CHEROKEE PLACE NAMES

CHEROKEE PLACE NAMES
Cherokee Place Names Agiqua Ahmachunahut Catawba Cowee (see Keowe) Cullasaja Estatoa Hiawassee (see Owassa) Keowe Kul-la-sa-jah (see Cullasaja) Nantahala Nan-ti-ha-lah (see Nantahala)	Ochlawaha (see Ocklawaha) Ocklawaha Ocono lufty Owassa Pse-li-co Qualla Saluda Satoola Swannanoa Tochawhah (see Toxaway) Tocheeostee Toxaway (Tochawha) Zillicoah

"It was a species of vandalism to substitute French Broad for Agiqua and Tocheeostee, the former being the name applied by the Erati, or 'over the mountain' Cherokees to the lower valley, and the latter by the Ottari, or 'valley' towns to the upper or North Carolina section below Asheville. "Racing river" is a literal translation of the term Tocheeostee. Above Asheville, where the stream is placid and winds snake-like through the wide alluvions, it took the name Zillicoah." (1883. Zeigler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p.18)
"Catawba is not of Cherokee origin. The river takes its name from the tribe which inhabited its valley until a recent date; South Carolina." (1883. Ziegler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p.18)
"Cowee, the designation of the great transverse chain which divides the Tuckasege from the Tennessee is a corruption of Keowe, the form which still attaches to the river. It means 'near,' or 'at hand'." (1883. Zeigler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p. 28)
"The Hiawassee was known among the earliest explorers as the Euphrasee, which was perhaps the name applied by a more southern tribe. The largest affluent of the Hiawassee is the Valley river, know by the Cherokees as Ahmachunahut, meaning 'long stream.'" (1883. Ziegler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p. 27)
"The little village of Franklin is romantically situated on the Little Tennessee...surrounded with mountains, and as quiet and pretty a hamlet as I have yet seen among the Alleghanies...I sent a couple of handsome flies, as a present to my post-office friend, and in less than twenty minutes he made his appearance at my lodgings, and insisted that we should go upon a fishing excursion....Horses were immediately procured, and having rode a distance of ten miles along a very beautiful stream called Kul-la-sa-jah, or the Sugar Water, we came to the chasm leading to the falls." (1849. Lanham, Charles. Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, p.75) "Cullasaja is the old name of that tributary of the Little Tennessee which heads in the Macon highlands, and is noted for the beauty of its cascades. The English signification of the word is 'sweet water.' Sugar fork is the local designation, though the maps preserve the old and rich sounding original." (1883. Zeigler, Wilbur Zeigler and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p.28)
"After leaving the above valley, my course lay over two distinct spurs of the Alleghanies, which are divided by the river Nan-ti-ha-lah, and consequently called the Nan-ti-ha-lah Mountains." (1849, Lanham, Charles. Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, p.66) "The river Nan-ti-ha-lah, or the Woman's Bosom, was so named on account of its undulating and narrow valley, and its own intrinsic purity and loveliness." (1849, Lanham, Charles. Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, p. 68) "The euphonious name Nantahala seems to be little understood. The most commonly given interpretation is 'maiden's bosom,' though that meaning can only be derived by a stretch of metaphor. If the word, as supposed by some interpreters, is compounded of Nantaseh and Eylee, it means' 'between ridges,' whence by far-fetched simile ' maiden's bosom.' But it is more probably compounded of Nantaseh and Eyalee, which literally means 'The sun between" or "half way," hence 'noonday sun.'" (1883. Zeigler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p. 27)
"By some chance that gentle stream which snakes through the flat valley of Henderson county, has preserved an Indian designation, though it is probably a borrowed one. Ocklawaha is the name which we find in old legal documents, and its tributary, which gives the county's capital a peninsular situation, is designated the Little Ocklawaha--a barbarous mixture of Indian and English. The word is of Seminole origin, and means 'slowly moving water.' It was applied to a river in Florida by the natives, and to this Carolina stream by the 'low country' people who found summer homes beyond the Blue Ridge, because of the applicability of the name and its resemblance in some other respects to the original Ochlawaha. Reverence of antiquity and the geographical genius of the red race, cannot be claimed as an argument in favor of the re-substitution of the Indian designation for the present universally used colloquialism, 'Mud creek' as homely as it is false in the idea it suggests. Ochlawaha is not only more pleasing to the ear, but gives a much more faithful description of the landscape feature designated, and hence has sufficient claims to the public recognition which we take the lead in giving it." (1883. Ziegler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, pp.19, 20) "The Indian name Ochlawaha translated into English means 'slowly moving muddy waters.' When the early settlers began to file into our area, they found it hard to pronounce the name that the Indians called the creek and even harder to spell it, so they began to call the Ochlawaha 'Mud Creek.'....The name is too pretty to be allowed to vanish and it should be used more often." (1976. FitzSimons, Frank L. From the Banks of the Oklawaha, p.75)
