YAHULA
Yahoola creek, which flows Dahlonega, in Lumpkin county, Georgia, is
called Yahulâ′ĭ (Yahula place) the Cherokees, and this is the story of the
name:
Years ago, long before the Revolution, Yahula was a prosperous stock trader
among the Cherokee, and the tinkling of the bells hung around the necks of his
ponies could be heard on every mountain trail. Once there was a great hunt and
all the warriors were out, but when it was over and they were ready to return to
the settlement Yahula was not with them. They waited and searched, but he
could not be found, and at last they went back without him, and his friends
grieved for him as for one dead. Some time after his people were surprised and
delighted to have him walk in among them and sit down as they were at supper
in the evening. To their questions he told them that he had been lost in the
mountains, and that the Nûñnĕ′hĭ, the Immortals, had found him and brought
him to their town, where he had been kept ever since, with the kindest care and
treatment, until the longing to see his old friends had brought him back. To the
invitation of his friends to join them at supper he said that it was now too late—
he had tasted the fairy food and could never again eat with human kind, and for
the same reason he could not stay with his family, but must go back to the
Nûñnĕ′hĭ. His wife and children and brother begged him to stay, but he said that
he could not; it was either life with the Immortals or death with his own people
—and after some further talk he rose to go. They saw him as he sat talking to
them and as he stood up, but the moment he stepped out the doorway he
vanished as if he had never been.
After that he came back often to visit his people. They would see him first as he
entered the house, and while he sat and talked he was his old self in every way,
but the instant he stepped across the threshold he was gone, though a hundred
eyes might be watching. He came often, but at last their entreaties grew so
urgent that the Nûñnĕ′hĭ must have been offended, and he came no more. On the
mountain at the head of the creek, about 10 miles above the present Dahlonega,
is a small square enclosure of uncut stone, without roof or entrance. Here it was
said that he lived, so the Cherokee called it Yahulâ′ĭ and called the stream the
same name. Often at night a belated traveler coming along the trail the creek
would hear the voice of Yahula singing certain favorite old songs that he used towould hear the voice of Yahula singing certain favorite old songs that he used to
like to sing as he drove his pack of horses across the mountain, the sound of a
voice urging them on, and the crack of a whip and the tinkling of bells went with
the song, but neither driver nor horses could be seen, although the sounds passed
close . The songs and the bells were heard only at night.
There was one man who had been his friend, who sang the same songs for a time
after Yahula had disappeared, but he died suddenly, and then the Cherokee were
afraid to sing these songs any more until it was so long since anyone had heard
the sounds on the mountain that they thought Yahula must be gone away,
perhaps to the West, where others of the tribe had already gone. It is so long ago
now that even the stone house may have been destroyed this time, but more
than one old man’s father saw it and heard the songs and the bells a hundred
years ago. When the Cherokee went from Georgia to Indian Territory in 1838
some of them said, “Maybe Yahula has gone there and we shall hear him,” but
they have never heard him again.