stylistic:tone, information:highlighting
Prehistory

Native Americans had likely been hunting in the Great Smoky Mountains for 14,000 years. Numerous Archaic period (c. 8000 –1000 B.C.) artifacts have been found within the national park's boundaries, including projectile points uncovered along likely animal migration paths. Woodland period (c. 1000 B.C. - 1000 A.D.) sites found within the park contained 2,000-year-old ceramics and evidence of primitive agriculture.

The increasing reliance upon agriculture during the Mississippian period (c. 900 –1600 A.D.) lured Native Americans away from the game-rich forests of the Smokies and into the fertile river valleys on the outer fringe of the range. Substantial Mississippian-period villages were uncovered at Citico and Toqua (named after the Cherokee villages that later thrived at these sites) along the Little Tennessee River in the 1960s. Fortified Mississippian-period villages have been excavated at the McMahan Indian Mounds in Sevierville and as well as mounds in Townsend.

Most of these villages were part of a minor chiefdom centered on a large village known as Chiaha, which was located on an island now submerged by Douglas Lake. The 1540 expedition of Hernando de Soto and the 1567 expedition of Juan Pardo passed through the French Broad River valley north of the Smokies, both spending a considerable amount of time at Chiaha. The Pardo expedition followed a trail across the flanks of Chilhowee Mountain to the Mississippian-period villages at Chilhowee and Citico (Pardo's notary called them by their Muskogean names, "Chalahume" and "Satapo").