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    Tennessee's Indian Peoples: From White Contact To Removal, 1540-1840
    Tennessee's Indian Peoples: From White Contact To Removal, 1540-1840
    Tennessee's Indian Peoples: From White Contact To Removal, 1540-1840
    Ebook182 pages2 hours

    Tennessee's Indian Peoples: From White Contact To Removal, 1540-1840

    By Ronald N. Satz

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Hernando De Soto’s invasion of Native lands in 1540 marked the onslaught of great change in the lives of Tennessee’s Native Americans. Although these first Tennesseans boasted a cultural heritage of thousands of years, only three centuries of contact with the white man elapsed before their population was decimated and the remnants driven out. The Indians were a settled people when de Soto visited, not the savage or exotic woods creatures so often depicted. Tennessee’s Indian Peoples, then, is a story of the ways the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, Shawnees, and other Indian peoples lived, reared families, farmed and hunted, worshipped, played, fought, and governed themselves. He describes also the eventful destruction of their societies—destroyed not only by external pressures for Indian lands, but also by internal change wrought by increasing dependence on the white man’s trade goods.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Tennessee Press
    Release dateAug 9, 2024
    ISBN9781621909927
    Tennessee's Indian Peoples: From White Contact To Removal, 1540-1840

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    • 3/5
      A brief history of the native american inhabitants of Tennessee from prehistory prior to the first contact in 1540 to their removal during the Trail of Tears. A good informative read particularly in regards to the prehistory becoming more generic and politicized as it approaches the modern age. A good book if somewhat lacking in details.
    • 4/5
      a canoe fight away from one of the best works on natives in Tennessee. a refreshingly more comprehensive account than some of the more cherokee obsessed counterparts, giving the chickasaws their credit. a non-apologetic but fair history and brief but revealing ethnography, tragically essential to any Tennessean. an educational read

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    Tennessee's Indian Peoples - Ronald N. Satz

    Tennessee’s

    Indian

    Peoples

    Tennessee’s

    Indian

    Peoples

    From White Contact

    to Removal, 1540-1840

    BY RONALD N. SATZ

    PUBLISHED IN COOPERATION WITH

    The Tennessee Historical Commission

    THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE PRESS

    KNOXVILLE

    Tennessee Three Star Books / Paul H. Bergeron, General Editor

    This series of general-interest books about significant Tennessee topics is sponsored jointly by the Tennessee Historical Commission and the University of Tennessee Press.

    Copyright © 1979 by The University of Tennessee Press.

    Manufactured in the United States of America.

    All Rights Reserved.

    Cloth: 1st printing, 1979; 2nd printing, 1985.

    Paper: 1st printing, 1979; 2nd printing, 1982;

    3rd printing, 1985; 4th printing, 1990;

    5th printing, 1993; 6th printing, 1995;

    7th printing, 2001; 8th printing, 2023.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

    Satz, Ronald N.

    Tennessee’s Indian peoples.

    (Tennessee three star books)

    Bibliography: p.

    1. Indians of North Amxerica—Tennessee. I. Title.

    II. Series.

    E78.T3S24 970.’004’97 77-21634

    ISBN 0-87049-285-3 (cloth: alk. paper)

    ISBN 0-87049-231-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)

    Ronald N. Satz is Dean of Graduate Studies and University Research and teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. In addition to numerous articles and book reviews, his published work includes American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (1975). He has received fellowships from both the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Satz has served as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the American Indian Quarterly.

    For my wife and children:

    Christa and Ani and Jakob

    Contents

    1. Introduction

    2. Native Culture and Society

    3. The Creeks and the Shawnees

    4. The Chickasaws

    5. Early Cherokee-White Relations

    6. The Cherokees and The White Man’s Road

    Acknowledgments and Suggestions for Further Readings

    Index

    ILLUSTRATIONS

    Sequoyah

    Spear thrower and weights

    Burial mound

    Map of Cherokee towns

    De Soto’s crossbowmen

    Map of southern Indian lands

    Handmade trap and baskets

    Seating in the council house

    Chunkey disks

    Indian ball game

    Tecumseh

    Massacre at Fort Mims

    Andrew Jackson

    Red Eagle surrenders

    Trade goods as currency

    James Robertson

    Map of land cessions

    John H. Eaton

    Cherokee Indian embassy

    Cunne Shote

    Fort Loudoun

    Treaty of Sycamore Shoals Dragging Canoe

    John Sevier

    Map of Five Lower Towns

    Blockhouse fort, Knoxville

    Sequoyah

    Cherokee syllabary

    Cherokee Phoenix

    John Ross

    John Ridge and Major Ridge

    Map of the Trail of Tears

    Trail of Tears

    Tennessee’s

    Indian

    Peoples

    1. Introduction

    Like American Indians everywhere, the Indians who once made their homes in the hills, valleys, and plains of Tennessee have usually been pictured in history books as little more than natural phenomena, creatures of the pristine wilderness who unfortunately but inevitably fell victim to the progress of the white man. Tennessee was theirs at the beginning of history, when wolves still roamed the forests and rivers ran clear and pure. They were children of nature, untamed and unspoiled, moving through the forests as noiselessly as the wind, subsisting on wild game and berries, and occasionally exhibiting that fierce cruelty that is to be expected from forest dwellers, as when a cougar slaughters a helpless deer. Seen in this way, the Indians are but a part of the natural history of Tennessee. They merely set the stage for the unfolding of the human drama that began with the coming of the first Spanish explorers.

    But in truth their story is not so simple. The Indians of Tennessee were not innocent children of nature, fundamentally different from Europeans. They were men and women—human beings. Theirs is not a nature story. It is a human story that reaches back over 11,000 years.

