Currahee Cherokee

The Gold Hole

Located down on the side of Currahee is a cave, that for identification purposes, I will call "The Gold Hole". How this cave came into existence was not known by my people. They only knew that it was a place they could get a material that the pale faced people called gold. My people would take this material back to their village where they would break it up into very small pieces. These small pieces would be heated until a liquid was formed. This liquid would be poured off into split joints of cane where it would cool becoming a solid material again This solid material was then cut and pounded into items that could be traded to the traders that came to the village. For some reason the traders wanted to trade for these items first and then for our animal skins. The location of this cave was only known by my people and went undetected until the day that two of the pale faced intruders discovered it's location. One day these two intruders were observed leading another pale face, who had a piece of cloth tied over his eyes, to the cave. Some say that this blindfolded man was a geologist that was brought there to get a few samples of the gold from the cave for verification. Others say that he was just a stranger who happened to overhear the other two men talking about the cave and the gold it contained. He expressed his doubts to them that the cave even existed so it is said that they put the cloth over his eyes and carried him there to prove their story to him. As they were leaving the area one of the men took a smoking stick from his lips and threw it on the ground. Sometime later the smoking stick caused a fire to start burning the woods on that side of Currahee. As the fire came up the side of Currahee and towards the cave some very large serpents were caught in its path. Their only way to escape the raging fire was to go in the cave and afterward they decided to make this cave their home. A few days after the fire the two pale faced men came back to the cave and shortly after entering it they both came back out screaming, "they bit me". These two were never seen again around the cave or on Currahee. One can only wonder what happened to them. I don't know if the serpents are still standing guard on this cave but I do know that I'm not going to check to see if they are.

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