At the time of first European contact, the Yuchi people lived in what is now eastern
Tennessee.
deerhide map of the
tribes between
Charleston (
left) and
Virginia (
right) following the displacements of a century of
disease,
enslavement, and the 1715–17
Yamasee War Yuchi towns were later documented in western South Carolina and northern Georgia, where the tribe had migrated to escape pressure from the Cherokee. "Mount Pleasant" was noted as being on the
Savannah River in present-day
Effingham County, Georgia, from about 1722 to about 1750. To take advantage of trade, the British established a
trading post and small military garrison there, which they called Mount Pleasant. "Euchee Town" (also called Uche Town), a large settlement on the
Chattahoochee River, was documented from the middle to late 18th century. It was located near Euchee (or Uche) Creek, about ten miles downriver from the Muscogee settlement of
Coweta Old Town. The
naturalist William Bartram visited Euchee Town in 1778. In his letters he ranked it as the largest and most compact Indian town he had ever encountered, with large, well-built houses. US Indian agent
Benjamin Hawkins also visited the town and described the Yuchi as "more orderly and industrious" than the other tribes of the
Creek Confederacy. The Yuchi began to move on, some into the Florida panhandle. ,
Georgia. In the late 18th century, English colonists noted Patsiliga, a settlement on the
Flint River. Other Yuchi settlements may have been those villages noted on the
Oconee River near Uchee Creek in
Wilkinson County, Georgia, and on Brier Creek in
Burke or
Screven counties, also in Georgia. A Yuchi town was known to exist from 1746 to 1751 at the site of present-day Silver Bluff in
Aiken County, South Carolina, which developed in the later 18th century. During the
Creek War of 1813–1814, which overlapped the
War of 1812, many Yuchi joined the
Red Sticks party, traditionalists opposed to the Muscogee people of the Lower Towns, who had adopted aspects of
European-American culture. Euchee Town decayed. The Yuchi tribe became one of the poorest of the Muscogee communities, at the same time gaining a bad reputation. The
archaeological site of the town, designated a
National Historic Landmark, is within the boundaries of present-day
Fort Benning,
Georgia. In the 1830s, the US government forcibly removed the Yuchi, along with the Muscogee, from Alabama and Georgia to
Indian Territory (present day
Oklahoma), west of the Mississippi River. The Yuchi settled in the north and northwestern parts of the Muscogee Nation. Three tribal towns which the Yuchi established there in the 19th century continue today: Duck Creek, Polecat, and Sand Creek. ==Second Seminole War==