The Packhorseman by Charles Hudson

Charles Hudson (1932-2013) was one of the foremost scholars of Southeastern Native Peoples of his generation. His greatest achievement was arguably establishing the route that Hernando de Soto took in the 1540s that brought him and his party to become the first Europeans to visit the Southern Appalachians. Hudson was born and raised on a Kentucky farm, earned his doctorate from the University of North Carolina, and taught at the University of Georgia. The Packhorseman was his last book, a novel that follows William MacGregor from Charles Town to the Cherokee country as a packhorseman. "Hudson successfully carries the reader into the Cherokee world of 1735. His characters, settings, props, and human interactions are all convincing and historically, as well as anthropologically, sound. Readers will find this book engaging, entertaining, and enlightening.”—Gregory A. Waselkov. “This novel is fun to read. . . . The most impressive thing about it is the setting—it is as authentic a depictio