In 1869 a group of hunters on Iron Mountain, TN near the intersection of the current US 421 and the Appalachian Trail discovered the burial mound of several decayed bodies.  Decayed “implements of war” and a Spanish coin led to identifying these bodies as dead Spanish soldiers.  They were on a direct line between Saltville and Morganton, on an old Indian Trail that passed through Mountain City.  Evidently these soldiers were returning to Fort San Juan when they died, perhaps of wounds sustained at Saltville or Chilhowie. 

          In retaliation the Indians burned Fort San Juan.  A single survivor made his way back to Santa Elena.  No one knows what happened to the six remaining forts in the interior.

            In 1671 Captain Henry Batte led an expedition from the James River settlements to Saltville, and noted in his journal that he had encountered Indians there who were makers and venders of salt to the other Indian tribes of the Southeast.  Artifacts found at Saltville show that the Yuchi traded with Indians as far as Texas. 

            This early contact with Europeans, and their wide spread commerce with other Indian Tribes led to the Yuchi’s early acquisition of Old World diseases, which hit them earlier than they did the Cherokee.  These diseases almost wiped out the Yuchi.  Those that remained were militarily weakened, and the Cherokee began a war of extermination against the Yuchi.  The last stronghold of the Yuchi, at Hiawasse, was wiped out by the Cherokee in 1714. 

            The Saltville salt works were abandoned, and forgotten.  There is no evidence that the Cherokee made salt here.  Major Charles Campbell, in 1750, became the first European to make salt at Saltville.  It seems that he and his neighbors thought that it was a new idea. 

             Remnants of the Yuchi were adopted by the Cherokee. Today there are people living in Lee and Wise County, VA who have traditionally believed that they were Cheorkee, but who have recently found out by DNA testing that, while they are of Indian ancestry, they are not Cherokee, or of other specifically identifiable tribe.  This finding would suggest that there are descendants of fragments of the Yuchi still living in the region.   

            There are perhaps five Yuchi speakers still living in Oklahoma.  Linguistic studies have begun, and their finding is that the Yuchi language is unrelated to any other known tongue. 

            After their annihilation of the Yuchi in 1714, the Cherokee moved into the Valleys of the upper Holston and Clinch Rivers.  The Yuchi commercial center on the Great Warrior’s Path south of Saltville acquired a Cherokee name, Chilhowie, which means ‘Valley of Many Deer’. 

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