Hiwassee Island, also known as Jollys Island and Benham Island, is located in Meigs County, Tennessee, at the confluence of the Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers. It is about northeast of Chattanooga. The island was the second largest land mass on the Tennessee River at 781 acres before the Tennessee Valley Authority created the Chickamauga Lake as a part of the dam system on the Tennessee River in 1940. Much of the island is now submerged, leaving 400 acres above the waterline.
The island has been inhabited as early as the Archaic and Woodland periods. A Mississippian culture village was inhabited by people of the Hiwassee Island and Dallas phases beginning in the 11th century. It was a Cherokee village of about 300 people in the 19th century. The village was led by Chief John Jolly and Sam Houston lived there for three years.
When the State of Tennessee grew corn nearby to attract Canada geese, they attracted up to 20,000 sandhill cranes. Now there are fewer than 1,000 cranes, and a few hundred pelicans that stopover on their seasonal treks.
Native Americans
There are seventeen Native American tribes who have connections to the island. The island was inhabited intermittently through pre-historic periods into historic times. It was among a number of Native American Mound Builder sites in the Chickamauga Reservoir Basin. Mounds began to be built in the area in the 9th and 11th centuries. At some point, perhaps as early as the Late Woodland phase, there was a stockade that surrounded the village. Initially, residents hunted and gathered food in the area. They became farmers, growing maize, which likely led to a growth of the island's population. Initially, manufactured pottery was tempered with limestone, but later almost all of the town's pottery was tempered with shells. Hiwassee Island Complicated Stamp pottery, similar to that of northern Georgia, was made on the island by the Cherokee.
Cherokee village
Early settlement
It is suggested that the Cherokee began as a Woodland culture (1000 BC – AD 1000), and had adopted a general Southeastern pattern after having assimilated some of the traits of the Mississippian culture (ca. 800 CE to 1600 CE). Sustained interactions with whites began in the 17th century.
The Cherokee, who were centered in the highlands of North and South Carolina into the 17th century, expanded into Tennessee during or after whites settled in the area. The Cherokee assimilated some of the cultural traits of the Europeans.
After 1650, settlement by people of European descent impacted the lives of the Cherokee. Their population was reduced due to disease and warfare. Some villages were abandoned as the Cherokee gravitated to arable land for crops and ranching. There were fewer labor-intensive mounds and townhouses. Deerskins were traded by the Cherokee for manufactured goods, like garden tools, paint, clothing, beads, ornaments, and rum. They also traded for weapons that made it easier to hunt deer for skins. By the early 1700s, about 50,000 skins were exported from Charleston, South Carolina. The weapons made them more successful combatants when at war.
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, shell gorget styles and burial pits were made on Hiwassee Island. Stones were used in mound construction and earth lodges were constructed for ceremonial purposes. The dead were buried in chambered tombs. They used rattlesnake motifs to decorate shell gorgets.
Latter settlement
The last native people to inhabit the island were a small group of Cherokee, from the late 18th century into the 19th century. The Cherokee were led by Chief John Jolly (also known as Oolooteeskee). In 1809, Sam Houston came to live with the Cherokee. He later married Jolly's niece, Diana Rogers Gentry.
They cultivated corn and assimilated ways of Anglo-Europeans, such as establishing a constitution and treaties, as well as printing a newspaper called the Phoenix.
The Cherokee had developed a loose sociopolitical "tribal state", where earlier settlements of the late prehistoric (before 1550) and early historic periods (from 1550) had a more autonomous village-ceremonial-center groupings. There were three Cherokee historic districts by the early 19th century. 1) Ridge and Valley, or Overhill town, including Hiwassee Island, 2) Piedmont, or Lower Cherokee and 3) Blue Ridge, or Middle Cherokee districts. The Overhill towns were located in Ridge and Valley area of southeastern Tennessee, northwestern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama. There were different dialects for each of these districts. Western or Otali dialect was spoken in Tennessee in the Overhill districts.