Retracing the Keowee Trail: A Deep Map of the Cherokee Path in the History of the Carolinas

In Retracing the Keowee Trail, the author tells the story of the Cherokee Path that connected the low country of colonial Carolina with the mountain homeland of the Cherokee Nation. The Keowee Trail was a busy trading route for a burgeoning deerskin trade. Along this same path, epidemic disease made its way inexorably from the colony toward Cherokee society, reducing their population by more than half. Along this path, warfare was waged in both directions, by Cherokee war parties determined to defend their homeland and by settlers like the author’s Scots Irish ancestors, evermore hungry for land. That ancestral history is an entry point into this larger narrative. A “deep map” approach to the Keowee Trail will hold together multiple lines of perspective, including memoir, family history, migration patterns, religious history, Indigenous wisdom, trauma theory, ghost stories, mythology, archeology, geography, the watersheds, and the flora and fauna of the Southern Appalachians.

Stuart Taylor is a retired Presbyterian minister. He is coauthor of St. Francis and the Foolishness of God.