Chattanooga, Tennessee: A Name the Cherokees Said Wasn't Theirs

Chattanooga, Tennessee, took a Native name in 1838, but Cherokee speakers told James Mooney it wasn’t a Cherokee word and had no meaning in their language. Mooney, whose study of the Cherokees was published by the federal Bureau of American Ethnology, wrote that the name first belonged to some spot on Chattanooga Creek, and that his best informants guessed it came from the Chickasaw language.

Before it was Chattanooga

For years the place on the river went by a plainer name: Ross’s Landing. Which Ross, though, depends on the book you open. Goodspeed’s 1887 county history says it “took its name from the Scotchman, Ross, or his descendants.” Mooney, writing in 1902, says the landing got its name “from a store kept there by Lewis Ross, brother of the chief John Ross.” George C. Connor’s 1889 guide to the city mentions a ferry there run by John Ross himself.

Whichever Ross it was, Connor says the landing grew into a trading town after the Cherokees were removed. Goodspeed says a post office opened at Ross’ Landing on March 22, 1837, with John P. Long as postmaster, and its name was changed to Chattanooga on November 14, 1838.

A vote in a log schoolhouse

Connor, who’d lived in the city for nearly 20 years when he wrote his guide, describes how the new name won. In 1838, when the town was laid out, “the name Chattanooga was selected, after a lively contest, which occurred in the log school-house that stood on the corner of Fifth and Lookout streets.” The losing names were Lookout City and Montevideo, which he says had the backing of “a minority of the citizens.” You can only guess what the city would feel like today as Montevideo, Tennessee.

That same year, Connor notes, the Cherokees were removed west. Most of the nation, led by John Ross, had refused to accept the treaty, “but the powers were against them, and they had to yield,” and in the fall of 1838 the last of them left. The town kept a name from the country they’d been made to leave.

So what does Chattanooga mean?

Here’s the honest answer: nobody knows for sure, and the old books say so. Connor: “The meaning of ‘Chattanooga’ is unknown.” Goodspeed: the meaning “is uncertain, though the origin is doubtless from the Indians.”

Mooney dug further than the local books. He says the Cherokees pronounce the name Tsatanu’gi, “but say that it is not a Cherokee word and has no meaning in their language.” His best informants thought it might come from Chickasaw (he writes “Chickasaw (Choctaw)”), and he calls that possible, since Chickasaw country once reached a long way up the Tennessee River. Connor heard a different Cherokee tradition: that the name came from “another race” who lived there before them, and that the Cherokees “adopted it without enquiry as to its meaning.” Those two ideas don’t cancel out, but neither one gives you a translation.

You may have seen Chattanooga translated as “crow’s nest.” Even the U.S. Geological Survey printed that once: Henry Gannett’s 1902 place-name book called it an Indian word “meaning ‘crow’s nest’ or ‘eagle’s nest,’” and the 1905 edition left Chattanooga out. Mooney had an explanation for the crow’s nest. The Cherokees sometimes called the city Atla’nuwa’, which he translates as “Tla’nuwa (Hawk) hole,” their old name for a bluff on the south side of the river at the foot of Market Street. He thought that’s “probably” where a magazine writer got the idea that Chattanooga means “The crow’s nest.” If he’s right, the name of a bluff got passed off as the meaning of a different word.

Sources & further reading

• James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (Bureau of American Ethnology, 1902). Tsatanu’gi, “not a Cherokee word,” the guess of Chickasaw origin, Atla’nuwa’ as “Tla’nuwa (Hawk) hole” and the “crow’s nest” claim it probably inspired (pp. 412–413); Atla’nuwa as the old name of the bluff at the foot of Market Street (p. 511); the name first applied to a point on Chattanooga Creek, and Ross’ landing named for Lewis Ross’s store (p. 536).
• George C. Connor, Historical Guide to Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain (1889), pp. 9–10. Ross’ Landing and John Ross’s ferry, the removal of the Cherokees in the fall of 1838, the vote in the log schoolhouse, Lookout City and Montevideo, and the Cherokee tradition that the name came from “another race.”
• Goodspeed Publishing Co., History of Tennessee, East Tennessee edition (1887), Hamilton County sketch. Ross’s Landing named for “the Scotchman, Ross, or his descendants,” the town named Chattanooga when laid out in 1838 with a meaning “uncertain,” and the post office dates of March 22, 1837, and November 14, 1838.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, 1st ed. (U.S. Geological Survey, 1902), p. 69. Chattanooga as an “Indian word, meaning ‘crow’s nest’ or ‘eagle’s nest.’” The 1905 second edition has no Chattanooga entry.
• GNIS feature 1307240 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Chattanooga, in Hamilton County.