SAUTEE NACOOCHEE VALLEY - GEORGIA POSTCARD

Sautee Nacoochee's name combines two place names of Native American origin. The word "Sautee" comes from the Cherokee name of a former Hitchiti-speaking Creek Indian village named Sawa-te near the juncture of Sautee Creek and the Chattahoochee River. The name means "Racoon People." By 1540 AD, the area was inhabited by Cherokee people (probable displacement of the Mississippian cultures that preceded them took place between 1200 and 1400 AD), who called the village "Chota" (also spelled Chotte in some texts). The village was at the southern end of what is today referred to as the Sautee Valley. The word "Nacoochee" may come from a Choctaw word meaning "little arrow". The village of Nacoochee was located to the east of Chota, near the foot of Alec Mountain on the Unicoi Trail. The Nacoochee Valley is known for the Nacoochee Indian Mound, at the northwestern end of the valley, which was constructed between 700-1200 AD. Nearby Yonah Mountain is the site of a Romeo-and-Juliet-like legend that Nacoochee was a beautiful Cherokee "princess," who fell in love with a Choctaw warrior named Sautee. When their love was forbidden by the Cherokee elders, a war party followed the eloping lovers and threw Sautee off the mountain, with Nacoochee then jumping to her death, a Lover's Leap. Although he did not invent the legend, George Williams, the son of one of the original white settlers, popularised it in his 1871 Sketches of Travel in the Old and New World.