HOW OUR LANDS WERE STOLEN


THE FORTS
THE STATIONS
NORTH CAROLINA MILITARY RESERVATION
ROADS, TRACES, PATHS, ETC.
THE FORTS:
  • Early accounts of forts in North America came from an account by Oconostota Sevier's Letter About Prince Madoc. He told of a tribal legend of Welshmen arriving in their country during the 12th century AD. Variously known as Prince Modoc or Madoc, he is said to have fled Wales about 1170 AD and came into Chickamaugan land through what is now Mobile Alabama. The remains of stone forts were first noticed along the Hiawasee River and today only Fort Mountain Georgia, Desoto Falls Alabama, and Old Stone Fort Tennessee remain.
  • 1540-1542: DeSoto's expedition, as well as those who followed him, are known to have built posts or fort on their journey through Chickamaugan land. However, exact numbers and locations are unknown. It is thought that De Soto journeyed as far as present day Columbia Tennessee, along the Duck River, where he met a party of Chickasaw warriors and there suffered the wound that would later be fatal. In the area that was to be the Columbia Dam impoundment, is a spot consisting of several large holes, the Money pits, dug in search of the cave where it is said Spanish gold was stashed. De Soto died at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers.
  • After Columbus, the east coast was dotted with forts/settlements by mostly Spanish, English, and French viaing for control of the new land. The devastion of the Native inhabitants by disease of the Ohio Valley and the subsequent invasion by whites opened the way for invasion of Chickamaguan lands by 1700. The forts served as bases for explorations and raids into our lands.
    The French forts were established as early as 1543. Quebec, on the St. Lawrence Seaway- 1608. A settlement at this site was first established in 1530. Fort Detroit- 1701, Ponchatrain, and many others. On June 14, 1671, the Sieur de St. Lusson (in the presence of three Jesuits, 16 lay Frenchmen and several hundred Indians) took possession for France of "Lake Superior, Lake Huron and all contiguous countries, streams, lakes and rivers in all their length and breadth bounded by the North and South (Pacific) seas."
    Fort Caroline 1562-1568
    Spain: San Augustin, 1565; others.
    A French military officer and colonial administrator, born in Gascony. With the approval of King Louis XIV of France, Cadillac founded Fort Pontchartrain (now Detroit) in 1701. In 1760 Fort Detroit was turned ovr to the British.
    Michigan Forts
  • In April of 1673, James Needham, an Englishman and Gabriel Arthur, possibly an indentured servant came with approximately eight Indians, as explorers to the Tennessee Valley. There, Needham described finding “hairy people .... (who) have a bell which is six foot over which they ring morning and evening and at that time a great number of people congregrate togather and talkes” in a language not English nor any Indian dialect that the accompanying Indians knew. And yet these people seemingly looked European. Needham described them as “hairy, white people which have long beards and whiskers and weares clothing.” These people claimed that they were descended from a group of Portugese who had been shipwrecked or abandoned on the Atlantic coast. (Byron Stinson, “The Melungeons,” American History Illustrated, November, 1973:41) The term they used was ‘Portyghee.’
  • Fort Prudhomme was established around 1682 by Sieur Robert Cavalier De La Salle, France. La Salle's party, after a short stay at the mouth of the Ohio, floated down to the Chickasaw bluffs.One of the party went into the woods and lost his way. La Salle stopped and visited the Chickasaws in the area and obtained their permission to build Fort Prudhomme as a resting place until the lost man returned. The fort was named for this lost French countryman. When La Salle departed he left Prudhomme to complete the fort as a stopping point for further explorers.
  • 1699: Biloxi Bay Mississippi was the site of the first southern French settlement.
  • Prior to 1700, the Shawnees had built a fort on a large mound where Lick Creek joined the Cumberland River. About 1700, through an alliance between the Chickasaws and Chickamaugans, the Shawnees were forced out of the Cumberland Valley. After several of them had escaped, the Chickasaws attacked their fort at the Lick, killed the Shawnees remaining, and captured their property. Late in the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, the French assiduously explored the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers and their tributaries. In 1710, a Frenchman came up the Cumberland as far as the Great Lick, present day Nashville Tennessee. No record exists of his name but he is mentioned because he conducted M. Charleville to this site. In 1714 he established a trading post near the fort built some years earlier by the Shawnees. This site was along Lick Creek near the river and atop a large mound. The traders eventually looted and destroyed the mound and sites surrounding the salt marsh along Lick Creek.
  • 1735 Fort Tombigbee Located on the west side of a high bank overlooking a narrow deep point of the Mobile River and 100 leagues rom Mobile.
  • 1739 Fort Assumpsion was erected where Memphis now stands.
  • 1756 By the middle of the eighteenth century, the struggle for power between the English and French in North America had reached a crescendo. Great Britain's colonies extended down the Atlantic Coast; French territory formed an encircling arc from Canada to the Mississippi Delta. Thus, the English colonists clamored for the construction of forts in the Chickamaugan lands. These forts were to be built for the protection of Charleston and its trade, and seduce the Southern Indians from their loyalty to France, which was always their favorite. In 1730 Moytoy had allied the nation with the British crown, thus the Chickamaugans expected the British assistance when the warriors were called to war against the French and their Indian allies and many chiefs requested a fort in their areas. One such fort was Fort Atta Kulla Kula.
  • 1) Great Britain was concerned about the loyalties of the Natives and the protection of their settlements in North Carolina. There was continual fear that the tribes might be incited by the French to fall upon and destroy the frontier settlements of Carolina.
  • 2) Charleston, S. C., was the military and commercial center for the British and it was to this place that all efforts were made to divert the Indian trade. The colonists sought this trade from all regions within the French influence and it became a consuming desire on their part to destroy the French forts and erect such a line of forts of their own, with permanent military occupation.

