was opposite a sharp bend in the river known as Bacon's Bend. Tanasi was situated on a relatively flat terrace flanked by the river on one side and a series of high, steep hills on the other. These hills, noted on Timberlake's 1762 map, are part of the Appalachian Ridge-and-Valley Province, which spans much of the upper Tennessee Valley. The Appalachian Range proper rises a few miles south of the Chota-Tanasi site. History Tanasi first appears in the historical record in the early 18th century, at a time when the fur trade between the English and the Cherokee had grown to the extent that the colonists wanted to regulate it. Ethnologist James Mooney reported that the meaning of the town's name is unknown, but noted that it was used for other places among Cherokee lands in Tennessee and North Carolina. The Cherokee name for the river upon which Tanasi was situated was probably Callamaco. Early Euro-American explorers and traders renamed the river after Tanasi. Among the earliest English traders to reside at Tanasi was Eleazar Wiggan— nicknamed "Old Rabbit" by the Cherokee— who operated out of Tanasi as early as 1711. He also served as a guide for later colonial diplomats and emissaries. In 1725, the province of South Carolina dispatched Colonel George Chicken to Tanasi to obtain Cherokee assistance in the colony's struggles with the Creek. Chicken indicated in his journals that the chief of Tanasi— known as the Tanasi Warrior or Head Warrior of Tanasi— ruled over the Cherokee Overhill, Middle, and Valley towns in the region. (But this would have been unusual. The designation of Middle and Valley Towns generally referred to groups of towns on the eastern side of the Appalachians in Western North Carolina. Kituwa was chief among the Middle Towns. Not only was Cherokee society highly decentralized and the towns generally exercised considerable autonomy under their own chiefs, but travel between these territories was difficult in the mountainous region.) Chicken recorded a speech in which the Tanasi Warrior pledged support for the English. The two later engaged in a pipe-smoking session in which the Tanasi Warrior told Chicken of recent Creek hostilities in the area. Colonel John Herbert visited Tanasi on a similar mission in 1727 and reported meeting with the "King and Long Warriour" of Tanasi at the Cherokee townhouse. In 1730, Sir Alexander Cuming, a trader claiming to be an emissary of