Nottely River

The Nottely River is a river in the United States. The river originates in the Blue Ridge Mountains in northern Georgia. The river flows for 51.1 miles (82.2 km) into the artificial Hiwassee Reservoir in North Carolina. The Nottely River is dammed in Georgia, creating Lake Nottely.

The region was occupied by Native Americans, associated with modern day Muskogean tribes, until the early 18th century. The earliest European maps only vaguely show the area to be occupied by a mountain branch of the Apalachee people. However, it is quite likely that groups ancestral to the Creek and/or Yuchi Indians occupied the Nottely River Basin at some time in the past. After the Cherokees occupied the region, most of their villages had names from the Muskogee (Creek) language. However, the region seems to have remained thinly populated due to its proximity to Creek Indian territory.

The origin of the word, Nottely, is not known for certain, but appears to be derived from the Hitchiti-Creek word Note-le, which means, "People on the Other Side."

In 1715 the Cherokees invited leaders of all the major Creek provinces to a diplomatic conference in the nearby town of Tugaloo, at the head of the Savannah River. All of the Creek leaders were murdered in their sleep. This act of treachery precipated a 40-year-long war between the Creeks and the Cherokees. Initially, all the branches of the Creeks were involved, but only the Kowita branch fought the war continuously. By the 1750s, the Kowita Creeks alone had gained so much military prowness that they were consistently defeating the Cherokees in battle. One Creek war leader bragged that he had sent women and boys into battle, but still captured another Cherokee town. By 1755 the Kowita Creeks had destroyed all of the Cherokee towns and villages in the Nottely and Hiwassee Valleys. The 1755 John Mitchell Map labels the entire region "Deserted Cherokee settlement."

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