Oconostota

Oconostota[a] (c. 1707–1783) was a Cherokee skiagusta (war chief) of Chota, which was for nearly four decades the primary town in the Overhill territory, and within what is now Monroe County, Tennessee.

Oconostota's Cherokee name, according to Mooney, was "Aganstata," which he translated as "groundhog-sausage" (agana: "groundhog"; tsistau : "I am pounding it"[b]).

[citation needed] Some sources claim Nionne Ollie was a Natchez refugee who was adopted as the daughter of Oconostota's wife (as the Cherokee were a matrilineal society, inheritance and descent went through the mother's clan.

[4] In February 1760 Oconostata led a retaliatory attack on Fort Prince George in South Carolina, where colonists had imprisoned 29 Cherokee chiefs seeking peace and then executed them.

[citation needed] During the late 20th-century excavations at the site of Chota, prior to the Tellico Reservoir impoundment, the remains of Oconostota were found.

It has become a tradition to place a pebble on his gravestone to symbolize the permanence of his memory and legacy, since a stone can never die.