The land now known as the State of Tennessee has been home
to numerous American Indian peoples the past several thousand years. In Southeast Tennessee and the rest of the
tri-state area, the first that comes to mind is the Cherokee, while in West
Tennessee and northern Mississippi it would probably be the Chickasaw. In Middle Tennessee, the first to mind might
be the Shawnee.
While it’s true all these were present in the early
historical era, none of the three were native to Tennessee nor was the land of
the later state exclusive to just these three tribes of the historical era
until as late as the mid-17th century. At that point, the native population in the
later state included the tribes or nations of Cherokee, Chickasaw, Shawnee,
Chiaha, Koasati, Tuskegee, Kaskinampo, Tali, Natchez, and Yuchi.
At the time of first contact, the Southeast region was
dominated by speakers of three language groups, not counting the abundant
population in the territory of the current state of Florida: the Muskogean
family, the Algonquin family, and the Siouan family. There were also language
isolates such as the Yuchi, the Tuskegee, and the Natchez. Speakers of Iroquoian family languages
(Cherokee, Tuscarora, Nottoway, Meherrin) did not appear in the South until the
first half of the 17th century.
Prehistory
Paleolithic era
In North America,
this covered the period from 18,000-8000 BCE.
Archaic era
In North America,
this covered the period from 8000-1000 BCE.
Woodland era
The Woodland era is
divided into three periods: Early
Woodland (1000 BCE-1 CE), Middle Woodland (1-500 CE), and Late Woodland
(500-1000).
Mound complexes
during the Woodland period served strictly ceremonial purposes and were almost
never inhabited. They were central to groups of hamlets and
villages. Hunting, gathering, and small-scale horticulture fed
inhabitants.
The greatest site of
the entire Woodland era is the Pinson Mounds site in Madison County of West
Tennessee. Dating from the Middle
Woodland period (1-500 CE), the site was purely ceremonial, without permanent
habitation. There are seventeen mounds
and an earthen enclosure. Saul’s Mound,
the central feature of the entire complex, appears to have been a platform
mound more for ceremonial purposes than burial.
It is the second highest aboriginal mound or pyramid in North America.
The Old Stone Fort
in Manchester in Coffee County, is our state’s other archaeological park and
dates from the same period, though of entirely different construction. Located on the peninsula formed by the
confluence of the Duck and Little Duck Rivers, its earthen and stone walls are
four to six feet high, and there are no mounds.
Another site in the
local area, now destroyed, was the Tunacunnhee Mounds in what is now Trenton in
Dade County, Georgia. Rare for this
region, the mounds were composed entirely of stone. There is another group of mounds in the same
county, the Hooker Mounds.
The Late Woodland
period (500-1000) in Hamilton County was the most important phase of the
Woodland period not only because that was its most populous phase, but because
it developed its own cultural complex which spread to other regions in the
Southeast, called the Hamilton Phase of the greater Hopewell Culture.
A handful of sites
in the eastern U.S. demonstrate the in situ transition between the Woodland
period and Mississippian periods. The land where Heritage Landing now
lies was one such site before construction of the townhouses there now.
Its former inhabitants crossed the river and became the founders of the substantial
Mississippian site at Citico.
Mississippi era
The Mississippi era
(900-1600) is divided into three periods:
Early Mississippi (900-1200), Classic (or Middle) Mississippi
(1200-1400), and Late Mississippi (1400-1600), the latter including first contact
with the Spanish conquistadors of La Florida.
During the
Mississippi era, the population grew exponentially largely due to advances in
agriculture and introduction of maize. Social structures became more
complex and stratified. Villages became towns which were palisaded.
Burial mounds still
existed but were less important, and were included inside towns. The newer,
larger platform mounds, or pyramids, replaced them in importance and dominated
each of the towns. Generally, there was one large platform mound per
town, but some few had more than one, as was the case in the Chattanooga region
at Hiwassee Island, Citico at the mouth of the same-named creek, and the north
end of Long Island in Marion County, Tennessee.
In East Tennessee,
the archaeological complex from the Early to early Classic Mississippi Period
is called the Hiwassee Island Phase.
During the Classic
Mississippi period, the towns of North Georgia, Southeast and East Tennessee,
and Northeast Alabama were dominated by the paramount chiefdom at the Etowah
Mounds site. De Soto’s chroniclers called the abandoned town of
Talimachusi, its inhabitants, the Itawa, being much reduced and relocated
several miles downriver.
The complex of
buildings and ceremonial objects and other cultural features in East Tennessee and
North Georgia during this Classic Mississippi period was called the Dallas
Phase, after the Dallas (Yarnell) site at the later Harrison. The Dallas Phase continued in some places
well into the Late Mississippi period, including first contact.
The corresponding
complex in Middle Tennessee in the Cumberland Basin during the Classic
Mississippi period is called the Thurston Phase. The Thurston Phase’s most prominent towns
were the ones that stood at Mound Bottom site and Pack site in on the Harpeth
River in Cheatham County. The Thurston
Phase vanished along with the rest of the Middle Mississippian Culture around
1450.
The Middle
Mississippian Culture of which the Thurston Phase is part extended over the
Lower Ohio, Middle Mississippi, and Cumberland Valleys. The center of this larger culture was at
Cahokia, Illinois, home to the largest earthen mound, or pyramid, north of
Mesoamerica, Monks Mound, which stands a hundred feet high and contains a
greater volume than another other pyramid in the Western Hemisphere.
In West Tennessee,
the cultural complex that included the people at the archaeological site of
Chucalissa near Memphis during the Classic Mississippi period is called the
Walls Phase.
The Southern
Appalachian Mississippian Culture covered Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and
Eastern Kentucky and East Tennessee. It was
dominated by the rivalry between the paramount chiefdom at Etowah and the one
at Moundville in Alabama (home to twenty-nine platform mounds). Other paramount chiefdoms in Southern
Appalachian Mississippian Culture were that at Cofitachequi (aka Kasihta) and
at Ocmulgee.
The Hiwassee Island
Phase and the Dallas Phase, by the way, arose along the line where the Middle
Mississippian met the Southern Appalachian Mississippian.
With the final collapse
of Itawa, the town of Coosa rose up in its place. Coosa was located at
the Little Egypt site which the Cherokee had called Coosawattee, or Old Coosa
Place, now under Carter’s Lake. It was one of the two most prominent
chiefdoms in the region when De Soto’s expedition invaded in 1540. In later historical times, the inhabitants of
Coosa relocated to North Alabama and merged with the Abihka town of the Creek
Confederacy.
The Mouse Creek Phase, both successive to and contemporary
with the Dallas Phase, was marked by burials around the family dwelling and the
notable absence of platform mounds, as well as a generally more egalitarian
culture than its Dallas Phase predecessor.
Mouse Creek is not the result of invasion and replacement but of in situ
development adapting to circumstances, the same way the Woodland era developed
in situ into the Mississippi era. Mouse
Creek sites are found in the Hiwassee Valley and in Hamilton County.
First Contact
The first Europeans to encounter the Indians of Tennessee,
of course, were the Spanish would-be conquistadors of the 16th
century. The expedition of Hernando de
Soto passed through both ends of Tennessee in 1540 and 1541. That of Tristan de Luna came northwest in
support of their allies from Coosa into the Chattanooga area. Juan Pardo and his subordinates made at least
three expeditions into the interior from the La Florida capital of Santa Elena
on Parris Island, South Carolina, 1567-1569.
All three of the Pardo expeditions entered Tennessee, one planting two forts
there that lasted eighteen months.
The overwhelming majority of the towns and peoples the
Spanish encountered in Tennessee fell under the suzerainty of the paramount
chiefdom at Coosa (Coosawattee, Georgia).
They were still in the Late Mississippi stage, dominated by chiefdoms
with organized group agriculture, social classes, and the Southern Ceremonial
Complex. With a couple of exceptions,
these people were all speakers of Muskogean languages, and part of what
archaeologists call the Dallas Phase.
The various peoples the Spanish encountered remained stable
throughout most of the century, not moving until the massive dislocations
provoked by increasingly cooler weather of the Little Ice Age that began around
1450, increasing contact with Europeans, the diseases imported with the new
arrivals, and the chaotic Beaver Wars which plagued the north from 1609 to
1701.
The easiest way to list the towns and peoples then in East
Tennessee is to list them as Spaniards would have encountered them along the
routes they travelled from Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina.
The most important town to the Spanish in the interior was
the one on Catawba River which they called Joara, or Xualla. Though still subject to the paramount
chiefdom of Cofitachequi, Joara was the dominant chiefdom for the Piedmont
region of North Carolina, which informants to the Spanish called Chelaque, meaning
speakers of a different language. Its
people were not those later called by the similar name, Cherokee, but the
Siouan-speaking Catawba, specifically the division called Cheraw or Sara. Pardo established Fort San Juan there in 1567.
