The Upper towns lay for the most part on the Western Waters, as they were called by the Americans,--the streams running into the Tennessee.

Their inhabitants were known as Overhill Cherokees and were chiefly Otari; but the towns were none of them permanent, and sometimes shifted their positions, even changing from one group to another.

The Lower towns, inhabited by the Erati, lay in the flat lands of upper Georgia and South Carolina, and were the least important.

The third group, larger than either of the others and lying among the hills and mountains between them, consisted of the Middle towns.

Its borders were ill-marked and were ever shifting.
Thus the towns of the Cherokees stretched from the high upland region, where rise the loftiest mountains of eastern America, to the warm, level, low country, the land of the cypress and the long-leaved pine.
Each village stood by itself, in some fertile river-bottom, with around it apple orchards and fields of maize.