Coyotee (also spelled Coyatee, Coytoy, Coiatee, Cawatie, or Kai-a-tee) was an Overhill Cherokee town near the confluence of the Little Tennessee River and the Tennessee River in what is now Loudon County, Tennessee. [1] Situated approximately ten miles below the mouth of the Tellico River, the town served as a northern outpost guarding the river approaches to the principal Overhill settlements upstream. [2]
James Mooney recorded the settlement as Coyatee in his 1900 Myths of the Cherokee and catalogued it among the former Cherokee settlements on the Little Tennessee River. [1] Colonial-era documents rendered the name variously as Coytoy, Coiatee, Cawatie, and Kai-a-tee. [3] The modern community of Coytee in Loudon County preserves a variant of the name. [3]
Coyotee occupied a strategically important position near the junction of the Little Tennessee and Tennessee rivers. The town had existed for centuries before sustained European contact and functioned as a gateway to the Overhill towns—Chota, Tanasi, Citico, Toqua, and others—that lay farther upstream along the Little Tennessee. [2] By the mid-eighteenth century, these Overhill settlements collectively formed the political center of the Cherokee Nation, with Chota recognized as the mother town. [4]
Hanging Maw (Cherokee: Scolaguta) served as the principal leader of Coyotee during the 1780s and 1790s. A proponent of diplomatic engagement with the United States, Hanging Maw was a claimant to the Cherokee Principal Chieftainship from approximately 1788 to 1794. His position at Coyotee placed him in a mediating role between the Overhill towns, which generally favored negotiation, and the Chickamauga Cherokee towns to the south, which pursued armed resistance under Dragging Canoe and later John Watts. [5] [1]
In mid-1786, tensions between Cherokee communities and settlers of the breakaway State of Franklin escalated into open conflict. John Sevier dispatched a force under the joint command of Colonel Alexander Outlaw and Colonel William Cocke, who drove off Cherokee raiders from the Holston River settlements before marching south to Coyotee near the mouth of the Little Tennessee. There they burned crops and the town's council house. [6]
Negotiations lasting from July 31 to August 3, 1786, produced the Treaty of Coyatee. Under its terms, Cherokee leaders Old Tassel and Hanging Maw were compelled to cede the remaining Cherokee lands north and east of the Little Tennessee River to the ridge dividing the Little Tennessee from Little River. [7] The treaty also stipulated punishment if any murderer of white settlers was sheltered by the Cherokee. [8]
Neither the Continental Congress nor the broader Cherokee national leadership recognized the treaty. Along with the earlier Treaty of Dumplin Creek (1785), it deepened factional divisions within the Cherokee polity and contributed to the formation of the Chickamauga Cherokee resistance movement. [5] [7]
On June 12, 1793, Captain John Beard led a militia force across the Tennessee River to Coyotee in pursuit of warriors suspected of killing the Gilliam brothers and stealing horses. Beard had been called into service by Governor William Blount for frontier defense but was under explicit orders not to cross the Tennessee River into Cherokee territory. [9]
At dawn, Beard's men attacked the town, where a group of Cherokee leaders had assembled at Hanging Maw's house by invitation of the federal government. Major Robert King and Daniel Carmichael, both employed by the United States to conduct trade and diplomacy with the Cherokee, were present. Hanging Maw was seriously wounded, and his wife was killed. The Chickasaw chief Scantee and between twelve and fifteen other Native American leaders gathered for upcoming national peace talks were also killed. [9] [2]
King and Carmichael intervened to prevent Beard's men from killing Hanging Maw or burning his house. Hanging Maw subsequently complained to Governor Blount, and Beard was arrested and court-martialed. [2] Secretary of War Henry Knox reported the incident to President George Washington, characterizing it as "the perpetration of as inhuman an act as ever was committed" and calling the attack "so disgraceful to the United States." [9] The episode inflamed tensions along the frontier and complicated federal efforts to maintain peace with the Cherokee during the broader Cherokee–American wars. [5]
The settlement declined through the 1790s as the Overhill Cherokee population consolidated around fewer towns. By the early nineteenth century the site was largely abandoned. Subsequent federal treaties, culminating in the Treaty of 1819, extinguished Cherokee title to the remaining Overhill lands in eastern Tennessee. [1] [10]
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) began construction of Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River in Monroe and Loudon counties. The University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology, under the broader Tellico Archaeological Project directed in part by Gerald F. Schroedl, conducted fourteen years of excavations and surveys (1967–1981) in the river valley before its inundation. [4] [11]
The project focused principally on Chota-Tanasee, Citico, Toqua, Tomotley, and Mialoquo, producing extensive data on Cherokee settlement patterns, architecture, and material culture from the eighteenth century. [11] The site of Coyotee, located near the mouth of the Little Tennessee, was not among the sites that received major excavation. When Tellico Dam was completed and the reservoir gates closed on November 29, 1979, the Coyotee site was submerged along with numerous other Cherokee and prehistoric archaeological sites spanning more than 12,000 years of occupation. [12] [13]
The snail darter, a small freshwater fish whose discovery prompted a landmark Endangered Species Act case (TVA v. Hill, 1978), was first identified in 1973 at Coytee Springs, a shoal area near the former townsite approximately seven miles from the river's mouth. [14] [15]
The Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in nearby Vonore preserves artifacts and interpretive exhibits related to the Overhill Cherokee, including materials recovered during the Tellico Archaeological Project. [16] The community of Coytee in Loudon County and street names within the Tellico Village development preserve the town's name in local geography. [3]