Driving through the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee gives you a little piece of serenity.  If you drive between Gatlinburg and Cherokee, N.C., you will see the majestic mountains gradually tower above you as you wind through.   It is a beautiful scene. 

To me the two cities are nothing alike. One is very commercialized, (Gatlinburg).  The other not so much, (Cherokee).   The Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation live in and operate the small town of Cherokee.   I have always had a fascination with Native American history.   (In fact one of my favorite projects when I worked with the Governor's office was a project that I worked on with the Alabama Indian Affairs Commission.   Students from a socioeconomically disadvantaged community participated in the program, they were Native American.   Indian mounds had been discovered in Moulton, Ala., and the students worked to come up with a plan to create an Indian village that would become a historical tourist attraction for the state).   I recently had the opportunity to re-learn history so-to-speak, when I visited the Cherokee village, museum and art gallery in North Carolina.   There's a lot of history there, things I don't really remember from my visit as a child.  Like I really didn't  remember how the Trail of Tears came about.   In 1838 as settlers increasingly put pressure on the Cherokee for their land, most of the Cherokee were forced into exile in the Western United States.  A handful of Cherokee in the East hid in the mountains to protect their land, and as a result, they still occupy the land today.  

To the Cherokee, generosity is a virtue. 

Another thing I had not remembered is that to this day the Cherokee live by the Sacred Fire.   The fire was brought back east in 1951, after the Cherokee Historical Society sent an expedition of tribal leaders from the Eastern band to retrace the Trail of Tears.  The leaders in the Western Band lit the Eastern Band's bucket of charcoal with coals from the Sacred Fire, which the Eastern Band took back east.   They believe in one Creator and use dance as a way of giving thanks and prayer. 

The Cherokee don't, however, dance in public, it is reserved for private ceremonies.    If you go to Cherokee you will see some of the locals dressed in fancy headdresses dancing in front of the shops.  They do this for the visitors.

As it just so happens, I was one of  those visitors and learned what they described as the Cherokee two-step.  Not sure of that.  But, what I am sure of is, that I never pass up an opportunity to learn something new.   And if it is dancing, that's even better.