In the mountains of northwestern North Carolina, the Spanish
encountered a people they knew as the Chisca, who are otherwise known as the
Yuchi. Their territory spread into Upper
East Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia.
Among the towns of the Yuchi the Spanish came across in Upper East
Tennessee were Guasili and Canasoga, aka Cauchi, as well as Guapere on the
upper Watauga River which was destroyed along with Maniateque near Saltville,
Virginia, by Spanish soldiers under Hernando Moyano in 1567. Moyano built a small fort at Cauchi called
Fort San Pablo.
The next town/people to which they would have come is
Tanasqui, which lay at the confluence of the French Broad and Pigeon
Rivers. Tanasqui, which ultimately gave
its name to our state as Tennessee, sat at the northernmost limits of those
subject to the paramount chiefdom of Coosa at Coosawattee, Georgia, now under
Carters Lake. Coosa took tribute from
almost all of East Tennessee and Northwest Georgia and some of Northeast
Alabama.
At Zimmerman’s Island at the mouth of the French Broad River
lay the major town of Chiaha, then the dominant chiefdom in East Tennessee, if
still subject to Coosa. The town on the
island was also called Olamico. Moyano
built another fort here, called Fort San Pedro.
Both it and Fort San Pablo at Cauchi/Canasoga were destroyed in 1569.
Below Chiaha in the Holston Valley, the town of Coste
(Koasati) stood on Bussell’s Island at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River. Upriver from there, along the Little
Tennessee Valley, sat the towns of Satapo (Citico) and Chalahume (Chilhowee).
Beyond the towns in the Little Tennessee Valley, there was
the town of Tali, for which many sites in the 16th century have been
suggested, including Tellico Plains, Tennessee, but there are also several
sites known to have been occupied at the time along the Tennessee River, for
example the Late Mississippi site on Hiwassee Island, or perhaps the one at
Ledford Island upstream in the Hiwassee River.
If that is the case, Tali would have been the first town they
encountered of the Mouse Creek Phase.
Although the Mouse Creek Phase was first identified along
the Hiwassee Valley, it extends over Southeast Tennessee. Beyond doubt, for instance, is the fact that
the towns of Olitifar (Opelika at Audobon Acres), Tasqui at the Citico site in
downtown Chattanooga, and Tasquiqui (Tuskegee) at the Hampton Place site on
Moccasin Point were all Mouse Creek Phase sites.
{A note about the Citico site in downtown
Chattanooga: In the Middle Mississippi
period of 1200-1400 and early in the Late Mississippi period 1400-1500 (though
the period lasted itself until 1600), the remarkably large town at the mouth of
the Citico Creek dominated all of East Tennessee and some of North
Georgia. Its apex of power and influence
was contemporary with that of the town at the Etowah Mounds site. The people of the latter had migrated several
miles downriver by the time of the De Soto expedition, one of whose chroniclers
called the site Talimuchisi.}
These people (Olitifar, Tasqui, Tasquiqui) were the same as
those called the Napochi by the chief of Coosa when he demanded of De Luna that
he and his men accompany his warriors north to put the rebels in their place in
1559. After the Spanish and their Coosa
allies burned Opelika, its inhabitants never returned and very likely relocated
to Tasquiqui. Spelled Tuskegee in
English, these people, although subject to the paramount chiefdom at Coosa,
spoke a non-Muskogean language, though their occupation of the area may have
gone back centuries.
On the opposite end of Tennessee, the Spanish encountered
the Quizquiz in the vicinity of present-day Memphis. Upstream lived the Pacaha, whose chief town
was in the vicinity of Turrell, Arkansas (Nodena site), but whose territory
straddled the Mississippi River into West Tennessee. The Pacaha (sometimes mistakenly identified
as the Quapaw) were hostile to their neighbors, the Casqui, whose chief town
was near Parkin, Arkansas. The Quizquiz
were subject to the paramount chiefdom at Pacaha.
A Time of Great Tribulation
Sociologist Henry F. Dobyns estimates that nearly 145
million people inhabited the Western Hemisphere in 1490. By 1600, disease, disruption, and drastic
climate change left a population of a mere 1.5 million, a drop of 98.97%. The Valley of Mexico and Central and South
America, much more populous and much more exposed, suffered a greater
percentage than their cousins in the rest of North America.
The 17th century saw the beginning of new empires
trying to get their foot, or more accurately both feet, in the door of the
wealth that was North America. Europeans
exported furs, timber, and other goods, and imported people as colonists as the
French, the English, the Dutch, the Swedish, the English, and the Scottish
joined the Spanish in North America.
