If you take a trip to Cherokee, through the state-of-the art museum or the Oconaluftee Indian Village, you will likely hear more than just the ancient language of the Cherokee.
You might be just as likely to hear German or Japanese or English with a distinct British or Australian accent.
"Some days you hardly hear any English at the village," said Mary Jane Ferguson, the director of marketing and promotion for the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. "We clearly know -- and research has told us -- that international visitors have a real affinity for Native American culture."
Though high gas prices and a slowing economy are crimping travel plans for many Americans, more overseas visitors seem to be taking advantage of a weak dollar to visit Western North Carolina, ancestral home to the Cherokee.
In 2007, North Carolina drew about 358,000 foreign travelers, ranking 15th among all states, according to the latest figures available from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
"The Germans in particular love that authentic American Indian culture," said Wit Tuttell, a spokesman for the N.C. Division of Tourism, Film and Sports Development. German passengers flying into Charlotte-Douglas International Airport increased 51 percent in 2007 over the previous year.
With six weeks of vacation time standard in the country and the euro reaching record highs against the dollar, Germans have the time and money to visit the U.S.
Such American landmarks as New York City and the Grand Canyon are still first on their lists, but a growing number of Germans are making a second or third trip to the States and venturing into the Southeast, said Jutta Farrer, a German native and independent travel consultant in Asheville.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, working through advertising partner the Goss Agency in Asheville, has targeted the German market in the past two years with a German language Web site aimed at tour operators and German media.
"Germans speak very good English, but they still like to see things in their own language," Farrer said.
The Germans have had a long love affair with all things Indian, Farrer said.
They grew up with the books of Karl Friedrich May, a best-selling 19th-century novelist who popularized the American West for Germans -- although he visited America only once, in 1908, four years before his death. Albert Einstein and the writers Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse counted themselves among May's ardent fans.
Now Germans as well as other Europeans are following in May's footsteps, heading west across the Atlantic and into Western North Carolina.
Many Germans take up Indian lore as a hobby, creating clubs to "play Indian," dressing up in American Indian regalia and camping out in tepees, Farrer said.
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