The Flier

A flier found in Maggie Valley, NC \\
https://i.imgur.com/F1h1FgG_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand  \\
Back- https://i.imgur.com/7EWmMUp_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand   \\
https://www.reddit.com/r/FoundPaper/comments/itgdpz/my_first_good_find_bizarre_pulltab_flyer_found_on/  \\
You can see an Appalachian Quilt Trail marker on the house in the image. \\
Text says ‘I made up my mind in the river to come and live with you here in the night land’ \\
This is from a fairly obscure and old Cherokee poem called ‘NIGHT LAND’

Only one copy of the poem can be found online, in a 2010 newspaper article by George Ellison, a resident of Bryson City, NC, in the Smoky Mountain News:
https://smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/708-secret-poems-of-the-cherokee

NIGHT LAND
Agadv:dodi\\
Grandfather!\\
Speak to me.\\
I have made up my mind.\\
She stood listening before smiling\\
and nodding as the mist burned away and\\
sunlight turned the sycamore-lined Tuckaseigee\\
into a track of light within which she arose\\
on out-spread arms and down-turned hands\\
above the indifferent grasping currents and\\
was transposed as if on the wings of a radiant hawk.\\
Many years later when her great-grandmother asked\\
when she had made up her mind, she smiled and replied:\\
“I grew tired missing you and grandfather and my uncles.\\
I made up my mind while fording the river.\\
I asked my other grandfather\\
the river to ask my heart.\\
My heart told my mind to place\\
My soul with the ghost people.\\
Thinking always starts in the heart.\\
I made up my mind in the river\\
to come and live with you\\
here in the Night Land.”\\