In addition to watching more and more of their people die
from strange new diseases against which they had no defense, the native
inhabitants fought each other for spoils of trade with the newcomers and over
decreasing resources brought about partially by that very trade as well as
European colonization and partially by the increasingly severe Little Ice Age.
By 1600, De Soto’s Casqui had shifted to the Lower Tennessee
River, which was often called Kaskinampo River after them.
The Beaver Wars began in 1609 when French explorer Samuel de
Champlain and his men attacked the Iroquois tribes living along the St.
Lawrence River in alliance with the Innu (Montagnais), the Algonquin, and the
Wendat (Huron). The Iroquois, who had by
then become the Five Nations (or Haudenosaunee), became sole trading partners
of the Dutch in New Netherlands after defeating and displacing the Mahican in
1628.
Armed with European weaponry courtesy of their Dutch
partners, the Iroquois soon began a campaign of conquest in 1638 which altered
life on the entire continent. Many
nations were absorbed, destroyed, or dispersed to other regions, usually never
to return. A large part of the blame for
this lies with the French, who refused to supply their allies with
firearms. The Ohio Country, Central
Great Lakes, and part of the Illinois Country became virtually
uninhabited. The Beaver Wars didn’t end
until the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701.
The first victims of the Five Nations (Mohawk, Oneida,
Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca) were their fellow Iroquoian-speaking neighbors. The Wenro, Attiwandaron (Neutral),
Susquehannock (Andaste, Conestoga), and Scahentoarrhonon peoples disappeared
entirely either by death or absorption into the Five Nations. The Wendat (Huron) and their neighboring
Tionantati (Tobacco, Petun) were so decimated that they merged as the Wyandotte
Nation.
The Erie (Riquéronon,
Nation du Chat), originally inhabiting the shore of the lake named for them,
were dispersed into small groups, some remaining in the north to be eventually
absorbed by the Five Nations, the rest migrating south along with other
refugees, where they became the Tuscarora, Nottoway, Meherrin, Westo, and
Cherokee. Their migration took some
time, with “Nation du Chat” noted on French maps in the Great Lakes region into
the early 18th century.
The Siouan-speaking tribes of the Virginia Piedmont—the Manahoac,
Monacan, Tutelo, Saponi, and Occaneechi—were so reduced by disease and warfare
peripheral to the Beaver Wars that by the early 18th century they
had become one tribe, the Tutelo-Saponi, and migrated north where they were
adopted by the Cayuga.
The Siouan-speaking Dhegiha of the Ohio Valley of Kentucky
sought refuge westward, crossing the Mississippi River to become the Kaw
(Kansa), Omaha, Osage, Ponca, and Quapaw.
Another Siouan-speaking tribe in the Ohio Valley, the Mosopelea (Ofo)
turned left when they got to the Mississippi and headed south to join the Biloxi-Tunica.
The Algonquian-speaking Mohican, Lenape (Delaware), and
Shawnee were reduced and/or dispersed out of the reach of the Iroquois. The Beaver Wars shifted from the Ohio Valley
to the Illinois Valley, where the advance of the Iroquois was stymied by a
coalition of Algonquian-speaking confederacies with the support of the Lakota,
then still sedentary agricultural hunter-gatherers in Minnesota.
As of 1625, the tribes on the Tennessee River remained
static, at least as far as location. But
that was soon to change.
By 1648, French sources report the Shawnee in the Central
Cumberland Basin. Two of that people’s
five bands, the Chillicothe and the Kispoko,
were there. Meanwhile, the largest band, the Hathawekela,
moved to the Savannah River, which was named for them (Savannah being an
Algonquian word for Southerner).
Since the early 17th
century, Iroquoian-speaking refugees had been flooding southward over the
Piedmont and Appalachian Mountains, primarily from the Erie (Riquéronon).
In 1654, the English
of Jamestown, with the Pamunkey of the Powhatan Confederacy, attacked a large
town of 600-700 warriors of a people they called the “Rechahecrian” in the vicinity of the later Richmond,
and lost the battle decisively.
A couple of years later, in 1656, a group called the “Westo”
with many similarities to the “Rechahechrian” settled on the Savannah River and
established a trading monopoly with the Province of Carolina, like the
Occaneechi then had with Virginia Colony.
A significant part of their trading was in slaves that came from other
Indians peoples in the region.
By 1670, the “Rickohakan” dominated the western Carolina
Piedmont and mountain areas, as reported by Virginia explorer James Lederer. These became known as the Cherokee. The Iroquoian-speakers in eastern North
Carolina became the Tuscarora, while those who stayed in Virginia became the Nottoway
and the Meherrin.
