 My name's driver pheasant. I'm a Cherokee Indian with the eastern band of Cherokees This is why the old men told me when I was a boy a Long time ago all the animals lived up in Galangladi, which is heaven And it was getting much crowded and they were woning more room As they looked down they saw the soft flat earth and they wondered what was down there So they sent out different types of birds Then one day shuleigwa He's the great buzzard the grandfather of all the buzzards that we see now. He said he would go He flew all around the world After a while he became tired and he flew low down close to the earth When his wings came down they formed a valley When his wings came up there was a mountain formed and to this day Cherokee country remains full of mountains The people followed trails of the buffalo and deer They fished the streams and ate wild berries and established small villages The old Cherokees called Kataloochee Gotaloochee Which means standing in rows or ranks and referred to the trees along the mountain ridges But in the late 18th century the ways of the Cherokees changed completely and permanently As white settlers pushed ever westward In the beginning a few hunters trappers and fishermen built cabins in the area Then Colonel Robert Love purchased the valley for three thousand dollars and granted homesteads to those who would settle the land The development prospered and the white settlers Studdering over the Cherokee syllables called it Kataloochee I grew up in a Kataloochee Valley. It's in the center of the world The reason I know that you have to look straight up to see the sun Each year Kataloochee families reunite They come together in laughter and song and in fellowship They reminisce over pictures which evoke fond memories of an earlier time Palmer's Woody's Sutton's Messers Nolan's and Caldwell's Families who put down roots in the rich bottom lands along Kataloochee Creek My great-granddaddy purchased some land in there in 1830 It was one of the first settlers Levi Caldwell and his wife Mary nailing And they raised the family of 11 children They come in there in 1835 1836 Small log homes dotted the slopes The first built by Levi Caldwell in the mid 1830s 60 years later Hiram Caldwell replaced the log house with a modern weatherboard structure In the 20th century the home became a welcome haven for tourists and renters George Palmer came to Kataloochee about 1840 His sons Lafayette and Jesse each built a classic dog trot house The covered breezeway or dog trot ran between two log cabins One of which was used for cooking and eating the other for sitting and sleeping The women peeled apples or potatoes in the cool breezeway on hot summer days The family dogs also used the area to keep warm in winter and cool in summer. That's the name dog trot George's grandson Jarvis was the last Palmer to occupy the house He enlarged it added three bunk houses and visitors paid to fish in the three miles of streams. He stopped flora Arleigh Messer Morrow I was born a little Kataloochee November the 5th 1895 10 sisters and one brother My father and mother Were working people they like to Have things and do things my father was Jack of all trades he made About ever casket that Kataloochee needed Little Kataloochee was separated from big Kataloochee by Nolan Mountain But the two were joined by blood and marriage as young adults moved across the mountain to establish their own homes The 1910 there were a thousand two hundred and fifty one people in both Kataloochee's Like most early settlers they became nearly self-sufficient My mother made our clothes out of the men's old pants This should take the legs and make the clothes. So this one is me and some of my pants This is a brother mother made his clothes to their very obviously homemade I'd like to tell you about the shoes. They were a High-top moccasin I suppose you would call them and my mother made them from my father's old felt hats she made her own pattern and They were less surprisingly a long time We all took our first steps in the shoes like that and then if someone older than us had another pair of shoes They had outgrown then we got real shoes and not felt at shoes The people of Kataloochee also grew their own crops for food and ranged cattle in the mountains Farming was done primitive Of course in my time we had horses and turning plows and Well, it's probably a plant when it's 13 year old that grow wheat and of course they had their corn the corn was a stable food for making meal and bread Jesse Palmer built the mill about 18 oh Wait in the mid 1850s Of course everybody come to mill on Saturday, you know the brokter Corn and Saturday was regular meal day. Of course they ground any other time that they need to be Kataloochee's kept up with current events through national newspapers received at the Nellie post office The combinations store and post office provided a necessary tie to the outside world Gudger Palmer remembers and we just tell you a little bit about the post office My father was postmaster however my mother Tended to the store and to the post office most of the time She'd go down about eight o'clock and fix up the mail The women just about ran things. They did an awful lot of work Now my mother never worked in the hayfield or the cornfield But she did do some work in the garden She cooked all the meals and When there's any special thing doing like I was killing hogs Why? She worked at that She made the beds swept the floors scoured the floors by hand We had a good time We were raised up in a Christian home, but my father He liked good clean fun We had bean strength in some corn shuckings and you'd have corn shallots Schools were built in both little Kataloochee and big Kataloochee Went to school up here at the school which is still standing when I started we had two rooms But when I wound up we had this one room one teacher Flora Messer Morrow taught in little Kataloochee for a salary of $50 a month. I never had much trouble teaching I had a lot of fun we had the the blackboard mostly and then I had the children to take their books home and They had to recite and tell me all about that lesson the next morning at school Each grade she'd call up the front Go to your lesson to find that group would go back and the next grade come up Always on Friday. We had a spelling match The whole school participated School was in session for only five or six months each year as the children were needed for harvesting and molasses Church services were held once a month when the circuit rider came Sunday school was in session every week and Each fall the sounds of preaching prayer and the songs of revival filled the Palmer Chapel and There was two things. There's always a must in our house And that was when Amos and Andy come on you had to be quiet And on Sunday morning come you had to go to church. You had to go to church That was two things. It was a must Church family and hard work These were the foundations for building a prosperous community Now I'd have to say by growing up in Category and being independent as our families were in there and the rugged Life that we had to live and hard work that we had to do to make a living Probably helped me when I come out to be able to make a decent living without Much education in the early 1930s the citizens of North Carolina and Tennessee entrusted this valley and its history to be preserved for future generations As the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was created Families moved away leaving behind vacant buildings and land no longer grazed nor plowed But as we reflect on those who came before Sights and sounds of an earlier time echoed through this valley The Cherokee the settlers Those who entrusted their hopes their dreams and often their lives to this place They have not left us an empty valley, but one filled with vivid reminders of a heritage now bonded to the future