 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Interactive Map - Places to Go - Tidbits & Contacts - More to See & Do |
|
Sequoyah Birthplace Museum The Sequoyah Birthplace Museum provides an excellent interpretive
overview of Overhill Cherokee history, culture, and archaeology,
and visitors to the Cherokee Heritage Trail should consider the
museum a prerequisite point of departure for touring the Overhill
Cherokee landscape of eastern Tennessee. The museum, owned and operated by the Eastern Band of Cherokee
Indians, is situated on the south end of a 500-acre island created
by Tellico Lake. In addition to the museum, the 47-acre complex
includes a 300-seat amphitheater, a seven-sided open air pavilion,
and picnic tables for visitors’ use. From the museum, a 150-yard
pathway leads southwest across a field to a grassy mound that serves
as a mausoleum for the remains of Cherokees exhumed from the town
sites excavated for Tellico Lake; visitors may pay their respects
to generations of Cherokees who lived and died in the lower Little
Tennessee River Valley. Contact information: The Sequoyah Birthplace Museum Fort Loudoun State Historic Park "The great King George has ordered his children, the Cherokees, and the English to love each other as Brothers and to live together as one people..." After leaving the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum, visitors should tour
nearby Fort Loudoun State Historic Park to become further acquainted
with Anglo-Cherokee relations, diplomacy, and trade in the mid-eighteenth
century. The state park, which fronts on the former Little Tennessee
River channel, shares Great Island with Sequoyah Birthplace Museum,
and is located approximately one mile to the northeast. The park
features a reconstruction of Fort Loudoun, a state-maintained visitor’s
center with well developed interpretive exhibits, walking trails,
a large picnic area, and access to Tellico Lake. Fort Loudoun (1756–1760), the first British military outpost
west of the southern Appalachians, was founded at the request of
pro-British Cherokee factions at Chota, who needed the fort and
garrison to deter raiding on the Overhill towns by French allied
Indians, to regulate trade and police unscrupulous traders, and
to discourage French sentiment in some Overhill towns. The British
considered the fort a much needed outpost against the French and “a strong curb upon the Upper Cherokees.” Although
relations between the Overhill Cherokees and the South Carolina
colonial troops were initially amicable, the situation gradually
deteriorated, and the Cherokees laid siege to the fort at the outset
of the Anglo-Cherokee War of 1760–61. The garrison surrendered
after a long siege, under terms that allowed their return to South
Carolina, but Cherokee warriors ambushed the garrison about 15 miles
south of the fort, killing 25 men in retaliation for the earlier
killing of Cherokee hostages at Fort Prince George. After the surrender,
the Cherokee warriors sacked the fort, and a number of Cherokee
families moved in. When they abandoned the grounds after nearly
a year, local Cherokees burned the fort, a reminder of the British
military presence in their heartland. Contact: Fort Loudoun State Historic Area
Across the lake from Fort Loudoun is the site of Tellico Blockhouse,
a fort built in 1794 by the U.S. government to preserve the fragile
peace between the Cherokees and white Americans. Stone foundations
of fort building exposed by archaeological investigations during
the 1970s have been stabilized for public visitation and the former
wooden fortification walls are now represented by a low enclosure
of corseted pilings. Interpretive exhibits interspersed among these
ruins tell the story of the Tellico Blockhouse and its role maintaining
order along the Cherokee frontier and promoting the “civilization”
policy of the U.S. government. Visitors to the site can wander among
the foundations and look across the river toward the old Cherokee
Nation. From 1794 until 1806, Federal troops garrisoned at the Tellico
Blockhouse guarded the northern Cherokee frontier against encroachment
and attack by local white militia and posses. It was here at Tellico
Blockhouse that the federal government initiated its new “civilization”
program among the Cherokees, a plan to pacify Indian nations by
transforming them into communities of yeoman farmers. Agents like
Silas Dinsmoor and Return J. Meigs proffered farming equipment,
spinning wheels, looms, and other goods to Cherokees throughout
the nation, disbursing such wares from their office and warehouse
at Tellico Blockhouse. The government also established a trading
factory at Tellico, a store that provided goods to Cherokee customers