In 1673, a party sent out from Jamestown to establish a
trade link to bypass the Occaneechi, who then held a monopoly over trade with
the interior as middle-men, met a party of warriors they called the
“Tomahitans”, who took them west to their town over the Appalachian
Mountains. These Tomahitans were clearly
Yuchi from several accounts and had by this time shifted from the mountains and
Southwest Virginia to the Holston Valley, and likely further.
The Westo town on the Savannah was destroyed by their
Shawnee neighbors in 1680, with the survivors fleeing to refuge on the
Chattahoochee among the Creek. A more
inland group on the headwaters of the Savannah known as the Cherokee became the
new traders of Indian slaves for the colony of South Carolina.
The Frenchmen Jesuit priest Father Jacques Marquette and
trader Louis Joliet became the first men to explore the Mississippi in 1681,
going south from New France down to about the middle of the later state of
Mississippi. On his map of their
travels, French cartographer Melchisédech Thévenot noted the Aganahali in the Memphis
area where the De Soto chroniclers previously noted the Quizquiz. This could be another name for the latter,
survivors soon absorbed by the Chickasaw, or it could be a name for the
Chickasaw themselves.
Another French cartographer, Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin,
produced a map of the new territory of La Louisiane in 1684 that showed three
towns or peoples (Tchalaka, Katowagi, Taligui) on the headstreams of the
Tennessee River. All three are names of
other peoples for those now usually called Cherokee, Tchalaka from the Creek,
Katowagi from the Shawnee, and Taligui from the Lenape (Delaware). Perhaps the map’s three separate markers
denoted the known thee dialects of the Cherokee language.
Wars and rumors of wars
Certainly by the dawn of the 18th century, the Rechaherian/Richohokan/Cherokee,
who had for some time occupied the mountains of the North Carolina-East
Tennessee border and the headwaters of the Savannah River, had spread to the
Little Tennessee Valley and Tellico River.
Just as certainly, the Chickasaw had spread from northern
Mississippi into southwestern Tennessee, either absorbing or wiping out the
Quizquiz/Aganahali.
French maps from the early 18th century, when they
were exploring their newly-claimed territory of La Louisiane, show the
following on the middle to upper course of the Tennessee: Chickasaw, Yuchi, Tali, Kaskinampo, Koasati,
and Tuskegee. The same maps show Shawnee
villages above those, but these were likely misplaced since the same maps show
the Cumberland River bearing the name Shawnee River.
At the turn of the
century, the Tuskegee likely remained in their home on Moccasin Point (the
Mouse Creek Phase site called Hampton Place), though they may have shifted to
Williams Island which for a long time was called Tuskegee Island. Shortly thereafter, in the second of third
decade, they split, one group heading south to the Creek Confederacy and another
to the Cherokee along the Little Tennessee River.
The Koasati and the Kaskinampo occupied towns at opposite
ends of Long-Island-on-the-Tennessee (Marion County, Tennessee and Jackson
County, Alabama), apparently being on good terms.
The Tali at the time were probably on Pine Island, or else
on one of the banks on either side.
We know from other
contemporary sources that there was a band of Yuchi on the Great Bend of the
Tennessee River, just above the Muscle Shoals (which extended roughly from
Browns Island eleven miles below Decatur to Florence). In the Hiwassee Valley, Yuchi occupied
Chestowee on South Mouse Creek, Hiwassee Island, Euchee Old Fields in Rhea
County, possibly the Mouse Creek site in Roane County, and the later site of
Old Tennessee Town in Polk County.
At this time and at
least until 1769, the Chickasaw had a town at Ditto Landing in Madison
County, Alabama, downstream from Hobbs Island, later known as Chickasaw Old
Fields.
According to ethnologist James Mooney, the last “Cherokee”
town in the Great Lakes region was destroyed by the Lenape in 1708. His information came from Cherokee
sources. If true, it is most likely they
who built the town of Tomotley on the Little Tennessee River, since the
structure of its dwellings is more northern-style longhouse than the other
Overhill Towns.
Early in the century, Cherokee Overhill Towns included
Mialoquo (Great Island), Tuskegee, Tomotley, Toqua, Tanasee, Chota, Citico,
“Halfway Town”, Chilhowee, and Telassee along the Little Tennessee River, and
Great Tellico and Chatuga on the Tellico River.
