Park’s highest peak reclaims historic name

Long before the Great Smokies’ highest peak was named in 1859 for Thomas Clingman, a US senator who would later become a Confederate brigadier general, the Cherokee people knew it by a different name—Kuwohi, meaning “mulberry place.” Following a September 18 decision by the US Board on Geographic Names and years of grassroots advocacy from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), that name has been restored.

For members of all three Cherokee tribes—the EBCI, Cherokee Nation, and United Band of Keetoowah—the decision has proved both joyful and emotional. Mary Crowe, who together with her fellow EBCI member Lavita Hill led the name change effort, said she saw friends and relatives shed tears at the news.

“It was humbling,” she said. “It was beautiful.”

Cherokee people talk about their ancestors as if they’re right above the trees, said Kim Smith, Southern Appalachian community conservation specialist for The Wilderness Society and an EBCI member. Kuwohi, formerly known as Clingmans Dome, is the highest peak within the tribe’s ancestral homeland and offers a sweeping view of treetops throughout the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s “the closest place you’ll be to our ancestors,” Smith said.

“For me, being able to take my family there now and know that the people that visit will be saying our language, it’s like my ancestors can hear the healing that the next generation gets to have that they weren’t able to experience or witness,” Smith said. “But because we’re there and we’re still connected, through us, they have that healing.”

The Cherokee people have a long and rich history in the Great Smoky Mountains, but at many points throughout the last 300 years, that cultural tradition has been threatened. In the 1830s, most of the Cherokee were forced to leave their homeland and march west to Oklahoma on the deadly Trail of Tears, and from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s, many children were forcibly taken from their homes and native communities to attend Indian boarding schools, a practice often described as cultural genocide. As a result, some knowledge has been lost. For instance, nobody is sure why the 6,643-foot mountain was called “mulberry place,” when mulberries aren’t known to grow above 3,500 feet. But doubtless, there was a reason.

“We know mulberry is a medicine to our people,” said Crowe. “We were told that our medicine people went there, we were told that our prophets and our spiritual people would go there.”

“When we’re talking about narratives that have been passed down for tens of thousands of years, there is knowledge to them,” Smith added. “There is purpose that that message would continue to be transferred from one generation to the next.”

Today, many Native communities, including the EBCI, are experiencing an era of cultural resurgence as their members seek to reconnect with a heritage that came close to being destroyed. Smith hopes her grandchildren will someday be born into a world “where progress has been substantial and creating spaces where their identity is accepted and valued” is the norm.

Crowe and Hill’s campaign to change the name started with a Facebook post. Crowe works with an organization called Native Organizers Alliance, which worked on the effort to rename Mount Doane in Yellowstone National Park to First Peoples Mountain, recognizing the multiple tribes with ties to that area. When that change was approved in 2022, Crowe posted to her Facebook, saying that Great Smoky Mountains National Park should do the same.

The suggestion sparked a conversation between Crowe and Hill that resulted in them presenting a resolution at the very next EBCI Tribal Council meeting, asking the tribe to support restoring the Kuwohi name. The resolution received unanimous approval from Tribal Council and a signature from then–Principal Chief Richard Sneed.

This victory marked the beginning of a two-year effort to see the process through. The US Board on Geographic Names, which falls under the US Department of the Interior, has the final say on name changes to geographic features, and input from surrounding communities weighs heavily in its decisions. Crowe and Hill began attending city council and county commission meetings across the region, asking these local governmental bodies for support.

“We knew we would get opposition,” Crowe said. “That was a given, but we were overwhelmed with the support that was given to us. We were very surprised and happy to be able to go into our counties and states, and the majority of them agreed to support us.”

Notably, in April the Tennessee General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution supporting the effort introduced by Rep. Justin Jones and signed by Gov. Bill Lee. Buncombe County also passed a resolution in favor of renaming, and the City of Asheville issued a proclamation.

Meanwhile, the tribe was working to compile a formal application to submit to the US Board on Geographic Names. The tribal government approved that document in January. Just over nine months later, the US Board on Geographic Names made the change official—a “really incredible” turnaround compared to how long such decisions often take, Smith said. The speedy process, she said, reflects “the mindset of humanity,” the progress the public is making “to understanding why place-names matter,” and the effective structure of the effort itself.

“It was led by women, which is reflective of our cultural matrilineal value system,” she said. “It was done with the right people in mind as far as allies and support structures. It was just done ‘du-yu-go-dv-I,’ the right way. And I think because everything lined up in the right way, it didn’t have to suffer through a long campaign period to get the support it needed to be successful.”

Great Smoky Mountains National Park was among the many stakeholders that supported the name change, taking action to recognize the Cherokee connection to Kuwohi two years before the final vote took place. The park held its first Kuwohi Connection Days event in April 2022, shutting down what was then called Clingmans Dome Road for two consecutive mornings to allow for an educational program celebrating the mountain’s cultural significance. The program was conducted in partnership with tribal elders, Cherokee community leaders, and park rangers, and it included fifth graders from Cherokee, New Kituwah Academy, Swain East, Robbinsville, and Smokey Mountain elementary schools as well as seniors from Cherokee, Robbinsville, and Swain high schools. The program repeated in fall 2022, this time expanding to three days, and it has been held every fall since.

“There was a desire to not just put words out there but to put action out into the world,” said Great Smoky Mountains National Park Chief of Resource Education Stephanie Kyriazis. “It seemed something modest we could do would be to hold space for tribal kids and elders and community members and Cherokee language speakers to connect with the place that is sacred to them and to have that be an experience of cultural connection and continuity.”

With the Kuwohi name now official, the park is embracing the change with enthusiasm. The board vote changed only the name of the mountain itself, but as soon as the vote took place, the park exercised its authority to rename the road, visitor center, and tower associated with the mountain to reflect the Kuwohi name as well. These new names are already displayed in the park’s online maps, and website text updates are in process. Sign production is now underway and is expected to take several months to complete.

“We are excited as the National Park Service to honor the many strands of culture that have interwoven on the Smokies over time,” said Kyriazis, “and being able to have Cherokee place-names on the landscape, whether officially or as something that we can share with visitors, is something we very much embrace.”