The Burden

Under the mountain, he slumbers
From the mountain, he stirs
On the mountain, he hungers
To the mountain, he calls
~ Chant of Uktena (undated)
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Uktena, the savages of this valley believe, is an unclean spirit of terrible power with the guise of a great horned serpent who holds principality upon the long mountain that lies to the west of their valley and effectively secludes it. The mountain, our guide informs us, is called by them "Uewatsu" which is one of their terms for death.
~ Father Bartolomeo DeGoya-Ortiz, Jesuit Priest with the Juan Pardo expedition in service of his most Catholic Majesty, King Phillip II, King of Spain and Portugal, twenty-first of November 1567
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"I give up the ancient ways when I was little. I been a Christian ever since. I don't hold with the Devil, and I didn't kill nobody. God is my witness."
~ Final words of Jacob "Billy" Turtle, at his execution for the murder of the entire Winslow family, Watson Township, Blount County, Tennessee, 1799
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The story of the serpent called Uktena is older than the Cherokee nation, older than the Mississippian tribes that preceded them, older even than the Paleolithic groups who first set foot in this fertile valley. Even so, the Cherokee did not speak of it openly, not to outsiders anyway, not until Alice Long-Night published her memoirs, "The Burden", in 1837. Folks in the valley have been whispering about the devil on that mountain ever since.
~ Owen Vickers, Mayor of Watson Town, Blount County Tennessee, 1886
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The residents of the valley are tight-lipped about it, but every few years or so a logger or a hunter will go missing, and folks will wring their hands and blame the devil up on the mountain. As for the few Cherokee who remain, they tread lightly up there and never at night, not ever.
~ Horace Carlton, Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Watson, Blount County Tennessee, 1917
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It all started for me on Christmas Eve, 1962...