For at least several thousand years groups of humans have lived in the lowlands around the Great Smokies. Use of the highlands themselves by these earlier groups was probably limited, however. Our history of peoples in the mountains begins with reports of explorers who visited the Cherokees in the late 17th and 18th centuries. They found this tribe, which is thought to have left the ancestral Iroquoian territory and moved southward about the year 1000, dispersed in small villages along foothill streams in a great arc around the Southern Appalachians. Primarily an agricultural people, the Cherokees tended fields of corn, squash, beans, melons, and tobacco around their thatched log cabins. But they also hunted and fished, and gathered wild plant materials for both food and trade. Although the mountains harbored spirits that were not entirely friendly, the Cherokees camped in coves and gaps to hunt bear and deer, to gather nuts and berries, and to gather stone for implements. Early reports from the Smokies noted the large numbers of deer, bear, and beaver skins being traded by the Cherokees. Quite possibly, they set fire to attract game and promote the growth of berry bushes, thus creating some of the mysterious grass balds atop the Smokies. For purposes of trade and warfare they established trails through the mountains. Such a trail across Indian Gap remained the principal cross-mountain route until early this century. What effect did all this have on the tapestry of life in the mountains? Undoubtedly the Cherokees increased the area of open land, although some of their cropland might have been established on old beaver meadows. They may also have reduced the numbers of game and fur animals, although 18th-century travelers in the region still could be amazed at the abundance of deer, bison, beaver, cougars, and other animals. No species except the bison is known to have disappeared during the years the Cherokees had sole dominion over the land, and they may have contributed in some way to this one loss. With relatively small numbers in the Smokies, and a lack of highly destructive implements, especially guns, the Cherokees apparently changed the ecological picture only slightly in the days before contact with Europeans.