What is "tanasi"

Tanasi (also spelled Tanase, Tenasi, Tenassee, Tunissee, Tennessee, and other such variations) was an historic Overhill Cherokee village site in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The village was the namesake for the state of Tennessee. Abandoned by the Cherokee in the 19th century, since 1979 the town site has been submerged by the Tellico Lake impoundment of the Little Tennessee River. Tanasi served as the de facto capital of the 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 had become the more prominent of the two towns, holding the townhouse where chiefs would meet with colonial emissaries. Although Chota and Tanasi had distinct political, social, and demographic traits, excavators in the late 1960s determined that the two towns are archaeologically indistinguishable. They were among what were called the Overhill Towns by English colonists, who traveled over the Appalachian Mountains from the east to reach them. 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.

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 south of Vonore, just off Highway 455 (Citico Road). The site is managed by the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation.