Tellico

Great Tellico was an important Overhill Cherokee town on the Tellico River, where the Trading Path and Warrior Path met. Its river plain had been inhabited by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years, including the Muscogee before their movement farther south. The crossing of the two trails placed Tellico among the communities connected by routes through the southern Appalachian country.

In 1730 the rise of the Cherokee leader Moytoy brought a shift in political prominence from Tanasi to Great Tellico. Later in the century, as settlers pressed upon Cherokee lands from the east and north, the town remained part of a changing borderland. The United States established a fur-trading factory there in 1795; it operated until 1807, placing a government trading post at an established meeting place of trails.