I don't have access to any land but I enjoy looking at what you guys find. My question is 1. What was the predominant tribe in TN? All Cherokee?
2. What was the estimated population of Native Americans in TN at its peak and when was that?
Thank you
The Cherokee were relative newcomers to Tennessee at European contact. They are an Iroquoian people who migrated here from the Great Lakes region, and brutally established a stronghold in East Tennessee, the western Carolinas, and north Georgia by pushing out other Native people.
The Shawnee lived in northern Kentucky, and the Chickasaw in southwestern Tennessee. Neither of the three tribes occupied middle Tennessee and Kentucky on a permanent basis, as they all fought over it as a super rich hunting ground and agreed on no permanent occupation. That's one reason why settlement here was relatively easy at first, because it was not permanently occupied by NA's.
At European settlement, the NA's didn't even know who built the Woodland and Mississippian mounds, and had no knowledge of the Paleo and Archaic people of our region who came thousands of years before them.
Edit to add that the historic tribes as we know them were only in existence for a few hundred years. The people who were before them and that they most likely descended from have little known history or only archaeological evidence of their existence.
