Nikwasi comes from the Cherokee word for "star", Noquisi, and is the site of the Cherokee town which is first found in colonial records in the early 18th century, but is much older. It covered about 100 acres on the floodplain of the Little Tennessee River in what is now Franklin, North Carolina. Today, an associated platform mound is the only extant feature left of the town.
History
The town was founded sometime before 1544, as it appears on several maps from that time. It is first mentioned in the records of the British colonies in America in 1718. The town was a spiritual, cultural, and ceremonial center for the local Cherokee people, who considered it the "Mother Town." The towns people kept the ever-burning sacred fire of the settlement, which had been kept burning since the beginning of their culture, located there in the fire pit of the meeting hall. The Varnod census, enumerated in 1721, found a native population of the town to be 142—constituting 53 men, 50 women, and 59 children.
Treaty of 1727
The town's meeting hall was set upon a central platform mound still prominent in the area today. Nikwasi probably met with a delegation from Charleston, South Carolina there in 1727; Colonel John Herbert took part in a treaty council held in the meeting hall on December 3, 1727. Following the signing of the treaty with South Carolina, a self-appointed royal ambassador, Alexander Cuming, was hosted at the town from April 3 to 4, 1730. During the negotiations with the Cherokee, Cuming met with UkuMoytoy. Cuming "appointed" Moytoy as "Emperor" of the Cherokee and secured a dubious pledge of allegiance of all the Cherokee peoples to King George II from him. The treaty was generally honored until 1741.
Further dealings with colonials
During the summer of 1761 the Nikwasi townhouse was used as a field hospital by the members of a punitive expedition against native American allies of France during the French-Indian War. The party, which had razed most of the town in the expedition, was led by James Grant. The town was once again leveled September 10, 1776 during the Rutherford Light Horse expedition, when the towns people allied with Great Britain early in the American War for Independence. Rutherford burned the town and its farmlands to the ground. After an austere, harsh winter, the town sued for peace the following Spring. The town was emptied in 1819 of its native American inhabitants when the townspeople were forced from their lands into the Qualla Boundary by the government.
The mound
The platform mound is conspicuous to the many drivers who pass by daily on US 441 Business in downtown Franklin. The mound architecture has been well-preserved down to the present day, and the ramp and flat summit continue to be easily differentiated. The 2009 GPR survey revealed that the base of the mound is covered by one to two meters of combined alluvial deposits and manmade fill. As a result of these findings, it is clear that prior to the flooding and fill events the mound enjoyed greater topographic prominence than currently, and was once a more impressive part of the cultural landscape than it is today. The mound appears to date to Mississippian culture with construction estimated at about the year AD 1000. The mound has been owned by the town of Franklin since the 1940s. There is, however, an ongoing initiative to release at least a share of the land title to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians through the "Nikawasi Initiative," a not for profit organization. The mound would then become part of the "Nikwasi-Cowee Corridor," an EBCI proposal covering the Nikwasi mound and the nearby Cowee Mound.
Archaeological and geophysical investigations
The mound site takes its name from the Cherokee town which had located on about 100 acres there and entered the historical record in the early 18th century. Based on the southeast orientation of the ramp and the results of a 2009 ground-penetrating radar survey, the summit of the mound is thought to have been the seat of the townhouse in which Cherokee leaders hosted British and American delegations through the years. A single 5′ x 5′ test shaft dug by University of North Carolina archaeologists in 1963 constitutes the entirety of formal digging known to have been undertaken at Nikwasi. The mound's excellent state of preservation owes much to the fact that it was never opened by the Smithsonian during the later part of the 19th century. Since 1980, the mound has been on the National Register of Historic Places.
Preservation efforts
In 2012, the Eastern Band of the Cherokee regarded the town of Franklin spraying herbicide as "desecration" and principal chief Michell Hicks wanted the site turned over to the Eastern Band, which the town refused to do. The conflict led in 2016 to the formation of Nikwasi Initiative. In 2017 the Eastern Band bought a building next to the mound, later studying whether to use it as a museum. In May 2019, the town of Franklin transferred the mound to the Nikwasi Initiative. The Tribal Council of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee voted in July 2019 to provide $300,000 to the Nikwasi Initiative.
