http://peopleofonefire.com/tag/nacoochee-valleyRabbit Clan (Chestua, Choestoe, Chestatee, Tanasi, Tennessee)
This may have been actually the Mouse Clan because the Tennessee Uchee and Cherokee word for rabbit is very close in sound to the Itsate Creek word for mouse. Rabbit makes more sense however.
The Uchee Rabbit Clan once occupied the extremely important trade route that followed the Hiwassee River (TN, NC, GA), Ocoee River (TN, GA), Nottely River (GA) and Chestatee River (GA). It was anchored by an ancient large town on Hiwassee Island, TN that the Spanish called Tanasqui. Along this route can still be found place names derived from the Uchee word for rabbit, Choestua. Chestatee is the Anglicized version of the hybrid Uchee-Itsate name Choestua-te, which means “Rabbit People.”
The rabbit is the totem animal of the Catawbas. Many Catawba scholars insist that their ancestors once lived on the west side of the Appalachians in eastern Tennessee. This cultural memory very likely remembers a paired relationship between the Uchee and Siouans of that region. The Tanasi, Tesna, Taensa or Tensaw People are normally associated with the Middle and Upper Tennessee River Basins, but early South Carolina maps also show them having a province in northern South Carolina that was allied with the Catawba.
There is a story, often repeated in history books, of a conflict in 1713 or 1714 between the Uchee town of Chestua and Cherokee towns on the other side of the Hiwassee River – supposedly in Tennessee. We only get the Cherokee side of the story so we don’t know exactly what triggered the conflict. In the late 19th century, the Cherokee elder, Swimmer, told Smithsonian ethnologist, James Mooney, that the war was started when the Uchees killed a Cherokee man after living peacefully across the Hiwasssee River from the Cherokees for a century. They then attacked the single town of Chestowee (Chestua) in revenge. However, contemporary Cherokee history sites state that the Cherokees conquered all of southeastern Tennessee in 1714.
Most contemporary history books provide the official South Carolina side of the story . . . that Indian traders Eleazer Wiggan and Alexander Long sold firearms to the Cherokees in Tennessee and agreed to buy all slaves captured, if the Cherokees would attack Yuchi towns along the Hiwassee River in present day Tennessee. The South Carolinians were seeking revenge because a Yuchi man in the town of Chestowee had cut off Wiggan’s ear after being caught cheating the Yuchi. Most texts place the location of “Chestowee” on the Hiwassee River in Tennessee. Several Yuchi towns, including Chestowee were supposedly destroyed and the survivors were marched off into slavery in South Carolina.
The Cherokee or South Carolina versions of the story are often repeated in Cherokee history web sites, Wikipedia, plus books by academicians. The authors should have looked at the maps! In 1714, the French occupied a fort at the confluence of the Tennessee and Tennessee River and all the territory between there and the Uchee on the Hiwassee River was occupied by Koasati and Upper Creeks. As can be seen above, the Cherokees couldn’t have possibly been neighbors of the Uchee for a century. They were nowhere around.
Furthermore, the Uchee town of Chestua in Tennessee continued to be shown on the maps for several more decades. The Cherokees did not conquer all of Southeast Tennessee in 1714. Chestua, Tennessee was not “cut off.” It was in Upper Creek territory until 1764, when the Upper Creeks agreed to withdraw southward from the Cherokees in order to create a buffer between the two peoples. It should be remembered that the Cherokees requested that the British build Fort Loudon on the Little Tennessee River in 1755 to protect them from attacks by the French-allied Upper Creeks living on the south side of the Hiwassee River.
Uchee Rabbit Clan villages were massacred in 1713 and 1714, but their probable locations were along the Upper Hiwassee River in North Carolina and Georgia. However, some of the Rabbit Clan survived. A Uchee village named Choestoe on maps continued to exist at the headwaters of the Nottely River in southern Union County, GA until 1838. Of course, local histories call it a Cherokee town.
Frogtown: There was also a Uchee village in nearby northern Lumpkin County, GA, which has been mistakenly labeled Cherokee. It controlled the vital trade link between Choestoe and the headwaters of the Chestatee River. Throughout the 1700s, the Cherokees derisively called the Highland Uchee, the Frog People (Ani-Wolosi or Ani-walasi). The earliest maps of the State of Georgia show a village named Frogtown on the trade route between Choestoe and the headwaters Yahoola Creek, a major tributary of the Chestatee River. Yahoola is a Creek word, so there were obviously still Creeks living around Dahlonega at that time.
Late 19th and 20th century historians saw the word Frogtown. Not knowing that this was the common Cherokee name for the Uchee, they assumed that it was a Cherokee village then changed its name to Walasi-yi (Place of the Frog) – a name that was never used on maps of the Cherokee Nation. Yet again, the Uchees were “cut off” from history.
From 1785 to 1838 official maps of the State of Georgia only used Creek or English names for Indian village in the Nacoochee Valley. The 1810 Sturgis Map of Georgia used the Creek word for bear, Nocose, for Yonah Mountain. This is primary evidence that even in this late date, the occupants of this area were ethnic Creeks and Uchee - not Cherokees - even though they were officially in the Cherokee Nation. Chota means "Frog" in Creek. This fact strongly suggests that all the "Cherokee lore" now put into local tourist brochures were the product of White Men, not the Native people, who actually lived there. In 1820, the village of Nokose sold its land to a group of families in Burke County, NC and moved to the Creek Nation in Alabama. However, the Eastern Band of Cherokees labels the Nacoochee Mound as "A Sacred Cherokee Heritage Site."
From 1785 to 1838 official maps of the State of Georgia only used Creek or English names for Indian village in the Nacoochee Valley. The 1810 Sturgis Map of Georgia used the Creek word for bear, Nocose, for Yonah Mountain. The Cherokee word for bear, Yonah, was not applied to this mountain until a couple of decades after all Native peoples were gone. This is primary evidence that even in this late date, the occupants of this area were ethnic Creeks and Uchee – not Cherokees – even though they were officially in the Cherokee Nation. Chota means “Frog” in Creek. This fact strongly suggests that all the “Cherokee lore” now put into local tourist brochures, including a couple of Cherokee names applied to local mountains, were the product of White Men who later settled there, not the Native people, who actually lived there. In 1820, the village of Nokose sold its land to a group of families in Burke County, NC and moved to the Creek Nation in Alabama. Had the Cherokee tribal government in NW Georgia considered this land, Cherokee, it would have forbidden the sale. However, the Eastern Band of Cherokees now labels the Nacoochee Mound as “A Sacred Cherokee Heritage Site.” A comprehensive investigation by University of Georgia archaeologists in 2004 could find no Cherokee artifacts in the village around the Nacoochee Mound.
A little known fact is that there were Rabbit Clan Uchee hamlets in the rugged Cohutta Mountains of Glimer and Towns Counties, GA and Polk County, TN until at least 1911. These were the last traditional Native American communities in the states of Georgia and Tennessee.
Uchee men cut firewood and hauled copper ore for the copper mines in Copper Hill, Tennessee. About 15 years later, the US Forest Service quickly acquired their remote farmsteads because they lacked legal titles to the properties. Most of these Uchee moved to the Snowbird Cherokee Reservation in Graham County, NC, where they retain their separate identity and physical appearance to this day.
Re: Less known ancient megalithic archaeological sites
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Thanks Iloveyou for the posting of lesser known megalithic structures! I can see there is much for me to plow through! It is mindboggling all the information available here on the Forum! I probably won't live long enough to get through it all! 
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