Qualla: Chota

Chota: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Eight stone pillars stand on a raised causeway above Tellico Lake in Monroe County, Tennessee -- seven for the Cherokee clans, one for the nation itself. Beneath the still water around them lies Chota, the place the Cherokee called their mother town. For nearly half a century, from the late 1740s until 1788, this settlement on the Little Tennessee River served as the de facto capital of the Overhill Cherokee. Leaders like Attakullakulla, Oconostota, and Nancy Ward walked its paths. Diplomats from Virginia and South Carolina traveled weeks through mountain wilderness to negotiate here. The grave of Chief Oconostota, identified during excavations by a pair of wire spectacles buried with him, rests beside the monument today.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Chota: Rising to Power on the Little Tennessee

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abraham Bradley (1767–1838), Public domain. Chota does not appear in European records until around 1745. Before that, nearby Tanasi held prominence as the seat of the Overhill Cherokee -- the towns west of the Appalachian crest in what is now East Tennessee. The Tanasi Warrior, as the English called the head man, governed ...

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Image: Abraham Bradley (1767–1838) | Public domain

Chota: Caught Between Empires

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Stansberry (photographer), CC BY 3.0. On the eve of the French and Indian War, the Cherokee tilted toward France, alarming the English colonies. Virginia dispatched Major Andrew Lewis with sixty men to build a fort at Chota in 1756, though it was never garrisoned after the Cherokee allied with England. South Carolina...

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Image: Brian Stansberry (photographer) | CC BY 3.0

Chota: Burned, Rebuilt, and Lost

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Natty4bumpo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The American Revolution brought destruction. Cherokee leaders aligned with the British, and in 1776 Dragging Canoe led an unsuccessful three-pronged attack on American frontier settlements. Virginia's Colonel William Christian marched into the Little Tennessee Valley and destroye...

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Image: Natty4bumpo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chota: Unearthed Before the Flood

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Smith (1748–1818), Public domain. When the Tennessee Valley Authority announced plans in 1967 to build Tellico Dam, archaeologists from the University of Tennessee raced to excavate before the waters rose. Between 1969 and 1974, they uncovered 783 features, 31 structures, and 91 burials. The finds spanned millenn...

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Image: Daniel Smith (1748–1818) | Public domain

Chota: The Pillars Above the Water

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Stansberry, CC BY 3.0. Tellico Dam was completed in 1979, and the Little Tennessee River became Tellico Lake. Chota and Tanasi -- the town that gave Tennessee its name -- vanished beneath the surface. But before the flooding, the Chota townhouse site was deliberately raised above the reservoir's operat...

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Image: Brian Stansberry | CC BY 3.0