Chatuga (Cherokee town)

The Chattooga River, whose name derives from the Cherokee word Tsatugi

Chatuga (Cherokee: ᏣᏚᎦ, romanized Tsatugi; also spelled Chatugee, Chattooga, Chattoogee) was the name of two distinct Cherokee settlements. One was an Overhill Cherokee town on the Tellico River in present-day eastern Tennessee; the other was a Lower Towns settlement near the headwaters of the Coosa River in present-day Floyd County, Georgia. James Mooney recorded the name as appearing in two or more places in the old Cherokee country and noted that, though apparently of foreign origin, a possible Cherokee derivation rendered it "he has crossed the stream and come out upon the other side."

Overhill Chatuga

Location and relationship to Great Tellico

The Overhill Chatuga was situated on the upper Tellico River, at the site of present-day Tellico Plains in Monroe County, Tennessee. It was a sister town of Great Tellico, and the two were among the most frequently identified settlements on the Tellico River. These twin towns lay among the Overhill settlements, the westernmost Cherokee town group, which English traders from the Carolina colony reached only by crossing the mountains.

Political role

In the early eighteenth century, Great Tellico was the de facto capital of the Overhill Cherokee, and Chatuga shared in its prominence. In 1730 the British envoy Sir Alexander Cuming designated Moytoy, of Tellico, to act as the Cherokee "emperor" and to represent the nation in dealings with the British. After Moytoy's death, the political center of the Overhill Cherokee shifted to Chota and Tanasi on the Little Tennessee River; by the mid-eighteenth century Chota was regarded as the mother town.

Like other Overhill towns, Chatuga conducted public business in a council house, an octagonal town house that could measure up to sixty feet in diameter, situated at one end of a village plaza.

Decline and cession

During the Cherokee–American wars of the late eighteenth century, colonial and later territorial militia repeatedly destroyed Overhill towns. A Virginia expedition destroyed Great Tellico and Chatuga in 1780, after which the towns were rebuilt and prospered into the 1790s. In the Treaty of 1819 (also called the Calhoun Treaty or Hiwassee Purchase), the Cherokee ceded the land between the Little Tennessee River and the Hiwassee River, transferring the sites of the Overhill settlements, including Chatuga, to the United States. The treaty also provided for individual Cherokee to retain residence on 640-acre reservations within the ceded territory.

Lower Towns Chatuga

Location and settlement

The Lower Towns Chatuga was situated near the confluence of the Etowah River and the Oostanaula River, which join to form the Coosa River, at present-day Rome in Floyd County, Georgia. The Cherokee called this area "Head of Coosa". The settlement dates to the period of the Cherokee–American wars, when it stood among the new towns established by Chickamauga Cherokee under Dragging Canoe in the upper Coosa region.

In his 1798–1799 survey of the region, the United States Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins recorded that the Coosa River had its source in the Cherokee country, formed by the Etowah and Oostanaula rivers, with rich land along their bottomlands.

1776 destruction

In the summer of 1776, Colonel Andrew Williamson led approximately 1,100 South Carolina militia against the Cherokee Lower Towns in retaliation for Cherokee raids on the Carolina frontier. Williamson's forces destroyed more than thirty Cherokee settlements, including Seneca, Keowee, Estatoe, Tugaloo, and Sugar Town, burning homes and food stores. Williamson then joined forces with North Carolina General Griffith Rutherford's troops to devastate the Middle Towns and Valley Towns. More than fifty Cherokee towns were destroyed across the campaign, leaving thousands of Cherokee without food or shelter.

The destruction prompted the Treaty of Dewitt's Corner in May 1777, in which the Lower Cherokee ceded nearly all their remaining lands in South Carolina to the colonial government.

Rebuilding and Cherokee leaders

After the wars, several Cherokee national leaders established homes near the Head of Coosa. John Ross, who served as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1827 to 1866, built a home and ferry operation near the confluence of the Oostanaula and Etowah rivers; his ferry was still in operation when the first steamboat reached the site in 1836. Major Ridge moved his family to a site on the Oostanaula River near present-day Rome after the War of 1812 and developed a plantation worked by enslaved African Americans, with corn, vegetable, and cotton fields, a fruit orchard, and a river ferry.

Removal and aftermath

Following passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, the Georgia legislature moved to claim Cherokee territory. In 1832, the state divided the former Cherokee lands into new counties through the Cherokee Land Lottery, with Floyd County carved from the original Cherokee County. The city of Rome was founded in 1834 on the former Cherokee settlement site at the Head of Coosa.

After the signing of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, the United States government committed to removing the Cherokee from their southeastern homelands. In the spring of 1838, federal troops and state militia began the forced roundup of Cherokee people across north Georgia. Floyd County contained two detention facilities: Camp Scott, in what is now downtown Rome and staffed by 150 Georgia militia, and Fort Means, near Kingston. In May 1838, approximately seventy Cherokee were arrested in the Rome vicinity and confined at Camp Scott before being transferred to holding camps in eastern Tennessee. Fort Means processed 467 Cherokee prisoners who were moved to Ross's Landing for the journey west.

Related settlements

A third Cherokee settlement bearing a similar name, Chattooga Town (also Tsatugi), was a small Lower Town on the Chattooga River in present-day Oconee County, South Carolina. A 1721 British census recorded Chattooga Town as a small village of eighty inhabitants. Archaeological excavations at the site in 1993 recovered evidence of Cherokee occupation from the late seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, including remains of a council house, pavilions, and storage structures. The Chattooga Town site was abandoned by the Cherokee around the 1740s and is distinct from both the Overhill and Lower Towns Chatuga settlements.

Legacy

The Chattooga River, which forms part of the border between Georgia and South Carolina, takes its name from the Cherokee word Tsatugi. The river was designated a National Wild and Scenic River in 1974.

See also

• Cherokee removal
• Trail of Tears

Further reading

• Swanton, John R. (1952). The Indian Tribes of North America. Smithsonian Institution. pp. 215–220.
• Greene, Lance K. (1996). The Archaeology and History of the Cherokee Out Towns (M.A. thesis). University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
• Hill, Sarah H. (2017). "All Roads Led from Rome: Facing the History of Cherokee Expulsion". Southern Spaces. Retrieved February 25, 2026.
• Rodning, Christopher B. (2011). "Cherokee Townhouses: Architectural Adaptation to European Contact in the Southern Appalachians". North American Archaeologist. 32 (2): 131–160. doi:10.2190/NA.32.2.b.