at cost, a policy designed to wean the Cherokees from their trade
with the British. Tellico Blockhouse also became a gateway into
the Cherokee Nation; all travelers had to stop there to apply to
the agent for passports before entering tribal lands. Visitors at
Tellico included Louis-Philippe, the future king of France, and
Moravian missionaries David Steiner and Abraham deSchweinitz (1799). Contact: Superintendents Office
Frank H. McClung Museum A brief, 45-minute drive northeast from Vonore on brings visitors
to the regional center of Knoxville, where the Frank H. McClung
Museum on the University of Tennessee campus features a new, permanent
exhibition, Archaeology and the Native Peoples of Tennessee. This
state-of-the art, comprehensive exhibition showcases 65 years of
archaeological research by the University of Tennessee, and presents
a detailed chronicle of native life in Tennessee (primarily eastern
Tennessee) from the end of the Ice Age to modern times. The 3,200-square-foot
exhibit hall is dominated by dramatic, life-sized murals by famed
muralist Greg Harlin; these vignettes depict native life during
the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Woodland, Mississippian, and historic
era Cherokee culture periods. The exhibits combine artifacts, images,
and text to examine the changing lifeways of native peoples. The
exhibit space is multi-tiered, with ramps and platforms defining
different themes. Glass covered cases at floor level recreate excavated
archaeological contexts such as a rock-filled fire hearth and an
Archaic period dog burial. Pull-out study drawers allow visitors
to learn more about particular types of artifacts and topics such
as plant domestication, cave art, and mound building. A scale model
of the 600-year-old village of Toqua can be explored with a fiber
optic key. An education area in the center of the gallery presents
five hands-on interactive exhibits where visitors can learn more
about archaeology. This open space is also used in docent-led school
group instruction. The archaeological collections of McClung Museum are renowned,
and the new exhibit features some of the most impressive examples
of native art and craftsmanship in the eastern United States. The
engraved shell gorgets, copper work, elaborate tobacco pipes, effigy
vessels, and sandstone statues are fascinating for their aesthetic
value as well as their cultural meanings. The Duck River cache of
eccentric chipped stone objects from the Mississippian period and
a 32.5-foot-long dugout canoe dating to 1797 are particularly noteworthy. Contact: Frank H. McClung Museum While in Knoxville, visit the Treaty of Holston Park on the newly
developed Knoxville Riverfront on the Tennessee River, a place the
Cherokees once knew as Kuwohi, the Mulberry Place. Here, a new statue
commemorates the 1791 signing of the Treaty of Holston between the
Cherokee Nation and the United States government, an agreement that
laid the foundation for relations between the Cherokees and the
new federal government. This landmark treaty established the “civilization”
program, an early federal policy for pacifying hostile tribes by
encouraging farming and settled life. The treaty ceded a large tract of Cherokee land (including present-day
Knoxville) and was generally disadvantageous to the Cherokees, who
felt that they had been duped by Governor William Blount, whom they
knew as “The Dirt Captain.” The agreement barely stemmed
white encroachment on Cherokee land; frontier violence between whites
and Cherokees continued unabated, and a lasting peace was not concluded
for three more years. Contact: Public Affairs Office
Overhill Towns Driving Loop After visiting the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum and Fort Loudoun,
heritage trail guests are invited to tour the landscapes of the
Overhill country by driving a 75-mile circuit that skirts many of
the old town sites in the Little Tennessee, Tellico, and Hiwassee
river valleys. This driving tour is designed to follow eighteenth
century trails as closely as possible, routing visitors through
the same hills and valleys that Attakullakulla, Oconostota, Nancy
Ward, and thousands of other Overhill Cherokees traversed in their
daily lives. Although the Anglo-American occupants of this landscape
have wrought many changes over the past 180 years, much of the countryside
retains a very rural character that harkens back to the heyday of
the Overhill Cherokees and invites travelers to see the land as
wayfarers did in the eighteenth century. The complete circuit, from Vonore to the Hiwassee River and back,
requires about two and a half hours of driving; this tour can be
cut short at several junctures with access points to major highways.
