Tsoyaha

The Tsoyaha, better known as the Yuchi, held the eastern valley of the Tennessee River in the sixteenth century. Their name means Children of the Sun; European colonists knew them as the Uchi or Euchee. Hernando de Soto heard of them in 1541 as a powerful people linked with the Chisca.

Cherokee expansion and disease drove them south after the late seventeenth century. In 1714 the Cherokee, urged on by Carolina traders, destroyed Chestowee in Tennessee; Euchee Town on the Chattahoochee drew William Bartram's praise in 1778. They traded deerskins and enslaved captives to southern colonies, but war and disease cut their numbers.

After the American Revolution they attached themselves to the Creek Confederacy. Many fought with the Red Sticks in the Creek War of 1813 to 1814, and in the 1830s shared the Creek removal west of the Mississippi.