GREEN CORN CEREMONY

Tugaloo, the location of the sacred fire for the Lower Towns, was one of the oldest Cherokee towns. When the village was destroyed August 1776 by the American commander Andrew Williamson, the fire keeper took part of the sacred fire with him as the people escaped to join Dragging Canoe and his band of Cherokees in Alabama and Tennessee. It is said that the fire still burns deep down in the mound. The top of the mound is all that can be seen of the great Cherokee town of Tugaloo after the river was flooded to make the Hartwell Lake.

Tugaloo was a Cherokee town on the
Tugaloo River. The Tugaloo River is a short river bordering Georgia and South Carolina at the mouth of Toccoa Creek, near present-day Toccoa, Georgia

The town's proper name, in Cherokee, was Dugiluyi, abbreviated to Dugilu. 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" (Mooney, 1900).

Tugaloo was one of the 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.

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.

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