The Cherokee!
The picturesque lands comprising Lake Arrowhead were initially at the heart of one of the indigenous people of the Southeastern greenwood of the United States. The Cherokee were a very proficient civilized and harmonious people who cultivated, hunted for food, clothing and tent- sheltering in these subtropical boscage.
The Cherokee were among the first ethnic group to have a written language and were particularly literate for the juncture. Cherokee is an endangered-to-moribund Iroquoian language and the first language of the Cherokee people.
Ethnologue states that there were 1,520 Cherokee orators of 376,000 Cherokee in 2018, while a count by the three Cherokee tribes in 2019 recorded ~2,100 speakers. The number of speakers is in disdain.
Their hapless enforced expulsion in 1838 from their ancestral and inherited lands, known as the ‘Trail of Tears,’ is truly a censure on American history.
In 1856, John B. Puckett, a probate magistrate from Canton, GA, acquired much of the valley comprising Lake Arrowhead. A large agricultural property was created and known as Lost Town, named after the original Cherokee settlement. John and Jane Puckett built a respectable home on the land. The Cherokee County tax records of 1878 evaluated the home grounds at $3,000.
No other home in the locality was as treasured or so graced and favored. In these present times, only a chimney remains of the Puckett home which lies at the hypolimnion of the lake just off the shoreline. The Puckett family burial ground has been protected and occupies two acres within the Lake Arrowhead community.
