Brasstown Bald and the Cherokee Country Above It
Near Helen, Georgia
Brasstown Bald rises to four thousand seven hundred eighty-four feet in the Blue Ridge highlands of north Georgia, the highest point in the state. On clear days from its observation deck, you can see into North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Alabama. The Forest Service operates a visitor center near the summit, and a shuttle runs from the parking area below.
The Cherokee called the mountain Enotah, and the name Itse'yi, which translates roughly as new green place or place of fresh green, belonged to a village and other nearby places. When English-speaking settlers arrived, they misheard the Cherokee name, confused it with the English word brass, and produced the corruption that became Brasstown, a name that has nothing to do with the metal and everything to do with the limitations of cross-language transcription. The surrounding valleys carry additional remnants of Cherokee geography: the Hiwassee River, the Nottely River, the town name Dahlonega, which comes from the Cherokee word for yellow, referring to the gold that the discovery of which in eighteen twenty-eight triggered the Georgia gold rush and accelerated the political machinery that produced the Indian Removal Act two years later.
The Cherokee homeland in this corner of north Georgia was among the most intensively farmed and permanently settled Indigenous territory east of the Mississippi. When the removal came in eighteen thirty-eight, it came to people who had been living in houses, farming fixed fields, running a newspaper, operating a written language, and in some cases practicing Christianity for decades. The forced march known as the Trail of Tears began for many families in these valleys.
The forests that cover these mountains now, managed by the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests, grew back over land those families were made to leave.
