Overhill Towns Driving Loop
Mialoquo
Start your tour at Mialoquo (Amayelegway, "Great Island"), westernmost of the Overhill Towns on the Little Tennessee River and home to many of the refugees from the Lower and Middle Towns that were displaces by the Anglo-Cherokee War of 1760-61. The town site, now inundated by Tellico Lake, is visible northwest of the US 411 bridge over the reservoir; Bakers Creek Road, which turns northwest from US 411 on the northeast side of the lake, provides several views of the site.
Tuskeegee
The next town site upstream was Tuskeegee, the birthplace and boyhood home of Sequoyah; today this location lies under the lake waters immediately south of Fort Loudoun and can be viewed from the grounds of the reconstructed for and Visitors Center. This settlement was founded alongside Fort Loudoun to take advantage of the forts protection and trade opportunities. A number of Cherokee women from Tuskeegee took soldiers as husbands and protected these men during the 1760 siege and ambush.
Tomotley & Toqua
From Tuskeegee, the driving tour continues along Citico Road (TN 360 and Monroe County road 455), which closely parallels the original trail that linked the major Overhill Towns along the south side of the Little Tennessee River. As visitors continue southeast along Citico Road from Fort Loudoun, they will see a broad expanse of lake on the left, approximately 2 miles southeast of the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum.
Beneath these waters lie the old town s of Tomotley and Toqua; these locations can be viewed from the Toquah Beach Recreation Area, a well-marked public access point visible from TN 360, about 2.4 miles form the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum. Tomotley appears to have been founded relatively late (ca. 1750) by Lower Town refugees, people seeking sanctuary from raids by Creek warriors. The town was razed by the 1776 Virginia expedition and never rebuilt. Toqua (Dakwa yi, "Dakwa Place") was the site of the ancient Mississippian town and mound center. Until the establishment of Tomotley, Tuskeegee and Mialoguo, Toqua represented the westernmost pale of the Cherokee Nation, a frontier outlier that bore the brunt of attacks by the Iroquois and French-allied tribes.
Chota & Tanasi Memorial Sites
Throughout much of the eighteenth century, the Overhill Towns of Tanasi and, later, Chota, were recognized as "capitals" of the entire Cherokee Nation, beloved towns where Cherokees from all over the nation gathered for important national councils and religious events. The settlements were adjacent, and their intertwined history is complex, which lends its name to the state and river, receded by Chota by decades as the Mother Town of the Overhill settlements and acknowledged capital of the nation.
Chota apparently grew up on the northern outskirts of Tanasi during the 1730s; by 1746, it was "the mother Town Chota," although tribal business continued at the "Tennissee Town house." The residence of the foremost priest-chief, or uku, of the nation, Chota was deemed a holy town of sanctuary, where fugitives were protected and no blood could be shed.
When Virginia militia invaded the Overhill country in 1776, they spared the beloved peace town of Chota, but the next expedition of 1780 destroyed Chota-Tanasi along with all other settlements in the lower Little Tennessee River Valley. The Cherokee Nation ceded the old Overhill Towns in 1819 and by 1823 the few Cherokee families who remained at Chota were driven out by white settlers.
Before Tellico Lake flooded Chota and Tanasi in 1979, University of Tennessee archaeologists conducted extensive excavations, documenting much in the area of the eighteenth-century town sites. Among the more noteworthy discoveries were the remains of the great townhouse and its hearth, along with the grave of the great warrior and principal chief Oconostota, who died in 1783.
Visitors to Tanasi will find a stone memorial erected by the Tennessee Historical Commission that commemorated the town as the source of the state name. The pavement in front of the marker is an octagonal slab representing a townhouse; in the center of the slab is a granite marker engrave with a seven-pointed star (representing the seven clans of the Cherokee) and a depiction of the eternal flame. The lakeside memorial, which overlooks the inundated town site, is located approximately one hundred feet east of Bacon Ferry Road; a small parking lot is provided.
Almost a mile north of the Tanasi monument is the parking area for the Chota memorial. A gated gravel road leads approximately 5550 yards south from the parking area to the Chota memorial, a full-scale representation of the townhouse erected by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which owns the memorial area. The town house monument is in the location of the original structure, on a raised surface built above the level of Tellico Lake.
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Citico, Chilhowee, and Tallassee
Upstream from Chota and Tanasi lay the Overhill towns of Citico, Chilhowee and Tallassee. Parts of Citico are accessible from the south side of the river; Chilhowee and Tallassee, which are inundated by Chilhowee Lake are best viewed from the north side of the lake, where US 129 intersects the Foothills Parkway.
From Citico, you can retrace the ancient Warriors’ Path to Great Tellico, the second mother town of the Overhills. In the eighteenth century, this route along Ballplay Creek and Tellico River became the Charlestown or Overhill Trading Path; in the nineteenth century, it was the Unicoi Turnpike Road from Taccoa, Georgia, to Chota, Tennessee. In the early eighteenth century, this corridor between Tanasi and Great Tellico was uninhabited, "the Path said to be lined with Enemies"-Iroquois and French-allied Indians who waylaid Cherokee and English travelers.
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Great Tellico & Chatuga
The broad river bottoms of Tellico Plains occupy almost fifteen hundred acres at the foot of the Chilhowee Mountains, one of the largest and most powerful towns of the Cherokee Nation during the eighteenth century. Tellico had an adjacent sister town, Chatuga, which allied itself with Tellico for mutual protection against enemy raids.
Although the 1780 Virginia expeditions against the Cherokees destroyed Great Tellico and Chatuga, the settlements were soon rebuilt and prospered in the waning years of the eighteenth century. In 1807, Great Tellico was the largest remaining Overhill settlements with a population of 246 Cherokees, 1 white, and 22 black slaves. By 1819, the Cherokee Nation ceded Tellico as part of the Hiwassee Purchase.
