212 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 118 



lated the warlike spirit of the Cherokee. Not until May 1761, after 

 a large force of British regular troops under Colonel Grant accom- 

 panied by a provincial regiment came from Charleston to Fort Prince 

 George and fought the Cherokee near their town of Etchoe were the 

 Cherokee willing to make peace. 



When peace was declared the Cherokee requested that some officer 

 of the British Army be sent to their Nation as a hostage, to live with 

 them for a time as a pledge of good faith. Lieut. Henry Timberlake 

 volunteered for this dangerous service and some time late in 1761 

 he visited the capital of the Over Hill Cherokee, Great Chote on 

 Little Tennessee River. He remained several months in that country 

 and prepared in March 1762 his celebrated map of the Cherokee 

 towns on the Little Tennessee. Of the town house at Chote, he says : 



The town-house, in which are transacted all public business and diversions, 

 is raised with wood, and covered over with earth, and has all the appearance 

 of a small mountain at a little distance. It is built in the form of a sugar loaf, 

 and large enough to contain 500 persons, but extremely dark, having besides 

 the door, which is so narrow that but one at a time can pass, and that after 

 much winding and turning, but one small aperture to let the smoke out, which 

 is so ill contrived, that most of it settles in the roof of the house. Within 

 it has the appearance of an ancient amphitheatre, the seats being raised one 

 above another, leaving an area in the middle in the center of which stands the 

 fire ; the seats of the head warriors are nearest to it." 



Of the Cherokee villages Bushnell says : 



Considering the size and importance of the Cherokee it is surprising how 

 little is known regarding the appearance of their dwellings and other struc- 

 tures. But their villages were not compactly built, as among other tribes. 

 The houses were widely scattered and were often far removed from the center 

 of the community, or village, which was indicated by the town house. 25 



In the early spring of 1776 William Bartram visited the Gierokee 

 town of Cowe, in North Carolina, on the upper reaches of Little 

 Tennessee Eiver. He found a town house situated on a mound 20 

 feet high in the midst of a village of about 100 houses. This town 

 house was a circular structure large enough to hold several hundred 

 people. It was built in the general form of a circular cone and 

 was some 30 feet in height from the floor to the peak of the roof. 

 Of this structure Bartram says : 



They first fix in the ground a circular range of posts or trunks of trees, about 

 6 feet high, at equal distances, which are notched at top, to receive into them 

 from one to another, a range of beams or wall plates; within this is another 

 circular order of very large and strong pillars, above twelve feet high, notched 

 in like manner at the top, to receive another range of wall plates ; and within 

 this is yet another third range of stronger and higher pillars, but very few 

 in number, standing at a greater distance from each other; and lastly in the 



24 Timberlake, 1765. 



25 Bushnell, 1919, p. 59. 



