View source for Isunigu

{{short description|Human settlement in South Carolina, United States of America}}
'''Isunigu''' (also called '''Seneca''', '''Esseneca''', and '''Sinica''') was a [[Cherokee]] town on the [[Keowee River]]. It was on the west side of the Keowee River, near the mouth of Coneross Creek, in today's [[Oconee County, South Carolina]]. Present-day [[Clemson, South Carolina|Clemson]] and [[Seneca, South Carolina]] later developed near here.
During the colonial period, Isunigu was classified by English traders and colonists as one of the Cherokee "Lower Towns", a geographical grouping that included Piedmont towns along the Keowee  River in southwestern South Carolina and towns along the [[Tugaloo River]] in northeastern Georgia. The principal town of this grouping was considered to be [[Keowee (Cherokee town)|Keowee]], on the river of the same name. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Cherokee ceded their land of the Lower Towns to [[South Carolina]].
[[Andrew Pickens (congressman)|Andrew Pickens]] developed his "Hopewell" plantation on the east side of the Keowee River. Following the American Revolution and conflict between the Cherokee and European Americans, this was where the 1785 [[Treaty of Hopewell]] was signed by both parties.
The site of Isunigu, a settlement that likely had more than a thousand years of previous indigenous habitation, as did other towns in the area, was flooded by the creation in the 20th century of [[Lake Hartwell]]. It was formed as the reservoir behind [[Hartwell Dam]] on the Keowee River. The meaning of the name ''Isunigu'' is lost, along with the artifacts and other materials from prehistoric and historic years now submerged under Lake Hartwell.
==References==
*[[James Mooney|Mooney, James]]. ''Myths of the Cherokee'' (1900, reprint 1995). See [[James Mooney]].
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[[Category:Cherokee towns]]
[[Category:Pre-historic cities in the United States]]
[[Category:Chickamauga Cherokee]]
[[Category:Pre-statehood history of South Carolina]]
[[Category:Geography of Oconee County, South Carolina]]
[[Category:Former populated places in South Carolina]]
[[Category:Former Native American populated places in the United States]]