123. Local Legends Of South Carolina

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

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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, Käwân'-urâ'sûñ'yï or Käwân'-tsurâ'-sûñ'yï, "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 bead of Keowee river; it has been incorrectly rendered "Place of shedding tears," from daksäwa'ihû, "he is shedding tears." The correct Cherokee form of the name is Dûksa'ï or Dûkw`sa'ï, a word which can not be analyzed and of which the meaning is now lost,