Great Hiwassee ( chr, ᎠᏴᏩᏏ ᎢᏆᎭ, translit=Ayvwasi Egwaha) was an important Overhill settlement from the late 17th through the early 19th centuries. It was located on the

Hiwassee River The Hiwassee River has its headwaters on the north slope of Rocky Mountain in Towns County in the northern area of the State of Georgia. It flows northward into North Carolina before turning westward into Tennessee, flowing into the Tennessee Riv ...

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 Bra ...

, on the north bank of the river where modern

U.S. Route 411 U.S. Route 411 (US 411) is an alternate parallel-highway associated with US 11. US 411 extends for about from US 78 in Leeds, Alabama, to US 25W/ US 70 in Newport, Tennessee. US 411 travels through no ...

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 that part of the network of trails in eastern North America developed and used by Native Americans which ran through the Great Appala ...

, 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 Overhill Cherokee was the term for 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 by 1 ...

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 Gr ...

) 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 Cherokee Nation (1794–1907) {{PolkCountyTN-geo-stub