It has been selected as one of the Southeast Tourism Society's Top 20 Events for the month of June 1999. This half-century run began July 1, 1950. A capacity audience at the Mountainside Theater witnessed the first performance telling about the Cherokee history from 1540 until the tragic removal of the Cherokee to the west in the late 1830s. Covering three hundred years of their history, the Cherokee drama is masterfully done. From the beginning scenes when Spanish Explorer Hernando DeSoto and his soldiers encounter the Cherokee people to the closing minutes that show the beginning of the divided Cherokee Nation, the legacy unfolds.
Scenes are humorous, tense, tragic, sentimental and moving.
Audiences leave Mountainside Theater with a deeper understanding of the Cherokee people, their history and their struggles in a non-Indian world. Unto These Hills is the story of the coming of the white man to Cherokee country, the sacrifice of Tsali who gave his life so that a handful of his people could remain in their homeland. It is the story of the wise Chief Junaluska, of Sequoyah who gave the Cherokee an alphabet, and the story of the brave Cherokee people who were finally forced to remove to Indian territory in the West. Interwoven into this story is the famous Eagle Dance, the mountain square dance, and finally the establishment of a reservation in Western North Carolina for the small Cherokee remnant remaining in the Smokies. Many veteran actors are returning to the Cherokee stage this summer.