© 1996 - 2007
Golden Branches
Western NC Genealogy Resource Center
for Graham County
On pages 216-221 of Swanton's Indian Tribes of North America are listed, under the middle settlements, the names of Cherokee Towns and villages. Three of these, Tallulah, Yunsawi, and Ustanali, were of particular interest to me, being in the vicinity of my birthplace. I made a trip to Graham County in 1958 and conacted a great uncle of mine, C.Z. Denton, now ninety-one years of age and a surveyor all of his active life. Upon mentioning the above Indian names to him, he not only gave me all of the following information, but took me to the location of Tallulah and Ustanali and gave me the location of Yunsawi and a town not listed, called Lolo town.
Tallulah is about ten miles up Tallulah Creek from Robbinsville, NC and was represented by a circular mound of some forty feet in diameter. This mound was destroyed by the building of the Graham County Railroad several years ago.
C.Z. Denton first saw this mound in 1887 and received the following information in 1890 from Mike Sherril of Tallulah Creek and Thomas Shepherd of Mountain Creek in Graham County. These two men were the only white men present at the following incident.
In 1845 the Cherokees gathered at Tallulah to participate in the last ball game that was played in Graham County. There was no town there then. The western team was composed of Valley River and Cheoah Indians, and the other team included Indians of Qualla Town, Bird Town, Big Cove and Oconea Lufty. Several hundred Indians were present and several thousand dollars worth of horses, cows and other property were bet on the games.
Harry Morrs, a son of Gideon Morris whose mother was full Indian and his father white, made the winning run for the west team. On this final run, some of the Lufty Indians ran two horses in front of Morris in an attempt to check him. He ran around one and jumped the other.
In the game, three players were killed and numbers injured. Some of the injured were kept on the ball ground for a short period until they were able to travel. A few of these passed by Thomas Shepherd's home on Mountain Creek nine days after the game.
Today the site of this ball game is slowly but surely returning to wilderness. The site had, up until a few years ago, been in cultivation. One of the former tennants, Ed George, told me that in cultivating the fields, today known as Hitchcock Meadows, he had plowed up numbers of clay pipes, arrow points, etc. It is now impossible to even see the ground as it is part of the national forest.
The town of Ustanali is at the junction of the Sweet Water and Tallulah Creeks. The union of these creeks start the Cheoah River. This site has a low, circular mound, as did all of the other towns. The oldest residents of the county all say that they were used to build dance houses on. On most of these mounds glass trade beads as well as stone beads occur.
The town of Yunsawi was on the southwest bank of Big Snow Bird Creek and near the junction of Long hungry Creek and Big Snow Bird. The town house of "Dance House" mound was recently used by whites for the Carver's Cemetery. This site is now under the waters of Lake Santeetlah.
Lolo Town was on the southwest bank of the Little Snow Bird Creek at the mouth of Hunting Boy Branch. This town house mound differed from the circular mounds at the other sites in that its shape was hexagonal. The Indians from this town had imported yellow plum trees and asparagus from South Carolina. The plum trees can still be seen at this site. The asparagus can be found on farms all over the county, the inhabitants using Lolo Town as a source for it.
Another town probably was at the head of Campbell Creek, a tributary of Tallulah Creek. Walter West of this section told me that his father-in-law remembered a small mound some twenty-five feet in diameter that stood at this spot several years ago.
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© 1996 - 2007
Golden Branches