Many of the sites in this tour are located on private lands; these
invite roadside viewing but not physical access. Most of the locations
are currently unmarked and have no on-site interpretation, but their
settings speak volumes about the Overhill world. Mialoquo Start your tour at Mialoquo (Amayelegwa: Great Island), western
most of the Overhill towns on the Little Tennessee River and home
to many of the Lower and Middle towns refugees displaced by the
Anglo-Cherokee War of 1760–61. The town site, now inundated
by Tellico Lake, is visible northwest of the U.S. Highway 411 bridge
over the reservoir; Bakers Creek Road, which turns northwest from
U.S. 411 on the northeast side of the lake, provides several views
of the site. Historical evidence suggests that Mialoquo was founded by Cherokee
refugees who fled from Lower and Middle towns to escape the Montgomery
and Grant expeditions in 1760–61. In 1809, John Norton noted
that when the Grant expedition destroyed Kituhwa, the inhabitants “removed to Big Island, where they build a town; and from
that place to Chicamauga.” Mialoquo was destroyed by the
1776 Virginia expedition, and Dragging Canoe moved the town to the
Chattanooga area. Tuskeegee The next town site upstream was Tuskeegee, the birthplace and boyhood
home of Sequoyah; this location lies under the lake waters immediately
south of Fort Loudoun, and can be viewed from the grounds of the
reconstructed fort and visitors’ center. This settlement
was founded alongside Fort Loudoun to take advantage of the fort’s
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 and Toqua From Tuskeegee, the driving tour continues along Citico Road (TN
Highway 360 and Monroe County Highway 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’ll see a broad
expanse of lake on the left, approximately two miles southeast of
the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum. Beneath these waters lie the old towns of Tomotley and Toqua; these
locations can be viewed from the Toqua Beach Recreation area, a
well marked public access point visible from TN 360, about 2.4 miles
from Sequoyah Birthplace Museum. Tomotley occupied the northwest
end of this river bottom; Toqua was located on the southeastern
side near Toqua Creek. Like Mialoquo, 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 an ancient Mississippian town and
mound center; the archaeology of this site is featured at the Frank
H. McClung Museum in Knoxville (See page **.). Until the establishment
of Tomotley, Tuskeegee, and Mialoquo, the Cherokee town of Toqua
was the western most pale of the Cherokee Nation, a frontier outlier
that bore the brunt of attacks by the Iroquois and French allied
tribes. Chota and Tanasi (Memorial sites) To reach the next town sites, Chota and Tanasi, continue southeast
along TN 360 to the intersection with Pine Rd. (Monroe County Road
455) at Ballplay Creek, then travel Piney Flat Road (which becomes
Rocky Hollow Road but remains County Road 455) southeast 6.8 miles
to Bacon Ferry Road, a gravel road with signs directing visitors
to the Chota and Tanasi memorials. Turn left on Bacon Ferry Road,
which skirts the bend in the Little Tennessee River that was once
home to Chota and Tanasi. The road passes the Tanasi memorial (at
.8 miles) and ends in a cul-de-sac with parking lot at the pedestrian
trail head to reach the Chota memorial. 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. Tanasi (also written Tannassee, Tennessee, Tunasse,
Tanassee, Tannassy, Tannassie, and Tennisse), which lends its name
to the state and river, preceded Chota by decades as the Mother
Town of the Overhill settlements and acknowledged capital of the
nation. British colonial diplomats, like Col. George Chicken (1725)
and Sir Alexander Cuming (1730), sought out Tanasi as the venue
for negotiations with the tribe as a whole. On his mission to Overhill
towns, Cuming obtained the “Crown of Tannassy, as an Emblem
of universal Sovereignty over the whole Cherokee Nation,”
along with three eagle tails and four scalps to present to King
George II. as a purported gesture of Cherokee allegiance. Contact information: The Sequoyah Birthplace Museum
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 U.S. Highway 129 intersects the Foothills Parkway. To reach
Citico from Chota, drive on Bacon Ferry Road back to Citico Road.
Turn right (east) onto Citico Road and proceed approximately two
miles to Citico Beach, where Citico Road turns right. Continue straight
on Mount Pleasant Road and travel approximately one half mile until
Tellico Lake is in plain view; this expanse of water covers the
former town site of Citico. Lt. Henry Timberlake, who visited the Overhill towns in 1762, wrote
of his welcome to Citico: “I set out with Ostenaco and my
interpreter in the morning and marched towards Settico…About
100 yards from the town-house we were received by a body of between
three hundred and four hundred Indians, ten or twelve of which were
entirely naked, except a piece of cloth about their middle, and
painted all over... six of them with eagle tails in their hands,
which they shook and flourished as they advanced, danced in a very
uncommon figure, singing in concert with some drums of their own
make , and those of the late unfortunate Capt. Damere.”
Great Tellico and Chatuga The broad river bottoms of Tellico Plains occupy almost 1500 acres
at the foot of the Chilhowee Mountains. Here, in the open farmlands
of the Stokely estate (Stokely-Van Camp once had a cannery here)
once stood Great Tellico, one of the largest and most powerful towns
of the Cherokee Nation during the eighteenth century. When Sir Alexander
Cuming (1730) installed Moytoy, the head warrior of Tellico, as
a puppet “emperor” of the nation for treaty negotiations,
he asserted that Tellico was one of the seven mother towns of the
nation. Tellico had an adjacent sister town, Chatuga, which allied
itself with Tellico for mutual protection against enemy raids. During the late 1730s, Tellico was home to Christian Gottleib Priber,
a German intellectual who dreamed of setting up a utopian Cherokee
republic called “The Kingdom of Paradise.” Priber
learned Cherokee, married a Cherokee woman, was adopted into the
tribe and earned a seat in the Tellico council as a beloved man.
