Today is American Indian Day in Tennessee

…And appropriately so because Tennessee we are surrounded by the history of our native predecessors.

As you likely know, even the name Tennessee comes from Cherokee roots, meaning, “Where the river bends.” However the story of the indigenous people in our corner of the world begins much earlier.

For instance, did you know that Paleo-Indians lived in Williamson County about over 9,000 years ago? These hunter-gatherers enjoyed the abundant vegetation and hunted the huge mastodons and large bison that roamed the rolling hills of Middle TN? Did you further know that, two years ago, the first mastodon kill site discovered in the New World was uncovered in a Brentwood backyard. Really!

Jump forward to the Archaic period (8000 B.C. to 1,000 B.C.) As Stonehenge was being constructed in the Old World, our locals decided to quit trekking around looking for massive mammals and put down roots about where Fieldstone Farm is today.

During the Mississippian period (800 A.D. to 1.500 A.D.) Williamson County was busting at the seams. With the Crusades raging in Europe, people in Middle Tennessee were building a network of villages that communicated and protected each other all over Williamson County. With its temples, residents, stone burial boxes and mysterious mounds, it’s believed that the municipal and religious epicenter was Old Town on Old Natchez Trace.

In the 1500 and early 1600s, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cousatta, Yuchi and the Algonquian Cisca called our corner of the world home. These early Tennessee residents were mostly agrarian and were only loosely associated with each other, until there was a common enemy.

By the late 1600s conflicts with Western Europeans dramatically increased as expansion across the continent continued. After the French and Indian war, the British Empire promised in The Proclamation of 1763, that there would be no European expansion beyond the Appalachian Mountains meaning, all of Tennessee was reserved for the original inhabitants. Hummm…., as Tennessee became a state in 1796, this was clearly short-lived.

Franklin plays a role in one of the saddest chapters in this long story. In August of 1830 General President Andrew Jackson (named Sharp Knife by the Chickasaw) hosted the first of several meetings that leads to thousands of Native Americans being forcibly removed from their homes in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama and moved to Oklahoma. The first of those treaties was signed in Franklin’s Masonic Hall, August of 1830. Obviously, this removal became known as The Trail of Tears.

So how is this good news?

That’s not an easy one. We are blessed to have Native Americans today who are willing to share their story. Over the years Naive Americans have been demonized, marginalized and romanticized. However, they want for us to see them through a realistic lens, to understand their culture and to celebrate their heritage. My guess is that whether we are talking about the earliest inhabitants who traversed Middle Tennessee and dined on Mastodons or the ones who hid in the Smokey Mountains to avoid being carted off to Oklahoma, they were probably not very different from us.

One way to find out is by attending a Pow-Wow. There is going to be one at Long Hunter State Park, October 14-16. Click here for more information.