If all you want is to know the six flags and when, it’s okay to skip to
the end. Otherwise, enjoy the background
and context.
Next to the temporary Viking camps at the beginning of the second
millennium of the Common Era, the earliest attempt to establish a permanent
colony in North America was that of Spain at San Miguel de Gualdape, probably
on Georgia’s Sapelo Island.
The Norse, by the way, continued trans-Atlantic voyages and trade with
native Americans until around 1400.
The first Europeans to enter what is now Tennessee were the Spanish of Hernando de Soto’s
expedition into the interior of what the Spanish called La Florida, which then
included everything south of the Ohio River, from 1539-1542. Their path took them thru native towns in
Tennessee that included Chiaha, Coste, Chalahume, Satapo, Tali, Tasqui, and
Chisca.
Twenty
years after de Soto’s expedition, 1559, another under Miguel de Luna y Arellano established the the Puerto de San
Maria at site of Naval Air Station Pensacola, and two months later moved up the
Alabama River to the native town of Nanipacana, where he founded the settlement
of Santa Cruz. One of de Luna’s chief
assignments is to cut a road from Pensacola Bay to Port Royal Sound off the
coast of South Carolina, to come out in the vicinity of Parris Island.
Santa Cruz
lasted for nearly a year, during which de Luna journeyed to the dominant
chiefdom of Coosa (at Coosawattee in Georgia) to obtain supplies. The mico there (paramount chief) invited the
Spanish to accompany his warriors in a raid to bring to heels the rebellious Napochi. Needing Coosa’s goodwill, de Luna complied.
The Coosa
warriors and Spanish troops journeyed northwest to reach the town of those they
called “Napochi”, which was deserted by the time the army reached it. Enraged by the Coosa scalps adorning the pole
in the center of the town square, the Coosa went beserk and burned the entire
town down to the ground. There is little
doubt that this town stood at the site Robert Sparks Walker mistakenly called
Little Owl’s Village at Chattanooga Audobon Acres, and which a later chronicler
called “Olitifar”, which is very likely a corruption of the Muscogee name
Opelika.
After the
town was engulfed in flames, the combined army pursued its fleeing populace
west and north, encountering what had once been a huge town and was then
reduced in population to village size at the Citico site at the Tennessee River
east of the Citico Creek. The village’s
people joined those of Opelika to flee across the Tennessee River on foot just
above the head of Maclellan Island. On
the north shore, these were joined by warriors from the large town at the
Moccasin Point archaeological site called Hampton Place, which may have been
Taskigi (Tasquiqui or Tuskegee).
The two
antagonistic parties reached a truce in which the “Napochi” agreed to resume
tribute to Coosa in return for an end to hostilities.
In 1562,
three years later, France beat the Spanish to the punch at Port Royal by establishing
Charlesfort at the foot of Parris Island, South Carolina, and Fort Carolina
near Jacksonville, Florida, naming the colony planned for these two forts to
serve “Carolina” after their king, Charles IX.
To which
Spain took offence and destroyed both French settlements finally founding the
La Florida capital of Santa Elena on Parris Island next to Fort San Salvador
(later San Felipe). At the same time,
they also established the later capital San Agustin somewhat south of the former
Ft. Carolina, which they renamed Ft. San Mateo.
They kept the name “Carolina” for the immediate region in honor of their
own king, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire.
During an
expedition into the interior of La Florida from Santa Elena in 1567, La Florida
governor Juan Pardo established four forts at several interior towns, those of
the major regional powers. These forts
included the first European permanent settlement in the Tennessee country, Fort
San Pablo, at what the Spanish called Cauchi and the Muscogee called Conasauga
in Southeast Tennessee.
Pardo’s
expedition also visited and/or stayed at Olamico (chief town of Chiaha), Coste,
Satapo, Chalahume, Tasqui, Tasquiqui, and “Olitifar” (Opelika), all in
Tennessee.
When Pardo
travelled to San Agustin later that year, his adjutant Hernando Moyano raided
into the interior, burning the Chisca (Yuchi) town of Maniateque at Saltville,
VA, and the town of Guapere on the upper Watauga River. Afterwards, he established Fort San Pedro at
the afore-mentioned chief town of Chiaha, which lay on what is now Zimmerman’s
Island at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River.