"I visited Smoky Mountain, the loftiest of a large brotherhood which lie crowded together upon the dividing line between North Carolina and Tennessee....It gives birth to a pair of glorious streams, the Pigeon river of Tennessee, and the *Ocono lufty* of North Carolina, and derives its name [Smoky Mt.] from the circumstance that its summit is always enveloped, on account of its height, in a blue or smoky atmosphere." (1849, Lanham, Charles. Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, p. 86) "Ocona Lufta, the name of the pearly stream which flows through the Indian settlement, is derived from its having been a nesting place for ducks and other water fowls. One of its affluents, the Colehmayeh is derived from Coleh, 'raven, and Mayeh, 'water.' The English 'Raven's fork' is in common use among the whites. Soco, the name of another tributary of the Lufta, means 'one.'" (1883, Ziegler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p. 27)
"The following day I travelled down the Owassa valley a distance of thirty miles, until I reached the very pretty place where I am now tarrying. The Cherokee word Owassa signifies the main river, or the largest of the tributaries: and the paraphrase of this name into Hiowassee by the map-makers is only a ridiculous blunder. So I have been informed, at any rate, by one of the oldest Cherokees now living." (1849. Lanham, Charles. Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, p.60)
"The original Indian name of the French Broad was Pse-li-co, the meaning of which I have not been able to ascertain." (1849. Lanham, Charles. Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, p.122)
"The post hamlet of Qualla town, in the present Cherokee settlement, is an English name modified to suit the Indian tongue. A white woman named Polly, familiarly 'Aunt Polly,' opened a small store. Her Indian customers, unable to give the sound of 'p', their speech being open-mouthed, substituted the 'q' sound, which came into general use and finally changed the word. Qualla is a very common name for Indian women." (1883. Zeigler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p. 27)
"Going southward, and crossing the Blue Ridge and Green river, which derives its name from the tint of its water, we come to the Saluda range, the fountain of a river of the same name. The word is of Catawba origin, as is also Estatoa." (1883. Ziegler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p.20)
"Satoola, the name of a high peak overlooking the upper Macon plateau, has been mercilessly pruned to 'Stooley.' Horse Cove is the homely appellation of a parquet-shaped valley within the curved precipice which leads from Satoola to Whitesides. sequilla, the old Indian name, has a much better sound." (1883. Zeigler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p 28)
"Swanannoa is one of the most resonant of Indian names, though in being accommodated to English orthography it has lost much of its music. It would be impossible to indicate the original pronunciation. I can, perhaps, tell you nearer how to utter it. Begin with a suppressed sound of the letter 's,' then with tongue and palate lowered, utter the vowel sound of 'a' in swan four times in quick succession, giving to the first as much time as to the second two, and raise the voice one note on the last. The word is said to have been derived from the sound made by a raven's wing as it sweeps through the air. Before white settlers came into the country that species of bird was very plentiful along all the streams, and at their points of confluence were it favorite roosting places, whence, aided by the scent of the water, it sallied up stream in search of food. Hundreds collected at the mouth of the Swanannoa, and the name was the oft repeated imitation, by the voice, of the music of their wings, as they whizzed past the morning campfire of the hunter or warrior bands on the bank of the stream. The hungry, homely, and hated raven is indeed an humble origin for a name so beautiful, applied to an object so much applauded for its beauty." (1883. Ziegler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p.19)
"Toxaway, or more properly spelled Tochawha, is Cherokee, but we have no satisfactory interpretation of its meaning." (1883. Ziegler, Wilbur and Ben Grosscup. The Heart of the Alleghanies, p. 20)