    Probably the first people to roam the great valley of the Tennessee River were small bands of nomadic Ice Age hunters. These were the Paleo-Indians, descendants of Asian people who came to North America across a land bridge that connected Alaska and Siberia. Today North America and Siberia are separated by 56 miles of fogbound, choppy water; but during at least two separate periods between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago the vast amounts of water locked up in the glaciers of the Ice Age lowered the level of the Bering Sea and created between the two continents a land bridge which at times was several hundred miles wide. In a series of migrations, Asian hunters moved across to North America following herds of the large game animals of the era—mammoths and straight-horned bison, among others. The diversity of languages spoken by North American Indians of later times is partly accounted for by these different waves of migrations, as well as by the linguistic changes that naturally occur over time when groups become geographically and culturally separate from each other. The common Asian origin of American Indians shows most clearly in such shared physical characteristics as a brownish skin tone, prominent cheekbones, dark eyes, sparse body hair, and coarse, straight, black hair.

    The Paleo-Indians of 11,000 years ago had a way of life similar to that of the Upper Paleolithic people of Asia and Europe. They did not live in permanent settlements but moved from camp to camp. The locations of these temporary camps were determined by the movements of game herds and the seasonal availability of wild plant food. Although the Paleo-Indians left behind in these camps little by which their presence could later be discerned, there is evidence that these nomadic hunters camped and hunted in virtually every part of Tennessee.

    Over a long period of time, as the Paleo-Indians and their descendants spread far and wide to occupy most of North and South America, the Ice Age gradually came to an end. The earth warmed; the environment changed. In some parts of North America forests grew where none had been before. Deer, elk, and moose thrived, whereas the huge, cold-adapted animals gradually disappeared. Beginning around 8,000 B.C. a new Indian lifeway began taking shape. This was the Archaic tradition.

    Instead of ranging limitlessly in pursuit of large game, the Archaic Indians began to exploit intensively more well-defined territories. Compared to their Paleo ancestors, they lived a more settled life. Their population increased and, indicative of their technological advancement, they began making a greater variety of stone objects, some of which were beautifully polished and of undeniable artistic worth. But the Archaic Indians of Tennessee did not live in permanent villages. These people moved with the seasons, gathering within their territories the varied resources of the forests—nuts, roots, seeds, and berries, as well as fowl, small game, and larger browsing animals. Large game was hunted with short spears ejected from spear-throwers that served as an extension of a man’s arm and greatly increased the force of the missiles. Domesticated dogs may also have been used in hunting. In addition the Archaic Indians depended upon the rivers for subsistence. They fished the streams and they collected mollusks, too, as indicated by the shell mounds found today along the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.

    Gradually, over thousands of years, the cultural patterns of the Archaic Indians changed. Their material life became more complex, and so presumably did their societies. By 1,000 B.C. they were so different from the early Archaic people that a new cultural tradition—the Woodland—can be said to have begun. One of the hallmarks of this new life way was the introduction of pottery. By the Middle Woodland period, the Indians of Tennessee were living in small villages. Food-gathering groups probably continued to move out to temporary camps at different times of the year, but the base villages seem to have been permanent. Woodland houses were oval or circular structures made by placing the ends of small saplings in the ground and bending them over to form a dome-shaped framework, usually covered with sheets of bark.

    Use of the spear thrower. Courtesy of South Carolina Wildlife.

    Polished stones used by Archaic hunters as spear-thrower weights. Courtesy of Frank H. McClung Museum, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

    The Woodland Indians were innovators. Over the years they developed pottery to take the place of vessels carved out of soapstone and, by the latter half of the Woodland period, the bow and arrow to replace the spear. Another Woodland innovation was the emergence of the rudiments of agriculture to supplement the hunting and gathering pattern of the Archaic lifeway. Woodland times may be viewed as a period of transition leading to a way of life in which agriculture played a larger role than it did for the Archaic huntergatherers. There is evidence to indicate that squash, gourds, and sunflowers were the first plants grown by the Tennessee Indians, these domesticates first appearing late in the Archaic period. The Woodland people continued to grow these crops and also may have developed crops of their own. For thousands of years their ancestors had gathered the seeds of wild weeds—sumpweed, chenopodium, and maygrass. The Woodland Indians continued this practice and perhaps even began to cultivate some of these plants. At some time during the Woodland period, these people began cultivation of a new crop, corn, that had been introduced from the south.

    The Woodland people were the first Indians of Tennessee to build mounds, many of which may still be seen in the state—some of them created by Woodland Indians, others by their descendants of a later tradition. Those built by Woodland Indians are burial mounds: dome-shaped earthen tombs for the dead. But not all people of the Woodland tradition were buried in mounds. Scholars are not certain of why some individuals were given these elaborate burials and others were not, but it is obvious that a complex social and religious structure was in operation, affecting to some degree the lives of most Woodland Indians.

    This Indian burial mound is located on the agricultural campus of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Courtesy of University of Tennessee Photographic Services, Knoxville.

    Around A.D. 900 a new social development arose among the natives living along the Mississippi River between present-day St. Louis, Missouri, and Vicksburg, Mississippi. The cultivation of corn and beans made agriculture more productive than ever before. Greater populations could now be supported. Villages and towns expanded. Political structures became more centralized, religion more formalized. Social organization became more stratified. Mounds were built on a larger scale than ever before and their function changed. No longer simply burial mounds, the new earthen mounds were shaped like flat-topped pyramids and served as platforms for temples, council chambers, and chiefs’ houses.

    This new tradition—the Mississippian—had a profound influence in the South. It spread throughout the region, partly by the movement of ideas and partly by the actual movement of people who migrated from the Mississippi

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