Cherokee Communities of the Upper Hiwassee River Valley

Cherokee Communities of the Upper Hiwassee River Valley. . , Native people lived here in the upper Hiwassee River Valley for hundreds of generations before the first European travelers reached this area in the sixteenth cetury. Thousands of sites where they lived, worked, and played dot the river and creek valleys between the sheltering mountains. The landscape still echoes the native presence - almost every creek, valley, and hollow bears Cherokee names. Hiwassee, actually Ayuhwa'si, is the Meadow Place. Tusquittee Creek is Da'skwitûn'yi, the Rafters Place. Shooting Creek is Du'stäyaldûñ'yi, where the Thunder makes a shooting sound. Jack Rabbit Mountain, Chunky Gal Mountain, Muskrat Branch, Hood's Branch, Chairmaker Branch, Blair's Creek, Geisky Creek, and dozens of other natural features are named for Cherokee individuals who went west on the Trail of Tears., The valley here at Hayesville was once called Quanassee, a thriving village that was part of the Valley Towns division of the Cherokee nation. In the early 1700s, the core of Quanassee was located around Spikebuck mound, located to the north on the bank of the Hiwassee River. Atop the mound sat the Quenassee townhouse, a large public building that served a town hall, council house, and temple for the town. At the base of the mound, there was a public plaza for ceremonies, dances and games. Small homesteads surrounded the plaza - each family had a circular winter house (asi) and a rectangular summer house, along with a small com house or two. Beyond the town core, orchards, gardens and fields of corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, tobacco and other crops filled the bottomlands. Farmsteads scattered up and down the river were probably part of Quanassee as well., Quanassee was positioned on the Overhill Trading Path (also known as the "Charles Town Trading Path," the "Quanassee Path," or the "Tellico Path"), the main route that crosscut the Cherokee territory from the Lower Towns of South Carolina to the Overhill Towns of Tennessee. English traders from Charles Town plied this path bringing trains of pack horses loaded with manufactured good to exchange for deerskins and other Cherokee commodities. In 1717, the South Carolina colony founded a trading "factory" (store and warehouse) at Quanassee to supply the region with English goods. The trading path remained a vital supply line for the Cherokee nation long after the demise of Quanassee, which fell to Coosa (Muscogee) raiders in 1725., Following the raid on Quanassee, many of the settlements near the headwaters of the Hiwassee River were abandoned, and the uppermost part of the valley may have been vacant for decades. By the 1770s, communities named Quanassee, Nacoochee, and Cattoogajoy were again seated near the head of the Hiwassee, but were much more scattered farming settlements than the earlier villages. American raids during the Revolution razed many of these settlements., After the Revolution, Tusquittee and Shooting Creek emerged as the primary towns (communities with townhouses) in the Clay County area. Surrounding communities, like Nacoochee, and Tuskeega were members of these larger township / organizations. These farming communities gradually came to resemble those of southern mountain whites; Cherokee families lived in log houses, tended cornfields with horse-drawn plows, raised apple and peach orchards, and kept herds of cattle, droves of hogs, and flocks of chickens. Their increasingly western lifestyles were fueled by stores like N.B. Hyatt's, which opened near present-day Hayesville along the Unicoy Turnpike, a commercial wagon road (built 1816) that followed the route of the old Quanassee Path through the Valley Towns. In 1820, the first churches and schools opened in the area. The same year, The Cherokee Nation formally organized a national court system and administrative districts; the upper Hiwassee Valley was part of the Aquohee District., Despite the modernizing/strides of the Cherokee Nation, the Americans demanded the Indian lands for expansion, and the Cherokees were forced to cede their homeland in 1835. In June 1838, most of the native people in the upper Hiwassee River Valley were arrested by federal and state troops stationed at Fort Hembree (Hayeville) and forcibly marched to Fort Cass, Tennessee. From there, thousands of Cherokees began the infamous Trail of Tears emigration to Oklahoma., (Captions) , Artist's visualization of an early 18th century Cherokee village like the community at Quanassee, 1838 Army map of the upper Hiawassee River Valley. Individual dots represent Cherokee homes