As the Cherokee withdrew from all of South Carolina except a small
strip in the extreme west as early as 1777, the memory of the old
legends localized within the state has completely faded from the
tribe. There remain, however, some local names upon which the whites
who succeeded to the inheritance have built traditions of more or
less doubtful authenticity.
In Pickens and Anderson counties, in the northwest corner of the state,
is a series of creeks joining Keowee river and named, respectively in
order, from above downward, Mile, Six-mile, Twelve-mile, Eighteen-mile,
Twenty-three-mile, and Twenty-six-mile. According to the local story,
they were thus christened by a young woman, in one of the early Indian
wars, as she crossed each ford on a rapid horseback flight to the lower
settlements to secure help for the beleaguered garrison of Fort Prince
George. The names really date back almost to the first establishment
of the colony, and were intended to indicate roughly the distances
along the old trading path from Fort Ninety-six, on Henleys creek
of Saluda river, to Keowee, at that time the frontier town of the
Cherokee Nation, the two points being considered 96 miles apart as the
trail ran. Fort Prince George was on the east bank of Keowee river,
near the entrance of Crow creek, and directly opposite the Indian town.
Conneross: The name of a creek which enters Keowee (or Seneca) river
from the west, in Anderson county; it is a corruption of the Lower
Cherokee dialectic form, Kawân'-urâ'sûñyi or Kawân'-tsurâ'-sûñyi,
"Where the duck fell off." According to the still surviving Cherokee
tradition, a duck once had her nest upon a cliff overlooking the
stream in a cave with the mouth so placed that in leaving the nest
she appeared to fall from the cliff into the water. There was probably
an Indian settlement of the same name:
Toxaway: The name of a creek and former Cherokee settlement at the
extreme head of Keowee river; it has been incorrectly rendered "Place
of shedding tears," from daksawa'ihû, "he is shedding tears." The
correct Cherokee form of the name is Dûksa'i or Dûkw'sa'i, a word
which can not be analyzed and of which the meaning is now lost.