Great Hiwassee () was an important Overhill settlement from the late 17th through the early 19th centuries. It was located on the

Hiwassee River The Hiwassee River is a river in the states of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. It originates from a spring on the north slope of Rocky Mountain (Georgia), Rocky Mountain in Towns County, Georgia, Towns County in n ...

in present-day

Polk County, Tennessee Polk County is a county located in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, its population was 17,544. Its county seat is Benton. The county was created on November 28, 1839, from parts of ...

, on the north bank of the river where modern U.S. Route 411 crosses the river. The site is now part of the Tennessee Forestry Division's East Tennessee Nursery. The town was linked to

Great Tellico Great Tellico was a Cherokee town at the site of present-day Tellico Plains, Tennessee, where the Tellico River emerges from the Appalachian Mountains. Great Tellico was one of the largest Cherokee towns in the region, and had a sister town nea ...

and Chota to the north, via the

Great Indian Warpath The Great Indian Warpath (GIW)—also known as the Great Indian War and Trading Path, or the Seneca Trail—was part of the network of trails in eastern North America developed and used by Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans w ...

, which followed

Conasauga Creek Conasauga Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 27, 2011 tributary stream of the Hiwassee River, located in southeast Tennessee, United States. It is not t ...

into the mountains. The path was heavily used by the

Overhill Cherokee The Overhill Cherokee were a group of the Cherokee people located in their historic settlements in what is now the U.S. state of Tennessee in the Southeastern United States, on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains. This name was used b ...

References

*Duncan, Barbara R. and Riggs, Brett H. ''Cherokee Heritage Trails Guidebook''. University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill (2003). *Mooney, James. "Myths of the Cherokee" (1900, reprint 1995). (see

James Mooney James Mooney (February 10, 1861 – December 22, 1921) was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. Known as "The Indian Man", he conducted major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as of tribes on the Great ...

) Cherokee towns in Tennessee Native American history of Tennessee Former Native American populated places in the United States Geography of McMinn County, Tennessee Geography of Polk County, Tennessee Former populated places in Tennessee Overhill Cherokee {{PolkCountyTN-geo-stub