What is "tugaloo"

Tugaloo was a Cherokee town on the Tugaloo River, at the mouth of Toccoa Creek, near present-day Toccoa, Georgia and Travelers Rest in Stephens County, Georgia.

The town's proper name, in Cherokee, was Dugiluyi (ᏚᎩᎷᏱ), abbreviated to Dugilu (ᏚᎩᎷ). In English it was spelled variously as Tugaloo, Toogelah, Toogoola, etc. Its meaning in Cherokee is uncertain, but "seems to refer to a place at the forks of a stream".

Tugaloo was one of the Chickamauga Cherokee "Lower Towns", the principal one being Keowee. The terms "Lower Towns" and "Lower Cherokee" were given by the English colonists to refer to the Cherokee who lived on the Keowee River, Tugaloo River, and other headstreams of the Savannah River. The terms correspond in general with the Eastern Dialect of Cherokee, which was originally spoken by what the English called the Lower Cherokee in the region of the Lower Towns.

U.S. Special Agent to the Cherokees and Chickasaws, General Joseph Martin, was in the Tugaloo town in 1788, where he wrote a letter to Creek leader Alexander McGillivray. Martin sends McGillivray the resolutions of Congress pertaining to Cherokee affairs and expresses a desire for tensions between the United States and the Creek Nation to end. He begs McGillivray's assistance in recovering his horses that were purportedly stolen by Creeks and asks if McGillivray will allow several hundred families to settle in the Tombigbee area. The letter was intercepted, and when the letter was discovered, the North Carolina General Assembly launched an investigation into Martin's conduct. He was later exonerated when it turned out that he was acting as a spy on Patrick Henry's instructions to ferret out the nature of McGillivray's ties to the Spanish, who were then active in Florida.

Today the Tugaloo River is impounded by Hartwell Dam. The dam's reservoir, Lake Hartwell, floods the Tugaloo River to a few miles upriver of the old site of Tugaloo town.