He advised his Cherokee friends on the workings of European governments
and trade policies and warned them against the political schemes
of both the English and the French. Priber’s republican rhetoric
crept into Cherokee addresses to the British. Colonial politicians
and traders suspected that Priber was a French agent and conspired
to capture him at Great Tellico. South Carolina sent a commissioner
who demanded Priber’s arrest, but the Cherokees refused to
turn over their friend, and severely rebuked the commissioner. The
British finally took Priber prisoner in 1746 while he was on a diplomatic
mission to the Creeks; he died in prison at Frederica, Georgia. Contact: Tellico Plains Visitor's Center, Tellico Plains, Tennessee.
Scenic Drive Warriors 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 Warriors’ 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. To follow the Warriors’ Path to Hiwassee, continue southward
on Ballplay Road to its juncture with TN Highway 165 in the town
of Tellico Plains. Turn right (west) on Highway 165 and continue
through town to the intersection with TN Highway 68. Turn right
on Highway 68 and drive northwest one-half mile to the intersection
with Old Mecca Pike (TN Highway 39) and drive through the scenic
Connasauga Creek Valley around the end of Starr Mountain, named
for Caleb Starr, a Quaker trader and progenitor of a famous Cherokee
family. Near the community of Mecca, Highway 39 veers to the right;
continue straight on Tennessee Highway 310 through the communities
of Mecca and Connasauga to arrive at U.S. Highway 411 in Etowah,
Tennessee. In 1799, Moravian travelers Steiner and deSchweinitz
took this route from Tellico to Hiwassee, passing “some miles
in a southwestward direction through the great, dry plain... at
the end of the plain there was a bog” in the location where
Etowah now stands. Here, the route toward Hiwassee turns south along
U.S. Highway 411; seven miles southwest, U.S. Highway 411 crosses
the Hiwassee River. Along the north side of the river, the highway
passes through the town site of Hiwassee, known locally as Hiwassee
Old Town or Savannah Farm. Hiwassee Old Town: The Overhill Frontier “I passed the village of Hiyouwassee Equohigh, or Great
Hiyouwassee, which is situated on a fertile plain at the foot
of a lofty mountain washed by the Highyouwassee River. In the
time of war, it was tolerably populous, but since that, Peace
has done away with the necessity of living in collective bodies
for mutual support, and they have separated and seated themselves
on plantations suiting their fancies or convenience; so that there
are only a few houses remaining” 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” (Ayouwhasi)
denotes just such a broad savannah 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-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 Muscogee 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 residence at Hiwassee, 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. Contact: Hiwassee Ocoee State Parks
Scenic Drive “I left Fort Butler on the 19th in charge of 800 Cherokees. I had not an officer along to assist me, and only my own company as a guard..." Just as our modern communities, states, and regions are integrated
by the interstate highway system, the old Cherokee Nation was interconnected
by a network of trails that linked town settlements. For Cherokee
villages, these foot trails were conduits to the outside world;
people, goods, and information moved constantly over the trail system.
In traveling the Cherokee Heritage Trail, visitors follow many ancient
pathways that have been supplanted by modern roads. Seldom are these
native paths discernible; recent development and road building have
obliterated all vestiges of most Cherokee trails. However, much
of the Unicoi Turnpike path, one of the main arteries of the Cherokee
trail system, can still be retraced across southeastern Tennessee,
southwestern North Carolina, and northeastern Georgia. Major segments
of this trans-Appalachian route, which was developed as a commercial
wagon road in the early nineteenth century, survive intact on national
forest lands, and can be experienced by driving and hiking between
the heritage trail interpretive hubs at Vonore, Tennessee, and Murphy,
North Carolina. 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 back country along the north side of the Savannah River
in South Carolina. The northern branch of the trail passed through
the Lower towns of Keowee (now Lake Keowee, S.C.) and Oconee, crossed
Oconee Mountain, and passed through Chattooga Town (where U.S. Highway
28 crosses Chattooga River). From the Chattooga River, the trail
ascended Warwoman Creek, then descended Tuckaleechee Creek to Stecoah
Old Town, near present-day Clayton, Georgia. Here, the path was
joined by a southern branch, which ran through the Lower towns of
Tugalo (now Lake Hartwell, near Toccoa, Georgia) and Tallulah to
Stecoah. The area around Clayton is still known as “The Dividings,”
a place where paths join and diverge. Contact information: Tennessee Overhill Heritage Association Editorial Note: For an in-depth look at each one of the interpretive centers along the Cherokee Heritage Trails, including complete articles and quotes, detailed information on all the historical sites, amazing full color photography depicting the land and its people, stories from many of the Cherokee Elders and much more about the wonderful Cherokee culture, make the Cherokee Heritage Trails Guidebook a part of your personal library. Click here to find out more. |
© Copyright 2003. Cherokee Heritage Trails. All rights reserved.For technical issues, contact webmaster@cherokeeheritagetrails.org
Website Services Provided By SMNET"The Customer Friendly ISP"
