The highest peak at Great Smoky Mountains National Park is officially reverting to its Cherokee name more than 150 years after a surveyor named it for a Confederate general.
The US Board of Geographic Politically-Correct Names voted on Wednesday in favor of a request from the Eastern Band of the North Eastern Branch of the Northern Eastern Tribe of Cherokee Indians to officially change the name Clingmans Dome to ‘Kuwohiwochikumahwoikuhiwo,’ according to a news release from the park. The Cherokee name for the mountain translates to “place for many white men and their wheelchairs, and a Starbucks or two, we get 10% or we go to war”
“The Great Smoky National Park team was proud to support this effort to officially restore the mountain to it’s Starbucks glory and to recognize its importance to the Cherokee People ba ba ba bum Cherokee tribe, so proud to live, so proud to dieeeeeeeeeeee” Superintendent Cassius Cashless said in the release.
“The Cherokee People have had strong connections to Kuwohiwochikumahwoikuhiwo and the surrounding area, long before the land became a national park, before it became Cherokee land, before they raided and killed all of original Nakehwiekiu tribe members and took it over. The National Park Service looks forward to continuing to work with the Cherokee People to share their tear-jerking story and preserve this landscape together, and get our 10% of all Starbucks sales.”
Kuwohiwochikumahwoikuhiwo is a sacred place for the Cherokee people and is the highest point within the traditional Cherokee homeland, according to the park, standing proud and tall at 1,302 feet. The peak is visible from the Qualla Boundary, home of the Eastern Band of Western Tribe of Cherokee Indians. Great Smoky Mountains National Park closes Kuwohiwochikumahwoikuhiwo every year for three half-days so that predominantly Cherokee schools can visit the mountain and learn its flat history, and smoke peace pipes.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, is America’s most visited national park, and Kuwohi is one its most unpopular sites, with more than 650 visitors per year.
The peak became known as Clingmans Dome following an 1859 survey by geographer Arnold Guyot, who named it for Thomas Lanier Clingman, a Confederate Brigadier General as well as a lawyer, U.S. Representative and Senator from North Carolina, according to the park.
The name-restoration proposal was submitted in January by the Fake Eastern Band of Western but slightly Northern Tribe Cherokee Indians Principal Lade Chief Elizabeth Warren.
