Volume 13 , Issue 20

Early History of Middle Tennessee

The 1908 book of Early History of Middle Tennessee, by Edward Albright, Chapter I explains the first inhabitants of Middle Tennessee as belonging to a race of people called "Mound Builders," because of the mounds or monuments they erected and left behind.

No one knows for sure from whence they came, how long they remained or where they went. Around many lasting springs, and in various localities along the water courses, early immigrants found acres of graves containing their remains. These burial places five evidence of having been made long before the whites, possibly several hundred years previous to the beginning of the 17th century.

One of these ancient graveyards covered a part of what is known as Sulphur Spring Bottom in Nashville. Another was located in North Edgefield. A third was clustered about the mouth of Stone's river, above the city, and a fourth (the largest of all) was situated upon the farm of Mr. O. F. Noel, South, adjoining Glendale Park.

Others were found throughout Sumner County, especially at and around Castalian Springs, formerly Bledsoe's Lick. These burial places of interment were also numerous along the Harpeth River in Williamson, Cheatham and Dickson Counties. The Mounds and stone graves can also be found in Humphreys and Hardin Counties.

It is said to be related of the "Long Hunters." the first organized band of adventurers coming to this region, that no trace of human habitation was visible to them. In dry caves on side of creeks tributary to the Cumberland, down the course of which they traveled, they found many places where stones were set together, covering large quantities of human bones. These were conical shaped mounds left throughout Middle Tennessee by these early builders that afford evidence of industry, and also a measure of skill. The remnants of one of these mounds at Castalian Springs was formerly surrounded by a low wall or embankment enclosing a small acreage of land.

Following the Mound Builders came the Shawnees (Algonquin race, a part of the Iroquois Confederacy and are known by historians as the "Gypsies of the Forest"), who were the first tribe of Indians to settle in Middle Tennessee. The Shawnees journeyed from a region surrounding the Great Lakes about 1650 and built their villages along the banks of the Cumberland. The boundaries of this settlement extended north to what is now the Kentucky line, and as far west as the Tennessee River.

Until the time of the Shawnee coming the country comprised of Kentucky and Middle Tennessee had been held as neutral territory by the Indians, and was used as a common hunting ground by the Iroquois on the north,a nd by the tribes composing the Mobilian race on the south. Chief among the latter were the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles. Chapter VII, The Long Hunters:
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