Toxaway (Cherokee town)

Toxaway (Cherokee: ᏚᏆᏌᎢ, romanized Dukwasa'i; also spelled Tosawa, Toicksaw, Tusoweh, Toxsaah, Toxoway) was a Lower Cherokee settlement on the Toxaway River in present-day Oconee County, South Carolina. Classified among the Lower Towns Keowee group, Toxaway was one of the principal Cherokee communities in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains from at least the late seventeenth century until its destruction in 1776.^[1][2] The former town site now lies beneath Lake Jocassee, created in 1973 by the construction of Jocassee Dam.

The name derives from the Cherokee Dukwasa'i (sometimes rendered Duquasa'i), which was anglicized over time into forms such as Tosawa and Toxaway. The original meaning of the word is unknown. Popular folk etymologies have translated it as "place of shedding tears" or "place of the red bird," but no authoritative Cherokee linguistic source has confirmed either interpretation, and modern scholars treat the meaning as lost.^[1][3]

The town occupied a river valley near the confluence of the Toxaway and Whitewater rivers, in the steep, gorge-cut terrain of the Blue Ridge Escarpment in northwestern South Carolina. The surrounding landscape, characterized by narrow valleys, hardwood forests, and numerous waterfalls, placed Toxaway in a relatively isolated position among the Lower Towns. Other nearby Lower Cherokee settlements included Jocassee, Eastatoe, and Keowee, the principal town of the group, located approximately 15 miles (24 km) to the south along the Keowee River.^[1][4]

Toxaway appears in the colonial record as early as 1684, when a treaty between two Cherokee towns and English traders from the Province of Carolina established regular commerce in deerskins and Indian slaves. The agreement was signed with the marks of eight chiefs of the Lower Towns, five of whom—including the Raven (Kâ'lanû, or Corani), Sinnawa the Hawk (Tawodi), Nellawgitchi, Gorhaleke, and Owasta—were identified as leaders of Toxawa. Three additional signers represented Keowa.^[1]

By the mid-eighteenth century, the Cherokee Lower Towns had become important nodes in the deerskin trade with the British colony of South Carolina. Deerskins from the cooler Cherokee mountain hunting grounds were of superior quality to those supplied by coastal tribes, making the Cherokee valued trading partners. The Cherokee Path, a major trade road linking Charleston to the Cherokee country, ran through Keowee and connected the Lower Towns to the colonial economy.^[4][5]

The title "Raven" (Kâ'lanû) denoted a war office in Cherokee governance; each town had its own Raven, a leader responsible for scouting ahead of war parties. The 1684 treaty reference to the Raven of Toxaway indicates that the town maintained its own war organization within the broader Lower Towns structure.^[1]

During the Anglo-Cherokee War, Colonel Archibald Montgomery led a force of approximately 1,600 British regulars—including 400 men of the 1st Regiment of Foot and 700 of the 77th Regiment of Foot (Montgomerie's Highlanders)—into the Cherokee Lower Towns in June 1760. Montgomery's expedition burned Toxaway along with other Lower Towns, including Keowee, Estatoe, and Sugar Town, killing or capturing around 100 Cherokee. The campaign aimed to relieve the besieged garrison at Fort Prince George, located near Keowee.^[5][6]

Montgomery's force subsequently attempted to advance into the Middle Towns but was ambushed and turned back at the Battle of Echoee near the town of Etchoe. The expedition withdrew to the coast without achieving a lasting military settlement. Toxaway was rebuilt by the Cherokee by 1762, following the end of hostilities.^[6]

In the summer of 1776, after Cherokee attacks on frontier settlements in South Carolina prompted by British encouragement during the American Revolutionary War, South Carolina organized a punitive expedition under Colonel Andrew Williamson. Williamson mustered approximately 1,800 militia troops and a contingent of Catawba scouts and marched into the Cherokee Lower Towns in August 1776. His force burned Toxaway, along with Keowee, Seneca, Estatoe, and other Lower Towns, destroying crops and food stores.^[2][1][7]

Williamson's South Carolina campaign was coordinated with a simultaneous expedition from North Carolina under General Griffith Rutherford, who led approximately 2,400 men against the Cherokee Middle Towns and Valley Towns further west. A third column under Colonel William Christian of Virginia struck the Overhill Towns in present-day Tennessee. Together, the three expeditions destroyed more than 50 Cherokee towns during the summer and autumn of 1776, leaving thousands of Cherokee without food or shelter.^[8][9]

Unlike the rebuilding that followed Montgomery's 1760 raid, Toxaway was not reoccupied after 1776. The Treaty of DeWitt's Corner, signed on May 20, 1777, formally ceded most of the Cherokee Lower Towns' territory in South Carolina to the state, encompassing the lands of present-day Anderson, Greenville, Oconee, and Pickens counties, except for a narrow strip in western Oconee County that the Cherokee retained until 1815.^[10]

The French botanist André Michaux, sent to North America by Louis XVI to collect plants for the royal gardens, traveled through the former Cherokee Lower Towns region in 1787. Setting out on June 11 from the site of the Cherokee village of Seneca (near present-day Clemson) with two Cherokee guides and an interpreter, Michaux traversed the mountain country and recorded the location of former Cherokee settlements, including the Toxaway site, in his botanical journals. During this journey he discovered Shortia galacifolia (Oconee bells), a rare plant that no other botanist would relocate for nearly a century.^[2][11]

The former town site lies within the Jocassee Gorges region, an area of approximately 43,000 acres (17,000 ha) managed by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources for conservation and recreation. The valley where Toxaway stood was inundated in 1973 when Duke Power Company completed Jocassee Dam as part of the Keowee-Toxaway Hydroelectric Project. The dam, standing approximately 385 feet (117 m) high and 1,800 feet (550 m) long, impounded Lake Jocassee, a reservoir with a surface area of 7,565 acres (3,061 ha). Construction of the dam and reservoir submerged archaeological sites, cemeteries, and communities dating to the Cherokee period and later European settlement.^[12][13]

The nearby Keowee-Toxaway State Park, established in 1970 on lands formerly owned by Duke Power along the shores of Lake Keowee, preserves interpretive exhibits on Cherokee history in the region. Archaeological artifacts recovered before the flooding of the Jocassee and Keowee valleys are held at the Museum of the Cherokee in South Carolina, located in Walhalla.^[14]

• Anglo-Cherokee War
• Cherokee–American wars
• Cherokee War of 1776
• Deerskin trade
• Historic Cherokee settlements
• Jocassee Gorges
• Keowee
• Keowee-Toxaway State Park
• Treaty of DeWitt's Corner

• Calloway, Colin G. (1995). The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-47569-3.
• Hatley, Tom (1993). The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-509638-5.
• Mooney, James (1900). Myths of the Cherokee. 19th Annual Report. Bureau of American Ethnology.