek again. And then he took his daughter back home.
And when the white settlers moved in and asked the Indians the name of the mountain they had crossed to get to Shooting Creek, the Indians said: “It’s Chunky Gal”.
Nobody knows what the Indians called the Shooting Creek section. It may have been Hiawassee, which is to say “savannah” or “meadow”.
It the early days, the pioneers met on the creek to hold shooting matches with their muzzle loading rifles, shooting for beef, deer or bear, turkey or whiskey. So they called it Shooting Creek.
Brasstown, now renowned as the home of the John C. Campbell Folk School, came by its name when some Indians turned up a rich load of gold. They thought it was brass and called the site of their strike “Brasstown” and built a village there.
Fires Creek, long an Eden of place for trout, was named for a man who first lived there by the name of Fires.
Peckerwood was named for an Indian known to the whites as Jim Peckerwood who lived about the fork of the branch.
Compass Creek got its name from Robert Henry, a surveyor and Revolutionary War veteran, who dropped his compass in the stream as he was crossing it.
Cherry Mill Creek was named for John Tucker Cherry who settled on a little stream just outside of what is now Hayesville in 1844 and built himself a gristmill.
Tusquittee is the name of a mountain range, a stream and a community. It is pure Cherokee, meaning “place of the rafters”.
Butcher Knife Ridge came by its name because a man named Tom Lance found a butcher knife there.
Couch Gap was so named because during the American Civil War its cliffs were a hiding place for dodgers and slackers who lived on wild hog meat.
Hurricane Creek got its name from a gif blow that blew down all the trees along the creek.
Nobody remembers his name, but he was a chair maker. So folks called the branch he lived on Chairmaker Branch.
Licklog came from the Davis family who felled trees not far from the church in that vicinity and cut.
Chonooga, which is say “groundhog” in Cherokee, got its name because folks caught so many groundhogs there.
Some folks say that the creek called Sweetwater was named by the Cherokee. Others say the settlers gave it that name because everybody on the creek raised sorghum cane and made molasses.
Medlock Creek was named for Medlock, Quals Creek for slave owned Robert Henry who set her free and built her a house at the foot of the mountain.
Stamey Cove is really Sunday Branch, named for a man named Sunday. Boon Gap was named for Bill Boon and Steve Gap for Stephen Kitchens.
Vineyards Mountain on Shooting Creek honors an abandoned enterprise started by an unremembered Englishman who covered the mountain with grape vines. But the grapes failed to prosper and he returned to England.
Woman Gap was named by the Indians who stole a settler’s woman and held her captive there for a spell.
Potrock Bald was named for a large rock on top of the mountain that was hollowed out by an Indian medicine man and used to steep his medicinal herbs.
Weatherman Bluffs wasn’t coined to honor a local meteorologist, but was named for Juckerson Weatherman who lived at the base of the bluff.
Cullakanee is a corruption of the Cherokee word Kalanu meaning the “the raven”.
The list of original place names is endless. And if you take the time to inquire you will come up with the how and why of them. But for us…Chunky Gal tops them all!
The lazy days of summer are here. Farm stands throughout the area are filled with baskets of fruit and vegetables warmed by the summer sun. The breeze carries the hum of cicadas by day and the chirp of katydids at night. The roadsides are blooming with the lacy cups of Queen Anne’s lace, the bright blue of bachelor’s buttons, and the yellow orange petals of the black-eyed Susans.A summer sunrise is a lovely thing to watch, and the evening breeze cools us as we see the sky grow orange and pink with sunset.
Summer on Lake Santeetlah is warm and cozy, without being hot and humid. The gentle breeze from the lake provides just the right amount of cool during the day when water sports are at their most exciting and sunbathing is at its most relaxing. Swimming, water skiing, boating, and more are taking place for those all that can make full use of this beautiful secluded pristine lake.
We encourage you to join us to enjoy these lazy summer days on Lake Santeetlah, where the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’…..