Monroe Country Tourism Council
4765 Highway 68
Madisonville, TN 37354
1-800-245-5428
www.monroecounty.com
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Warrior’s Path to Hiwassee Old Town
At Tellico Plains, the Overhill Trading Path and the Warriors’ Path diverge. The Overhill Trading Path, and the later Unicoi Turnpike, climb Tellico Mountain and cross the Unaka Mountains to reach the Valley Towns of North Carolina. The Warrior’s Path ran southwest to connect Great Tellico with the remainder of the Overhill Towns, the outlying frontier settlements of Hiwassee, Amohee, and Chestuee on the Hiwassee River.
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Hiwassee Old Town-the Overhill Frontier
Hiwassee Old Town, or Great Hiwassee, occupies a broad floodplain on the north side of the Hiwassee River, nestled at the foot of the Chilhowee Mountains. The name Hiwassee (Ayouwasi) denotes just such a broad savanna or plain, and the Cherokee town gave its name to the river for its entire course. The old town site sits astride the great north-to-south Warriors’ Path, which crossed the Hiwassee River at Savannah Ford near Jenkins Island. Great Hiwassee was a strategic entry point into the early Cherokee Nation, and for much of the eighteenth century, this frontier settlement guarded the flank of the Overhill region from attack by the Muskogee tribes to the south. Although the Hiwassee Cherokees abandoned the site after the devastating smallpox epidemic of 1738-39, a French-allied contingent of Cherokees from Great Tellico reoccupied Hiwassee in 1756.
When the 1776 Virginia expedition attacked the Overhill settlements on the Little Tennessee River, Cherokee refugees from across the nation streamed into Hiwassee for protection and support. Many of the displaced people took up residency at Hiwassee, and then used the town as a base to launch raids against the American frontier. When Virginia militia again invaded the Overhill country in 1780, the expedition sought out Hiwassee, bent on punishing the northernmost "Chickamauga" town. In 1788, John Sevier’s Tennessee militia again destroyed Hiwassee, driving the town into a gradual decline. Throughout the 1790s, the Cherokee frontier shifted progressively southward, and the Hiwassee community gradually abandoned the old town site until the land was ceded to the United States in the Calhoun Treaty of 1819 and by 1821 the few remaining Cherokee families were forced out.
Much of the site of Hiwassee Old Town, which is still known as Savannah Farm, is now a state-run seedling nursery. A forty-acre portion of this, which includes a Mississippian period mound and village site, is now an archaeological preserve. Although the landscape has been modified by recent development, the old town site, in the expansive floodplains nestled at the foot of the Chilhowee Mountains, still evokes the feeling of the old Cherokee frontier.
The site of Hiwassee Old Town is best viewed from the Tennessee Division of Forestry offices at the tree seedling nursery.
Hiwassee/Ocoee River State Parks
PO Box 5; Spring Creek Road
Delano, TN 37325
(423) 263-0050
Tennessee Department of Agriculture, Forestry Division, East Tennessee Nursery
PO Box 59
Delano, TN 37325
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Unicoi Turnpike Trail
During the eighteenth century, British travelers referred to the Unicoi Turnpike route as the "Tellico Path," the "Overhill Trading Path," or simply, the "great trading path." This ancient route spanned the Cherokee Nation connecting the Lower Towns in the foothills of South Carolina and Georgia with the Overhill settlements of eastern Tennessee. European traders, soldiers and diplomats from the Carolina coast who plied this path entered the Cherokee backcountry along the north side of the Savannah River in South Carolina. During the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, this path funneled steady commerce to and from the Cherokee Nation. British traders from the coastal settlements drove packhorse trains loaded with cloth, kettles, axes, guns, beads and other manufactured goods over the trading path to remote Cherokee communities. They returned via the trading path with deer hides, furs, ginseng, baskets and other Cherokee products for sale in the Colonies or export to Britain.
Following the American Revolution, the westward expansion of American settlement in the Tennessee Valley opened new markets for commerce and entrepreneurs began searching for ways to connect the markets of the seaboard states with the valley. In 1816 the Unicoi Turnpike was completed which generally followed the Overhill Trading Path opening a flourishing trade corridor across the Cherokee Nation. Every fall, drovers herded tens of thousands of hogs and cattle, even geese, ducks and turkeys down the turnpike. Stock stands with inns and taverns sprang up every 8 to 10 miles and some Cherokee reaped profits by selling corn and other supplies to the drovers. The road also brought new goods to the Cherokee. Families could buy live oysters packed in seawater, India rubber boots, Panama hats and Moet’s champagne.
By the time of the mass Cherokee removal of 1838, the Unicoi Turnpike was well established as the primary road into southwestern North Carolina from southeastern Tennessee and northern Georgia. In 1836, the US Army established Fort Butler at present-day Murphy and the Unicoi Turnpike served as the supply line and line of communications to Fort Cass, the Army headquarters for Cherokee removal at present day- Charleston, Tennessee. When the military roundup and deportation of the Cherokee began in North Carolina in June 1838, the turnpike was part of the route that the army used to conduct Cherokee prisoners from Fort Butler to the concentration camps at Fort Cass. Between June 19 and August 1, 1838, more that 3,000 Cherokee marched along the Unicoi Turnpike from present day Murphy to Tellico Plains in the first leg of the Trial of Tears.
After the Cherokee removal, the turnpike continued in use through the Civil War until the early twentieth century, when it was supplanted by modern roads built to accommodate automobile traffic. Although these newer roads have obliterated the turnpike in many areas, major sections of this historic trial and roadway were bypassed and remain accessible to modern visitors.
Sidenote: National Millenium Trail - View
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