Editing Bryson City, North Carolina (section)

===Indigenous settlements===
Indigenous cultures of [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] have been living and hunting along the [[Tuckasegee River]] in the vicinity of what is now Bryson City for nearly 14,000 years.<ref>{{cite web |first=Michael |last=Beadle |url=http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/05_06/05_24_06/out_mothertown.html |title=Remembering the Mother Town |publisher=Smokymountainnews.com |date=May 24, 2006 |access-date=August 18, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090813081547/http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/05_06/05_24_06/out_mothertown.html |archive-date=August 13, 2009 }}</ref> The village of [[Keetoowah|Kituwa]], which the [[Cherokee]] believed to be their oldest village and "mother town", was located along the Tuckasegee River. The ancient mound and village site is now controlled again by the federally recognized [[Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians]] and is preserved as a sacred site. (Bryson City developed downstream from this site.)

In 1567, an ''orata'' (minor chief) from Kituwa is believed to have met with Spanish explorer [[Juan Pardo (explorer)|Juan Pardo]] in the [[French Broad River|French Broad Valley]] to the north.<ref>Charles Hudson, ''The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Explorations of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568'' (Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 97.</ref> During the American Revolutionary War, many Cherokee allied with the British, hoping to expel European Americans from their territory. American soldiers burned and destroyed the town of Kituwa in 1776, but the Cherokee continued to hold annual ceremonial dances at the site throughout the 19th century.<ref name="brysoncitync.info">{{cite web |url=http://www.brysoncitync.info/cherokee.htm |title=History of Bryson City and Swain County, North Carolina |publisher=Brysoncitync.info |access-date=August 18, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080509134549/http://www.brysoncitync.info/cherokee.htm |archive-date=May 9, 2008 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

[[File:Everett Street, Bryson City, NC (46647749271).jpg|alt=|thumb|Buildings on Everett Street]]
Around 1818, a Cherokee chief known as Big Bear received a {{convert|640|acre|km2|adj=on}} reservation of land immediately west of the confluence of Deep Creek and the Tuckasegee River. Big Bear sold part of his reservation to Darling Belk in 1819 and another part to John B. Love in 1824.  Throughout the 1830s, Belk's heirs and Love fought an extended legal battle over control of the former Big Bear land, with Love finally prevailing in 1840. The following year, Love sold part of the land to James and Diana Shuler. The Shulers, in turn, sold parts of their land to Colonel Thaddeus Bryson and merchant Alfred Cline.  A small hamlet known as Bear Springs developed on what was once Big Bear's reservation.<ref name="brysoncitync.info" />