Little River is a river in Tennessee which drains a area containing some of the most spectacular scenery in the southeastern United States. The first of the river are located within the borders of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For the remaining , the Little flows out of the mountains through Blount County to join the Tennessee River at Fort Loudon Lake in Knox County.
History, course and geology
Historically, the Little River lay in a region of contact between the Overhill Cherokee and the American colonies, later states, during the Cherokee–American wars that emerged from combined pressures of colonies' demands for settlement beyond the Proclamation Line of 1763 and loss of land by the Cherokee in their traditional homelands. In 1785, the self-proclaimed State of Franklin negotiated the Treaty of Dumplin Creek, which set a boundary with the Cherokee leader Aucoo of Chota and other Cherokee town chiefs whom Aucoo spoke on behalf of, at the ridge separating the Little River and Tennessee basins. In 1786, Houston's Station on the Little River was the site of assembly for a volunteer cavalry force, who, under the leadership of Governor John Sevier, a chief signatory of the Dumplin Creek treaty, rode to destroy three Cherokee towns in the vicinity of the Hiwassee River in retaliation for a Cherokee attack on a settler's house that killed two people north of the Holston River near present-day Knox County, beyond the boundary set by the Dumplin Creek treaty.