Asheville Art Museum | Asheville-Buncombe Library | UNC Asheville | YMI Cultural Center
Appalachian State University |Appalachian Cultural Museum |Southern Highland Craft Guild
Asheville
Art Museum | Asheville-Buncombe
Library | UNC
Asheville |
YMI
Cultural Center
Appalachian
State University |Appalachian
Cultural Museum |Southern
Highland Craft Guild
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NANTAHALA RIVER |
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| "The musical name of
Nantihala (sic), as applied to the river, is a slight change from the
Cherokee pronunciation of it - Nanteyaleh. Judging from the fact
of different interpreters giving different meanings for the name, its
signification is involved in obscurity. By some it is said to mean
Noon-day Sun, from the fact of the mountains hugging it so closely that
the sunlight strikes it only during the middle of the day. The
other meaning is Maiden's Bosom.
"The river is wholly in Macon county. Rising near the Georgia boundary, amid the wilds of the Standing Indian and Chunky Gal mountains - peaks of its bordering eastern and western ranges - it flows in a northerly and then north-easterly direction, and after a swift course for fifty miles, empties its waters into the Little Tennessee. The ragged, straggling range, sloping abruptly up from its eastern bank, takes the name of the river. This range breaks from the Blue Ridge, in Georgia, and trends north, with the Little Tennessee receiving its waters on one side, and the Nantihala, those on the other. The Valley River mountains, forming the Macon county western boundary, run parallel with the Nantihala range. It is in the narrow cradle between these two chains that the river is forever rocked." (1883, Ziegler, pp. 79-80) |
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