Sarah Stacke

Cowee Mound, photographed on September 20, 2020, sits on 71 acres of land along the Little Tennessee River outside of Franklin, North Carolina, purchased by the EBCI in 2007. The site is thought to date from about 600 A.D. The council house of the Cherokee town of Cowee was located on the mound in the 18th century, when the town served as an important commercial center. In the 1840s, shortly after an estimated 17,000 Cherokee were forced off their homeland by the U.S. government and onto the Trail of Tears, the Halls, a white family, acquired the property. The land remained in the Hall family for 175 years until they returned ownership to the Cherokee. Cowee roughly translates to ‘the place of the Deer clan’ and is considered the most intact Mississippian period archeological site in western North Carolina.