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MAN IN THE MOUNTAINS Archeologists believe the ancient symbols on Judaculla Rock could be 3,000 years old. Archeologists suggest that the first natives to inhabit the Great Smokies were Paleolithic hunters and gatherers who migrated from Asia across the Bering Strait. The oldest evidence of human life in the Smokies dates back 12,000 years, when the Cherokee began to populate the southeastern mountains. The first Europeans to discover the Cherokee were Spanish explorers in 1540. Traveling north from Florida, Hernando de Soto and his soldiers were searching for gold. When they found none, they quickly moved on to other exploits. Over a century would pass before other explorers entered Cherokee territory in any significant numbers. By the time the Scot-Irish began to arrive, the Cherokee had developed an advanced civilization of nearly 22,000 people living in organized villages spread across more than 40,000 square miles. This 1762 portrait of a Cherokee warrior named "Cunne Shorte" shows him wearing strings of Cherokee beadwork and traditional English attire while brandishing his long knife.

	The survival of the Cherokee Nation is attributed to their large numbers, their infatuation with the British and the impenetrable mountains they called home. Despite the eventual betrayal by the British and the introduction of small pox by the settlers, the Cherokee still admired European culture. As difficult as it was, they wanted to co-exist with their new neighbors. Around 1809, a young Cherokee named Sequoyah realized that the only way his nation would thrive in a white man's world was to master the hallmark of civilization itself... the written word. In less than a dozen years, Sequoyah adapted a series of letters, dashes, and curls to make a distinctive letter for each of the 86 syllables in the spoken Chrokee language, a task that took the Phoenicians, Egyptians and Greeks ages to develop. Virtually overnight, the Cherokee were assimilated into a new way of life.
	In 1821 Sequoyah, the illiterate son of an itenerant German father and a Cherokee mother, invented the Cherokee "syllabary," an alphabet based on the sounds and syllables of the spoken Cherokee language.