At the hour appointed the head men of the Cherokees assembled. The high Balsam peaks were shaken by thunder and aglare with lightning. The cloud, as black as midnight, settled over the valley; then lifted, leaving upon a large rock a cluster of strange men, armed and painted as for war. An enraged brother of the abducted maiden swung his tomahawk, and raised the war whoop; but a swift thunderbolt dispatched him before the echo had died in the hills. The chiefs, terror-stricken, fled to their towns.
The bride, grieved by the death of her brother and the failure of the council, prepared to abandon her new home and return to her kindred in the valleys. To reconcile her the promise was granted that all brave warriors and their faithful women should have an eternal home in the happy hunting ground above, after death. The great chief of the forest beyond the clouds became the guardian spirit of the Cherokees. All deaths, either from wounds in battle or disease, were attributed to his desire to make additions to the celestial hunting ground, or on the other hand, to his wrath which might cause their unfortunate spirits to be turned over to the disposition of the evil genius of the mountain tops. Plagues and epidemics were sometimes supposed to be the work of sorcerers, witches and monsters, human and superhuman. Once during an epidemic of smallpox, so says a traditional tale, a devil in human form was tracked to the headwaters of Tusquittee, where he was apprehended in a cave. They saluted him with a volley of poisoned arrows, which he tossed back with derisive laughter. After several repetitions with the same result, a bird spoke to the disheartened warriors, telling them that their enemy was invulnerable, except one finger which, if hit, would cause his instant death. As in the case of Achilles, of Troy, the vulnerable spot received a fatal shot, and the plague ceased its ravages. The bird was of the variety of little yellow songsters--a variety protected as sacred down to within the memory of the man from whom the writer received this legend.
We return now to the discussion of Indian names, with which the narration of incidents, connected with the geographical nomenclature of the Balsam mountains has slightly interfered. The Indian names of the French Broad have already been given. The present name has an historical signification to commend its continued use, if nothing more. Prior to the treaty made between England and France in 1763, the latter nation claimed all the country drained by the Mississippi, the ground of this claim being actual settlement near the mouth of that river and at several places along its course. International customs gave the claim validity, though the English never admitted it. Adair, an early historian, says: “Louisiana stretched to the head-springs of the Alleghany and Monongahela, of the Kenawha and Tennessee. Half a mile from the southern branch of the Savannah is Herbert’s spring, which flows into the Mississippi. Strangers who drank of it, would say they had tasted of _French_ waters.” In like manner, traders and hunters from the Atlantic settlements, in passing from the headwaters of Broad river over the Blue Ridge, and coming to the streams with which they inosculate, would hear, as Adair did, of the French claim, and call it most naturally “French Broad.”