The De Soto Caverns are a Nunnehi Freehold in Alabama.
Overview[]
Sacred to the Creek tribe and sometimes cited as the place from which spirits came to create the copper-hued people, this vast cavern system holds within it the Spirit Rock. A potent source of wisdom and healing Medicine to generations of Creeks and to their Nunnehi allies, the monolith has never been viewed by outsiders.
"Discovered" in 1540, the caves are known to "the European invaders" as De Soto Caverns. Used as an Indian burial site, as an equipment and gunpowder storage facility for Confederate soldiers, and as a speakeasy called the Bloody Bucket during Prohibition, the easily reached portions of the caverns are well known even to non-natives of Alabama. The outer caves now serve as a tourist attraction (including a display of the burial site and a sound, light, and water show featuring lasers in the largest cavern, which rises over 12 stories high); outside, campgrounds and picnic areas, a water-fight maze, and gemstone mining provide entertainment for visitors to De Soto Caverns Park.
While the descendants of the despoilers frolic, within site of their sacred places, the inner reaches remain the inviolate hidden home of a mixed tribe of yunwi tsundsi and nanehi. Centered around the enormous onyx known as the Spirit Rock, which forms a gemstone table within one of the largest caverns, the community makes use of natural materials in constructing their homes. Led by a council of elders, including Izusa Whitestone, a noted onyx-worker, the faerie people of Spirit Rock help lead the fight to close the burial ground to public view. So far, they have failed in their efforts. Many visitors to the area have noted missing wallets, shoestrings tied together, and hair snarled in knots after touring the site, however. The nanehi work even now to spread stories of the curse upon those who come without reverence to a place of sacred worship.
The Nunnehi fashion amulets and jewelry from onyx found within the caverns and incorporate the oddly shaped stalagmites and stalactites into their equally breathtaking dwellings. Curving and spiraling, these dwellings often rise from the cavern floor, graced with a carved staircase that ascends alongside and around a stalagmite, ducking under an aerie attached to a huge stalactite, like Juliet's balcony, to emerge inside an upper room hollowed out of the same massive rock formation. Most are lovingly crafted by the yunwi tsundsi to nanehi specifications.
References[]
- CTD. Kingdom of Willows, p. 55-56.