Eighteen
months later, the natives burned all the interior structures of the Spanish and
killed all the members of the garrisons, save for one soldier and any of those
who had already left and “gone native”.
In 1570,
Spain established the mission of Santa Maria in Ajacan (their name for what
later became Virginia) on the coast of Virginia, but it was destroyed a year
later.
The
Spanish finally abandoned Santa Elena and Fort San Marcos (which had replaced
San Felipe) for good in 1587, but established their first mission in what later
became Georgia the same year, San Pedro, at the Timucuan-speaking town of Mocama. In 1602,
the Spanish established the mission Santa Catalina on St. Catherine’s Island
off the northern coast of Georgia in the territory of the Guale, which became
headquarters for their mission efforts in the region.
I want to
reiterate that no human has ever lived on or in Moccasin Bend, since that would
require either gills or the extraordinary ability to tread water for an entire
lifetime. The land upon which the town
at Hampton Place (and the other aboriginal sites) stood is Moccasin Point; the
Bend is the path of the Tennessee River itself.
That said,
more 16th century Spanish artifacts have been recovered from the
Hampton Place site on Moccasin Point than from the entire rest of the eastern
United States combined, and that’s including the still extant city of Saint
Augustine.
The London
Company reestablished the Colony of Virginia, which had collapsed after the
failure of its first settlement on Roanoke Island, at Jamestown in 1607.
In 1663, a
group of Lords Proprietor in England with a charter from Charles II established
the Province of Carolina, named for the king’s father and predecessor, Charles
I of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
This colony was the grand-mother of Tennessee.
The French
re-entered the region in 1682 with the establishment of Fort Prudhome at the
later site of Randolph, Alabama, and Fort Assumption on the Chickasaw Bluffs on
the Mississippi River, now known as Memphis, Tennessee.
A little known episode in the European colonization of the Southeast was
the founding of a Scottish colony in 1684 (23 years before the Union), between the
outskirts of Charles Town and the edge of Spanish territory. Its center was Stuarts Town at Port Royal,
former site of the French and Spanish colonies.
So the St. Andrew’s Cross flew on the soil of the territorial United
States too (in addition to Nova Scotia in Canada and Darien in Central America),
if only for a short time.
Two years
later Stuarts Town was destroyed by the Spanish and their Indian allies, though
the 150 survivors of an epidemic escaped ahead of time after being warned by
their Yamassee allies.
The
northern part of the (English) Province of Carolina divided off as Albemarle in
1691 and was renamed North Carolina in 1712, when Carolina became South
Carolina. North Carolina was the main
mother colony of what became Tennessee, along with Virginia, which got out of
the game early on.
In 1698, Col.
Daniel Coxe of England launched one of
several known episodes of abortive colonization attempts (Charlotiana in 1764,
Vandalia in 1768, Transylvania in 1775) after being granted a patent for a colony called Carolana
between the 31st and 36th parallels from the west border of the Carolinas to New
Spain. He sent expeditions from England
to Charles Town and to the mouth of the Mississippi River to secure his claims. Had his colonization been successful, it
would have included the area of the modern cities of Chattanooga, Murfreesboro,
and Knoxville but fallen just short of Nashville, down to the border of the
later West Florida.
Coxe,
however, was beaten to the areas by the French and the Spanish. The Spanish established the city of Pensacola
in 1698 with the building of the Presidio Santa Maria Galve, which contained
Fort San Carlos de Austria and an attached village. The next year, 1699, the French established
La Louisiane in the Mississippi Valley with Fort Maurepas at the present Ocean
Springs (aka Old Biloxi).
In 1702, the
Spanish missions in the provinces of Guale and Mocama (in what’s now coastal
Georgia) collapsed under pressure from English privateers from the colonies of
Virginia and Carolina and attacks by their Westo (Yuchi) allies, the survivors
fleeing to the safety of San Agustin.
The
parliaments of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were united
in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.
In 1714, the
French established Fort Charleville at the Great Salt Lick on what was then
known as the Wasioto (later Cumberland) River along with Fort Toulouse near the
later site of Montgomery, Alabama.
Several decades later, the Great Salt Lick became home to Fort
Nashborough, now called Nashville.
The French
began building New Orleans as the capital of La Louisiane in 1714.
