Cherokee Villages

The ten villages were autonomous towns linked by language, clan and ceremony, not a single polity. Each stood around a plaza of an acre or more, with an octagonal council house up to sixty feet across and a smaller rectangular summer house for public business. Clan membership came through the mother, so a traveler could count on kin in any town. By the mid-eighteenth century Chota was the mother town, though Tanasi and perhaps Great Tellico had earlier held that role. Scholars disagree on whether these towns date to the sixteenth century or to the late seventeenth.

What the plaque says

Cherokee Villages Along the south side of the Little Tennessee River for about thirteen miles were ten villages of the Overhill Cherokees. They were Mialaque, Tuskegee, Tomotley, Toquo, Tennessee, Chota, Citico, Halfway Town, Chilhowee, Talassee. White encroachments began upon this site in the 1790's.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 1.1 mi
  A reconstructed 1756-57 British fort on the Little Tennessee River in Overhill Cherokee country, besieged in 1760 and surrendered on August 9 of that year.
• Sequoyah Birthplace Museum — 1.3 mi
  The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' museum on Tellico Lake, near the town where Sequoyah was born, telling how he built the Cherokee syllabary and what the Tellico Dam drowned.
• Cades Cove — 25 mi
  A Smokies valley ringed by mountains, once the Cherokee hunting ground of Tsiyahi and later a farming community of 685 people, kept by the park after its families were bought out.
• Fort Southwest Point State Historic Park — 25 mi
  A reconstructed 1797 federal fort on a knoll at the meeting of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers, headquarters of Cherokee agent Return J. Meigs, a state park since July 2026.

More markers nearby

• Sequoyah — steps away
• Fort Loudoun — 0.7 mi
• Hiwassee College — 7.8 mi
• Tenasee Cherokee Village — 8.3 mi