In the early 1700’s, a large portion of the Hathawekela band of Shawnee, who were then
living on the Savannah River, moved from there to join their cousins in the
Cumberland Valley. This additional
influx of manpower and resource stress upset the balance of power in the area,
so the Chickasaw and the Cherokee formed a loose alliance to drive them out,
with hostilities lasting 1710-1715, though some Shawnee remained until 1721.
Instead of migrating
north, one group of the Kispoko Shawnee relocated south to the Great Bend of the
Tennessee and the protection of the Chickasaw and Creek. The parents of the noted warriors Chiksika
and Tecumseh were among them. Chiksika
was probably born there, and his brother may have been also.
Induced by two
English traders from Charlestown then living on the Little Tennessee River, the
Cherokee attacked and destroyed the Yuchi town at the Chestowee site at the
mouth of South Mouse Creek in 1714. French
cartographer Guillaume Delisle’s « Carte
de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississippi » published in 1718 showed one
band of Yuchi on Hiwassee Island and another on the Ohio River, probably
refugees.
We also know from
Mooney that Yuchi were living along Cohutta, Chickamauga, and Pinelog Creeks in
North Georgia until Removal, probably seeking refuge here at the time. Meanwhile, the Cherokee occupied Great
Hiwassee, Old Tennessee Town, Ocoee, Chestowee, and Amoyee (on Ledford Island).
After the Cherokee
of the Lower Towns massacred a Creek peace delegation in Tugaloo town on the
river of the same name in 1715, the two peoples began hostilities that lasted
until the Battle of Taliwa in North Georgia in 1755. Naturally, this conflict led the Muskogean-speakers
still living on river in East Tennessee to migrate and join what became the Creek
Confederacy. Even the formerly great
town of Coosa was abandoned, its people merging with the Abihka.
In 1730, the French
and their Choctaw allies destroyed the large town of the Natchez, the last
people to maintain the culture of the Mississippi period. The British-allied Chickasaw took in the
majority of the survivors, but a portion took refuge with the Cherokee in the
Overhill area, where they established a town on Notchy Creek. Some Natchez fled as far away as Murphy,
North Carolina.
By invitation of
the Cherokee in the Overhills, a group from the Piqua band of Shawnee settled
on the Cumberland River in 1746 as had their cousins before. After tolerating their presence for a decade,
the Chickasaw began attacking and drove them out in 1756. The Cumberland River was called the Shawnee
River on maps as late as 1763. The
Chickasaw attack on these Shawnee was one of the main irritants which led to
the Chickasaw-Cherokee War of 1758-1769.
This is the war which ended at the Battle of Chickasaw Old Fields.
In the meantime,
the colony of South Carolina ended its slave trade with the Cherokee in 1748.
The French and the
British and their respective Indian allies launched the French and Indian War,
which lasted 1754-1763. The French had a
forward outpost in the center of on Long-Island-on-the-Tennessee, between the
towns of Koasati and Kaskinampo, and may have also had another, smaller post on
the Chickamauga at the later Brainerd Mission.
Their Creek allies, meanwhile, reinhabited their old town of Coosa, in
support of the pro-French Cherokee at Tellico and Chatuga. When the Cherokee entered the war in the
connected conflict known as the Anglo-Cherokee War (1758-1761), it led to
nearly all the towns in the nation being devastated.
At the close of the
French and Indian War, the two towns on Long Island relocated south to the
later Larkin’s Landing just below Scottsboro, Alabama, merging as Coosada.
With the outbreak
of the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the related conflicts of the
Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794) and the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795), Shawnee
returned to Tennessee, maintaining a presence of a hundred warriors in the
area, at the invitation of their Cherokee allies, who in return sent a hundred
warriors north.
After their initial
defeat in 1776, the militant Cherokee removed southwest to the Chattanooga
area, with the chief town of their reported eleven, “Old Chickamauga Town”,
across the South Chickamauga Creek (then called Chickamauga River) from the
commissary of British Assistant Superintendent for Southern Indian Affairs John
McDonald. They abandoned all eleven
towns in 1782, relocating southwest, with their chief town of Running Water in
the vicinity of the current Whiteside, Tennessee, and another at Nickajack, or
Shellmound, Tennessee. Their other towns
were in Northwest Georgia and Northeast Alabama.
When the Cherokee
ceased fighting at the end of 1794, the Creek continued on, targeting white
settlements mostly in the Cumberland Basin.
