Tenasee Cherokee Village

Tanasi had once been the leading town of the Overhill Cherokee (Tsalagi). Early in the eighteenth century it served as the mother town, the settlement counted first among its neighbors, before that role passed to Chota. The name Tennessee comes from this town. Two outsiders left especially vivid descriptions of the Overhill council houses: Lieutenant Henry Timberlake, in 1760, and, in 1797, the Duke of Orleans, later King Louis Philippe of France. Great Tellico may have held the mother-town role even earlier than Tanasi.

What the plaque says

Tenasee Cherokee Village Near here on the bank of the now-flooded Little Tennessee River was the Cherokee Indian village of Tenasee. Probably established in the 17th century, by 1753 it had been overshadowed by Chota, the principal political center during the latter half of the 18th century. Lt. Timberlake's 1762 map of this area gives the spelling of the village at Tennessee -- the first known use of our state's name in its current form.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sequoyah Birthplace Museum — 7.0 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.
• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 7.3 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.
• Cades Cove — 18 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 — 33 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

• Fort Loudoun — 7.6 mi
• Cherokee Villages — 8.3 mi
• Sequoyah — 8.3 mi
• Sam Houston Homesite — 11 mi