Descendants of those who remained in North Carolina formed the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), which is federally recognized.

Conservative descendants of Cherokee who had migrated to Arkansas and Indian Territory in the 1810s and 1820s later formed what is now the federally recognized tribe of the United Keetoowah Band, based in Oklahoma.

During the 19th century, after removal to Indian Territory, there were Cherokee groups who identified as Keetoowah, at times forming secret societies that maintained rituals and sacred ceremonies.

For peoples of several Woodland and Mississippian cultures, building such earthwork mounds was characteristic of their societies and an expression of public architecture that was part of their cosmology and political system.

The areas of moundbuilding by various cultures included Tennessee to the west, Georgia to the southeast, Louisiana to the southwest, and Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri to the northwest.

[2] Mississippian-culture sites have been identified extending southwest in the river valleys, including the town later called Kituwa by the Cherokee, where the ancient platform mound is still visible.

The Mississippian-culture peoples were part of vast, indigenous trade networks that connected chiefdoms throughout the present-day eastern United States, spanning the continent from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes.

Archaeologists believe the people of the smaller chiefdoms were eventually absorbed by the developing, larger Catawba and Cherokee tribes of this region.

According to Cherokee oral tradition, they had built a townhouse structure on top that housed their sacred flame, which was to be kept burning at all times.

(The Cherokee-Anglo War began in late 1759 after approximately four years of increased hostilities due to British failure to meet treaty terms, settler encroachment, and shortages of pay to Cherokee auxiliaries who had fought in the Forbes expedition against Fort Duquesne.)

Kituwa's survivors migrated westward across the Appalachian Mountains, settling in Mialoquo (Great Island Town) on the lower Little Tennessee River among the Overhill Cherokee.

During and after the American Revolutionary War, when he led his warriors southwest to continue fighting the colonists of Upper East Tennessee, the entire population went with him, including those formerly of Kituwa.

In the late 1830s most Cherokee in the Southeast were forcibly removed by the federal government, walking overland on the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory.

Descendants of those who remained in this area later organized and were federally recognized in 1868 as the Eastern Band of Cherokee, based in Western North Carolina.

[4] In 2021, Kituwah was successfully placed into trust for the EBCI, becoming sovereign territory through an agreement signed by Principal Chief Richard Sneed.

Sneed made a statement afterward, noting that “Taking this land into trust will ensure this most sacred site will be preserved and honored in perpetuity.

But the state Utilities Commission has the power to override local ordinances in order to achieve its mission of supplying electricity at reasonable rates.

[9] On February 4, 2010, the Eastern Cherokee Tribal Council passed a resolution opposing the project, stating, It is this Tribe's solemn responsibility and moral duty to care for and protect all of Kituwah from further desecration and degradation by human agency in order to preserve the integrity of the most important site for the origination and continuation of Cherokee culture, heritage, history and identity.

[10]In March 2010, Swain County passed a resolution calling for a 90-day moratorium to stop construction of Duke Energy's project until they could better consult.

[11] In July 2010 the Swain County commission passed an ordinance requiring Duke Energy to consult with local stakeholders about projects, which they had not originally done in this case.

[12] In August 2010, after continued consultation, Duke agreed to move the proposed Hyatt Creek tie station away from sight of the Kituwa mound.

)[13] Some traditional Cherokee identify by the autonym of Ah-ni-ki-tu-wa-gi (spelled variously in local Oklahoma dialects as Ki-tu-wa or Gi-du-wa), meaning Kituwa people.

Well into the 20th century, the Cherokee had a matrilineal kinship system, by which clan membership, inheritance and status were carried by the mother's family.