The following is one of many entries from the Phantoms Fill The Southern Skies book. I am producing it here from the original manuscript file for visitors to sample and see if they would be interested in the full text available on Amazon.
Please respect the copyright owners – Jeff Lawhead, J.S. Lawhead and 23 House Publishing – and do not reprint or reproduce any portion of this text on any monetized formats and without permission. Reproduction for hobbyist or academic interest (as well as “fair use”) is ok as long as sources are explicitly cited. Contact me at Meteo.Xavier@gmail.com for any permission inquiries regarding this or any other excerpt.
The Cherokee always seemed to live in areas that were surrounded by thresholds to hidden realms. They hardly even had to wander outside their usual hunting grounds before they got lost and came upon a stranger from one of the other “peoples” that would offer to return them to where they came from, or maybe offer them food and lodging at their own villages before sending them back out. Other times, there may have been a battle with a different Native American tribe that would happen to be just close enough to one of these hidden realms that a surprise reinforcement group would arrive to help the Cherokee out when they needed it the most.
One such story was the Battle of Nïkwäsï’, which was a sacred mound located on the Little Tennessee River in what is now Franklin, North Carolina. The Nïkwäsï’ was a major center for the Cherokee of the area, as they built a townhouse used for meetings, councils and religious ceremonies at the top of the mound and kept a sacred flame burning at all times in there. The story goes that an unknown tribe from somewhere further southeast were moving their way up through Nïkwäsï’, killing and destroying everything in their path for no known reason, until they came to conquer the Cherokee on the mound. The warriors of Nïkwäsï’ fought long and hard but just could not overcome this vicious tribe.
As they begun to retreat, a stranger appeared on the Cherokee side of the battlefield, staring down the enemy, and he called for the Nïkwäsï’ chief to call off his men as he was going to finish off the enemy with his reinforcements. At first, the Nïkwäsï’ warriors thought he was a chief from nearby Overhill who brought his own men to drive off the invaders, but they watched instead as hundreds of warriors poured out from the sides of the mound and rushed to the battlefield, ready for blood and war. Even stranger than that, the warriors suddenly became invisible the moment they were outside the settlement, but their weapons and arrows stung and slashed all the same. The invaders had no idea what was going on, but the Nïkwäsï’ tribe soon realized they were being helped by the Nunne’hi; who were long said to have lived under the mound itself.
The Nunne’hi made short work of the invaders, and the few remaining survivors fled to the head of Tuckasegee many miles away. The Nunne’hi followed, and the desperate warriors begged to be spared. The Nunne’hi chief listened to their pleas and allowed them to escape back to their homes so they could spread the news of their defeat to their respective villages. It was a Native American custom to spare the last few men for this purpose anyway, but it speaks to the benevolence the Nunne’hi were often credited with.
It is said the invisible warrior tribe still exists today inside the Nïkwäsï’ mound in Franklin, protecting the sacred area from anyone who wishes to bring violence to a land set aside for peace. It is also said that many years later, during the Civil War, a group of Union federal soldiers were preparing to ambush a platoon of Confederates who were stationed there when they suddenly saw that it was guarded by a much larger number of men, said to be the same Nunne’hi who protected Nïkwäsï’ years ago, than they were prepared to deal with and canceled the attack. Interestingly, the story says the protectors did not take the forms of the Cherokee, but instead took the forms of the Confederate soldiers they were protecting.
Does this mean the Nunne’hi are actually shape-shifters (a reasonable assumption since they already have power over visibility itself), or perhaps they just like to keep up with emerging trends?
Images used in this post do not belong to me or 23 House and are not part of the original manuscript. They were pulled from Google Images or Snappy Goat and only serve as graphical decoration. They are not being used for any monetizing purposes whatsoever.