If you want to explore the history of the Cherokee Tribe and its people, a great place to start is here.
Noquisiyi (later interpreted as Nikwasi) means star place and was a Cherokee town situated in present-day Franklin, North Carolina. Though its exact age remains unknown, Noquisiyi appears on maps as early as 1544, and British colonial records first mention it by name in 1718.
At the heart of Noquisyi on the banks of the Little Tennessee River, the Cherokee town’s meeting hall once towered over the landscape, built atop the mound which was formed by Cherokee women carrying baskets of soil to that location. Today, Noquisiyi Mound, the settlement’s only surviving landmark, rises as the gateway to Franklin.
In February 2026, Franklin became perhaps the municipality to give a Native American tribe ownership of its ancestral land. In a unanimous vote by the town council, the deed for the ownership of Nikwasi mound (pictured below) was signed and given to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. At the event, the tribe announced that it will develop a cultural heritage learning center next to the mound.
The news of the mound’s return to the Cherokee tribe strengthens the Noquisi Initiative’s mission is to develop a Cherokee Cultural Corridor along more than 60 miles of the Little Tennessee River, from Cherokee to Franklin and the headwaters of the river. Much of that corridor is in place and it’s a beautiful part of Franklin’s heritage tourism.
Along this corridor, visitors will find cultural interpretation and information resources on-site that improve the visibility of important Cherokee landmarks and historic sites. The first piece of this important project was unveiled in 2018: a cultural information kiosk that overlooks Cowee Mound, the site of what once was the center of the ancient Cherokee town Cowee.
The Noquisi Initiative placed a second cultural kiosk at Noquisiyi (Nikwasi) Mound in downtown Franklin in 2020.
Signage along the Cultural Corridor is written in both English and the Cherokee syllabary — and gives visitors a sense of the rich, vibrant and complex culture that has existed for hundreds of years in Western North Carolina’s mountains.
Be sure to visit the website Noquisiyi Initiative for more information: https://www.noquisi.org
