Tanasi

Chota and Tanasi Cherokee Village Sites
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Monument overlooking the Tanasi site
Location	Monroe County, Tennessee
Nearest city	Vonore
Coordinates	35°32′55″N 84°07′57″W / 35.5486°N 84.1324°W / 35.5486; -84.1324
Built	c. 1600–1700 A.D.
NRHP reference No.	73001813
Added to NRHP	1973

This article contains Cherokee syllabic characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Cherokee syllabics.

Tanasi (Cherokee: ᏔᎾᏏ, romanized: Tanasi; also rendered Tanase, Tenasi, Tenassee, Tunissee, Tennessee, and other such variations) was a historic Overhill settlement site in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The village became the namesake for the state of Tennessee. It was abandoned by the Cherokee in the 19th century for a rising town whose chief was more powerful. Tanasi served as the de facto capital of the Overhill Cherokee from as early as 1721 until 1730, when the capital shifted to Great Tellico.

The Cherokee town of Chota developed immediately north of and later than Tanasi. The two sites were divided by an unnamed stream. By the 1740s, Chota had become the more prominent of the two towns, holding the townhouse where the community met, and chiefs would meet with colonial emissaries. Although Chota and Tanasi had distinct political, social, and demographic traits, research excavators in the late 1960s determined that the two towns are archaeologically indistinguishable. They were among the numerous Overhill Towns, as called by English colonists, who traveled over the Appalachian Mountains from the east to reach them.^[1] The two towns are grouped as a single listing on the National Register of Historic Places, although Tanasi was given its own site designation (40MR62) in 1972.^[2]

Both sites were submerged by creation of Tellico Reservoir, after completion of a dam on the Little Tennessee River in 1979. Archeological surveys were conducted of these sites in the 1970s prior to their flooding, and thousands of artifacts were recovered.

In the 1980s, the Tennessee Valley Authority placed a monument on the shoreline above the submerged site of Tanasi that commemorates its history and its legacy as the origin of the name Tennessee. This monument is approximately 7 miles (11 km) southeast of Vonore, just off Highway 455 (Citico Road). The site is managed by the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation.^[3]