Tomotley was a long-occupied Native American site on the lower Little Tennessee River in eastern Tennessee, inhabited from the Archaic period through the South Appalachian Mississippian era and later as a Cherokee town. Entering colonial records in 1756 under Attakullakulla, it figured in the politics of the French and Indian War and became a refuge for Ostenaco. Its strategic river ford made it the first Overhill town taken in 1776, and it remained ruined in 1779. Excavations from the 1880s through the 1970s revealed mounds, burials, numerous structures, and an unusual octagonal Cherokee councilhouse, deepening understanding of both Mississippian settlement and Cherokee community history before the site was submerged by Tellico Lake in 1979.