Keowee was a Cherokee town in the far northwest corner of present-day South Carolina. Located along the Lower Cherokee Traders Path, part of the Upper Road through the Piedmont, it was settled in what is present-day Oconee County at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Clemson developed south of here. The town was located on the banks of the Keowee River. When the river was dammed in a mid-20th century hydropower project, the former site of Keowee was submerged beneath the waters of Lake Keowee. Its artifacts and history were lost.
Early history
In the first half of the 18th century, approximately 2100 Cherokee inhabited sixteen towns east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Cherokee people were geographically divided into three regions: the Lower Towns of the Piedmont, the Middle Towns, and the Overhill Towns on the far side of the Appalachian Mountains. The Cherokee were highly decentralized and their towns were the most important units of government. There were seven Cherokee towns in the Lower Towns, of which Keowee was a principal one. The leaders or chiefs of each had a substantial amount of authority. Keowee Town is translated as "place of mulberries." It was also known as "Old Keowee," to distinguish it from other, later towns of the same name established after the Cherokee moved south and west.
The Cherokee allied with the British and played a significant role in the French and Indian War . The alliance was partly the result of diplomacy by Sir Alexander Cuming, who visited Keowee on March 23, 1730 and solicited the Cherokee as allies. As tensions rose with France, the English built a fort east of Keowee on the Savannah River. South Carolina governor Glen ordered this structure and named it Fort Prince George. During the French and Indian War, Nathaniel Gist urged one hundred Cherokee warriors to attack the Shawnee tribe, allies of the French in the Ohio River region. The alliance between the Cherokee and British collapsed due to mutual suspicion. During the Anglo-Cherokee War, the British destroyed Keowee and most of the rest of the Lower Towns. Keowee was razed during the first British campaign under the command of Archibald Montgomery. A second army under James Grant campaigned through the remaining Lower Towns and into the Middle Towns. Keowee was the birthplace of the father ofJohn Norton. Norton later became a chief of the Mohawk in the Iroquois League. He was of half Cherokee and half Scots ancestry. He was raised in his mother's culture, as the Cherokee had a matrilineal kinship system, with children taking their status from the mother's family and clan. His writings provide a rare American Indian perspective of the early 19th century in the United States. Norton spells the town name as Kuwoki. When naturalist William Bartram visited the town site in May 1776, he noted no Cherokee lived there. Before then, Anglo colonists had razed the town in the Anglo-Cherokee War.
Current geography
The former site of Keowee Town is now covered by Lake Keowee, formed by the damming of the Keowee River to provide cooling water for Oconee Nuclear Station. Built in 1970, it was part of a multi-million-dollar project to provide energy for upstate South Carolina. It is the first of three nuclear power plants built by Duke Power.