James
Oglethorpe established Georgia as a slave-free colony of former indentured
servants and penal prisoners in 1733, but worried about the Spanish in Florida,
the French in Louisiana (who by now had spread eastward into much of Alabama). So, he invited a group of Scottish
Highlanders to settle Darien District, the seat of which was the town of New
Inverness. This colony, which supported
the Highland Independent Company of Foot and the Highland Rangers, proved
longer-lasting than the previous Scottish colony at Stuarts Town. New Inverness was later renamed Darien and
became the seat of McIntosh County.
The French
and Indian War of 1754-1763, in large part the American extension of the
Continental Seven Years’ War, caused large amounts of territory to change hands
towards its end. In the meantime,
however, the French set up a forward base on Long Island-in-the-Tennessee,
below the series of river hazards in the river gorge. They may have also established an outpost on
the west bank of the Chickamauga Creek where the Great Indian Warpath crossed
it, later the site of Brainerd Mission.
Their Muscogee allies re-established themselves at the former site of
Coosa in support of the pro-French elements among the Cherokee at Tellico and
Chatuga.
In 1762, France
secretly ceded New Orleans and Louisiana west of the Mississippi to Spain in
the Treaty of Fontainebleau. At the
conclusion of the war, France ceded New France (Canada), Grenada, and Louisiana
east of the Mississippi to Great Britain while Spain cedes its territory east
of the Mississippi, including Florida and New Orleans, to Great Britain in
return for recognition of its claims to western Louisiana. It was after this that he British divided
Florida into East and West, with capitals at St. Augustine and Pensacola
respectively.
In 1768, a
Virginian named Evan Shelby purchased the land where he established Sapling
Grove (now Bristol, Tennessee) from my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather
land speculator John Buchanan, becoming the first British colonist in the later
Tennessee. In 1771, Jacob Brown of North
Carolina and John Carter of Virginia founded colonies along the Nolichucky
River and in Carter’s Valley respectively, and John Sevier led a group of
Regulators into the Watauga Valley.
The
American Revolution against the Kingdom of Great Britain began in 1775 and the
United Colonies declared independence within a year, but the new country’s
first flag, the Grand Union Flag or Continental Colors, was not adopted until
1777.
At the
conclusion of the war, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United
States of America and ceded the two Floridas (East and West) back to Spain. All other territory south of Canada and east
of the Mississippi River then belonged to the new government, with the
exception of the Republic of Vermont.
In 1785, Washington
County seceded from North Carolina as the State of Franklin but never adopted a
flag.
The Kingdom of Spain returned to the Tennessee country in 1795 when the
government of New Spain (Mexico) erected Fort San Fernando de las Barrancas at
Chickasaw Bluffs (Memphis). However,
they abandoned the fort two years later.
In 1796, Tennessee
became the 16th state to join the Union.
In 1861,
Tennessee seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. It was the last state to do so and also the
first to return, in 1866. There were
three national flags of the C.S.A. but they only count as one.
Although a
state flag was proposed in 1861 (the Stars and Bars with the state seal in the
upper right quadrant), it was never officially adopted. The first official state flag was flown
1897-1905, and the current flag adopted in 1905.
So, now let’s
count the flags of Tennessee:
1. The Kingdom of Spain’s
flag flew over forts San Pablo and San Pedro, both within the current borders
of East Tennessee, 1567-1569, and again at Fort Barrancas at Chickasaw Bluffs
(Memphis), 1795-1797.
2. The Kingdom of France’s
flag was planted in Tennessee when Fort Assumption was erected on the Chickasaw
Bluffs in 1682, and later at Fort Charleville at the Great Salt Lick
(Nashville) on the Cumberland River in 1714.
3. The Kingdom of Great
Britain’s flag came to Tennessee with the establishment of Sapling Grove (Bristol)
in 1768.
4. The United States of
America flag began flying over Tennessee in 1777.
5. The Confederate States
of America flag flew over Tennessee 1861-1865.
6. An official state flag
has flown over Tennessee since 1897.
Had the State
of Franklin adopted a flag, there would be seven, but since that was not the
case, there have only been six. Besides,
since the territories in East and Middle Tennessee were never completely
independent since the “free republic” operated under a dual system of
government (quasi-independent and as part of North Carolina), it doesn’t really
count as a separate government.
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