This brought them into conflict with the Chickasaw, now allied with the
Americans, who in turn earned the wrath of the Creek by joining the American
army in the Northwest. The conflict between
the two nations ended in June 1796. It
was the last time native warriors fought in Tennessee until the Civil War, when
the Thomas Legion of Cherokee Indians and Highlanders was often the main
Confederate force in the Department of East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia,
which included Western North Carolina.
After the end of
the wars, the Shawnee returned north and some of the Cherokee returned to the “Chickamauga
towns” in the Chattanooga area. Besides
Chickamauga and Chatanuga along the creek by the same name, there was Toqua at
the mouth of South Chickamauga Creek, Opelika in the East Brainerd-Graysville
area, Buffalo Town near the present Ringgold, Georgia, Cayoka on Hiwassee
Island (later home of John Jolly and Sam Houston), Black Fox in Bradley County,
Ooltewah, Sawtee on Laurel (North Chickamauga) Creek, Citico along the creek of
the same name, and Tuskegee in Lookout Valley.
The Chickasaw
“voluntarily” removed themselves west of the Mississippi in 1837. They gathered in Chickasaw Bluffs (Memphis,
Tennessee), and crossed the river there.
The following year,
the Cherokee were rounded up into concentration camps from which they were
forcibly removed to Indian Territory. Their last lands in Tennessee formed the Ocoee
District, comprising the land south of the Hiwassee and Tennessee Rivers to the
Georgia and Alabama borders in the south and the North Carolina border in the
east. With their departure, the last
native culture disappeared from Tennessee.
A list of Tennessee’s
tribes or nations
Aganahali
Named on French maps in the early 18th century,
these occupied approximately the same area as the occupied by the Quizquiz of
De Soto’s chroniclers.
Chalahume
One of the towns encountered by the Spanish in the 16th
century, it was probably located in the same place as the later Cherokee town
of Citico. One of the Cherokee towns in
the late 17th-18th centuries had the same name,
Chilhowee, though it was farther upstream.
The people of the 16th century town may have merged with the
Koasati before that group moved downstream.
Cherokee
Once thought to have
originated where they were found in the late 17th century, most
scholars now believe that the Cherokee were much more recent arrivals, first
appearing in the region in the early years of the Beaver Wars in the 17th
century. They have been identified with
the Late Qualla Phase which lasted in the Appalachian Summit from 1650 until Removal.
Today they make up
the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the United Keetowah Band of Cherokee
Indians, and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
Chiaha
By 1715, these former inhabitants of the town on Zimmerman’s
Island lived with the Upper Creek on the Chattahoochee River. When the Creek migrated west to Alabama, the
Upper Chiaha went with them while the Lower Chiaha headed south and became some
of the founders of the Seminole.
They survive today among the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and as
the Miccousukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.
Chickasaw
In addition to the main group in their initial home in
northern Alabama-Mississippi and later in northern Mississippi-Southwest
Tennessee, a band known as the Lower Chickasaw lived on the Savannah River from
about 1730 to about 1775.
They survive as the Chickasaw Nation.
Creek
A confederacy rather than a tribe, this group became home to
many peoples formerly living on the upper Tennessee River.
There were two basic divisions, the Muscogee-speaking Upper
Creeks led by the towns of Abihka (which absorbed Coosa) and Tukabatchee and
the Hitchiti-speaking Lower Creeks led by the towns of Kasihta (Cofitachequi)
and Coweta. Other primary tribes/towns
which made up the Confederacy include: Atasi, Eufaula, Hilibi, Holiwahali,
Okchai, Pakana, Wakokai, Fushatchee, Kanhatki, Kealedji, Kolomi, and Wiwohka.
They survive today as the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and as the
Poarch Band of Creek Indians, and also in the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the
Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.
Kaskinampo
By the mid-18th
century, these people had merged with the Koasati and were living in the town
of Coosada at Larkin’s Landing in Alabama.
For a century or so,
the lower Tennessee River, and sometimes its entire length, was called by their
name.
Their descendants
shared the fate of their Koasati hosts.
Koasati
By the 1800’s, these
people had moved from Coosada at Larkin’s Landing to just below the confluence
where the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers become the Alabama River.
They survive today
in the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of
Texas, and the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town in Oklahoma.
Natchez
At the time of contact, these were the most powerful tribe
in the Lower Mississippi Valley with their seat at Emerald Mound and the last
to maintain a classic Mississippian culture with the full Southern Ceremonial
Complex well into the historical period.
Their descendants survive among the Chickasaw, the Muscogee (Creek), and
the Cherokee.
Quizquiz
Named thus by the chroniclers of De Soto, this people in the
vicinity of Memphis, Tennessee, may be the same as those later called Aganahali
on French maps.
