Kuwohi

Kuwohi, meaning Mulberry Place, is the highest summit of the Great Smoky Mountains and a sacred place in the Cherokee homeland. Medicine people visited the mountain to pray and seek guidance on matters affecting their communities. Its significance also appears in stories about the relationship between people and bears, in which the mountains contained an animal society with its own leaders and gathering places.

In the traditions later recorded by James Mooney, Kuwohi housed the great bear chief and healer. Wounded bears recovered in a magical bath, and bears assembled in mountain townhouses before entering their winter dens. A hunting song named Mulberry Place among the bears' places of origin. These accounts belong to Cherokee oral tradition, with animals understood as powerful beings within a shared landscape. Together with the visits of medicine people, they give the summit a specific religious identity: a place connected with healing, counsel and the responsibilities of hunters, rather than simply a prominent height above the surrounding valleys.