Satapo
Originally at the Dallas Phase site at the later town of
Toqua, these people may have died out or may have merged with the Koasati.
Shawnee
Originally one people with the Lenape and the Nanticoke, the
Shawnee in historical times found themselves divided into five bands—Chillicothe,
Hathawekela, Kispoko, Piqua, Mekoche—some of which found their way south during
or as a consequence of the Beaver Wars.
The Chillicothe and
Kispoko bands of Shawnee lived in the Central Cumberland Basin from at least
1648 until 1715, with stragglers staying until 1721. A group of Hathawekela moved there from the
Savannah River and stayed for a short time in the early 18th
century. The Piqua band lived there from
1746 to 1756.
When their main group returned north, one group of the Kispoko
moved to the Great Bend of the Tennessee River, where they lived until 1761. According to turn of the century (19th/20th)
archaeologist Clarence B. Moore, another group of Shawnee had previously lived
in the Great Bend 1660-1721.
The Hathawakela on the Savannah River relocated to the Chattahoochee
in 1717, some later moving to the Tallapoosa while others returned north. The Piqua lived for a time in the Panhandle
of Florida before living next to the Abihka on the Talladega River. These two Shawnee groups later combined into
one.
The Hathawekela, Kispoko, and Piqua merged together as the
Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma.
There are two other Shawnee tribes in that state, the Eastern Shawnee
Tribe of Oklahoma and the Shawnee Tribe.
Other Shawnee descendants survive in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the Cherokee
Nation of Oklahoma, and the Sauk and Fox Nation, and among the Seminoles of
Florida.
Tali
The Tali probably lived
on Pine Island and were ultimately absorbed by the Koasati later in the 18th
century.
Tanasqui
Originally at the confluence of the French Broad and Pigeon
Rivers, this town gave its name to our state, as well as a Cherokee town on the
Little Tennessee River and another south of the Hiwassee River near the
Savannah Ford. Several scholars have
posited that the word is Yuchi, and in their trek southwest from the mountains,
the Yuchi may very well have paused in the Little Tennessee Valley. They certainly inhabited the site on the
Hiwassee for a time.
Tuskegee
One group of
Tuskegee (Tasquiqui) migrated northeast to join the Cherokee of the Overhill
Towns on the Little Tennessee River.
Another lived on the island which bore their name and became Williams
Island. This group later migrated south
to the Creek Confederacy and had their town first, on the Chattahoochee River
near Columbus, Georgia as early as 1685.
Later they moved to the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers.
Yuchi
When first they
encountered Europeans, the Yuchi (Chisca, Euchee, Hogohegee, Tomahitans,
Tahogalewi, Tahokale, Ani-Yutsi,
Tsoyaha) were in Southwestern Virginia-Northeast Tennessee-Western North
Carolina, the area often called the Appalachian Summit.
Their towns at the
time included Guasili, Canasoga/Cauchi, Guapere on the upper Watauga
River, Maniateque near Saltville, Virginia, and possibly Tanasqui at the
confluence of the Freench Broad and Pigeon Rivers.
In the first half of the 17th century, they lived
along the Holston River, which was
called by a version of their name (Hogohegee) on maps until 1799. Before the end of that century, the Yuchi
were in the Hiwassee Valley and its vicinity, including the later “Old
Tennessee Town” of the Cherokee below the Savannah Ford in Polk County, Chestowee
at the mouth of South Mouse Creek in Bradley County, Euchee Old Fields in Rhea
County (now under Watts Bar Lake), and possibly other sites.
Two traders from South Carolina living among the Cherokee in
the Little Tennessee River town of Tanasi, Eleazer Wiggan and Alexander Long, tricked
the Cherokee into destroying the Yuchi town about the mouth of South Mouse
Creek, which led to a battle at Euchee Old Fields. That was the extent of the Cherokee-Yuchi War
of 1714.
However, it led to the Yuchi relocating southwest to the
Cohutta, upper Chickamauga, and Pinelog Creeks, and to the Tennessee River
above Muscle Shoals. One group of Yuchi
lived on the Savannah River approximately 1722-1750 before moving to the
Chattahoochee to live among the Creek.
In fact, the Yuchi were one of the most widely dispersed native peoples
in North America, with bands reported in dozens of locations.
The Euchee (Yuchi) Tribe of Indians is headquartered
in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, and is currently seeking
federal recognition. It has a seat on
the board of Indian tribes of the State of Oklahoma.