    The general design was to erect, far back into the wilderness, three forts.

  • 1)Fort Moore, on the Savannah River, just below and opposite the present City of Augusta
  • 2)Fort Prince George was built on the land of the Catawbas far up the headwaters of the Savannah River, on the Cherokee path, near Keowee
  • 3)Fort Loudon was erected here on the southern bank of the Tennessee River in what is now Monroe County, near the point where the Tellico River runs into the Little Tennessee, more than thirty miles southwest of Knoxville.

    Other forts were built among the Allegheny Mountains were:

  • Fort Dobbs- Governor Dobbs, of North Carolina, made an offensive and defensive treaty with the Chickamaugans and with the Catawbas establishing Fort Dobbs approximately three miles north of the Fourth Creek Community. Fourth Creek runs across Highway 21 N. just beyond I-40 in North Carolina and was so named because it was the fourth creek west of Salisbury. Remember, there was no King or Emperor over the whole nation, thus when this treaty was made, the chief of each town required that a fort be erected within their respective countries for the defense of their women and children. It gave its name to the first community located in this area. The Fourth Creek Community became the county seat of Statesville North Carolina on January 9, 1789. Long Island Fort, on the north bank of the Holston River Fort Chissel, on New River in Virginia.
  • 1774 Fort Harrod: The first permanent settlement west of the Alleghenies.
  • April 1st, 1775: Fort Boonesborough established in 1775 by Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone of the Transylvania Company near present day Lexington Kentucky. First constructed several log huts in a sycamore hollow which led to the Kentucky River. The settlement was later moved by Henderson to a nearby rise on the river bank. A hollow squared stockade enclosing about an acre of ground with blockhouses and cabins was eventually completed in September 1778 - just in time to withstand a nine-day attack by Indians and Frenchmen, later known as "The Great Siege."
  • 1778 Bledsoe's Lick, Bledsoe's Fort. This fort was built near Castalian Springs Tennessee.
  • In 1779, on a bluff overlooking the Cumberland River, near the center of present downtown Nashville, a band of conspirators cleared the land and built a log stockade. This was Fort Nashborough. May 1st, 1780: representatives from the eight stations. met at Nashborough and adopted a form of local government, irrespective of the laws of either North Carolina or Virginia territorial governments(The Cumberland Compact). "That as this settlement is in its infancy unknown to Government and not included within any County in North Carolina the State to which it belongs so as to derive the advantages of those wholesome and salutary Laws for the protection and benefit of it..."
  • 1785, A highway was opened between Knoxville and Nashville, and hundreds of settlers passed through the area. Bon Air Springs, on this highway, developed as the first resort area in the South.
  • 1791 Fort Deposit Below Muscle Shoals Alabama.
  • 1791 Fort Blount Originally known as "Big Lick Garrison" or the "Block House on the Cumberland," Jackson County Tennessee.
  • 1792 Fort Southwest Point was an army garrison between 1792 and 1807. The fort was surrounded by several thriving trading posts which provided a protectection for the convergence of Southeastern trade routes at the mouth of the Clinch River. The City of Kingston was established in 1799 as a result of the growing population around it.
    Ostensibly, both Fort Blount and Fort Southwest point were built to prevent the encroachment of settlers on Chickamaguan lands.
  • 1795 Fort of San Fernando de Barancos on the lower Chickasaw Bluff.
    THE STATIONS:
  • The early forts, strong cabins, stockades were commonly called stations.
  • About 1780 a number of stations were built in the area of present day Nashville. These were; the Fort on the Bluff or Bluffs, Easton's one mile and a half below the Big Salt Lick, and on the east side of the Cumberland near Lock A, Freeland's in North Nashville, Bledsoe's, Fort Mission, Mansker's or Gasper's in Goodlettesvile Tennessee, Asher's at Gallatin Tennessee, Donelson's or Stone's River on the Stone's River at Clover Bottom, Union six miles north of Nashville, Renfroe's forty miles northwest of the Bluff.
  • The first stations in the Lexington Kentucky area were: Harrodsburg (1774), Ruddles (1775,79), Martin (1775, 79), Boonesborough (1775), Bryan (1779). Note that all but Bryan's Station were built before the Transylvania Purchase. The following were established later. Lexington, McAfee, Boiling Spring, Logan (St. Asaph), House of Capt Johnston, several forts at Danville, Blue Licks, Leestown, Macellan, Strode.
    NORTH CAROLINA MILITARY RESERVATION
  • 1782: In what is now known as north Middle Tennessee, the North Carolina Military Reservation, sometimes called the Military District, was created. The Officers and Men from North Carolina that served in their Continental Line during the War of Independence were issued Military Warrants which were redeemed in land within the Military Reservation. When the title to the land passed to the individual, it came as a land grant. Additionally, many preemption claims in that Reservation were honored with land grants. Warrants for land and land grants were both given by North Carolina even into Tennessee’s Statehood period. Some North Carolina Warrants were also used for land outside the Reservation.
  • North Carolina was not overly concerned with the land claims of the Chickamaugans. In North Carolina’s view, the Chickamaugans had joined Britain during the war. Therefore, they forfeited their land rights simply because they were on the losing side. North Carolina's Middle District was just east of the Military District and encompassed much of today’s Upper Cumberland and was considered Indian land. This Middle District ran southward and then westward to form a district that included much of the later Warren County.Clearly, that area, and much more, was Indian land and was not ceded by the Cherokee until 1806. (Treaty of Washington, 7 January 1806.)
  • It is interesting to note that in the SW corner of a map of the reservation that Black Fox had a 'camp' site. He is one of the signers of the 1805 Treaty of Tellico and the 1807 Convention which ended all Chickamaguan lands claims. His motivation was suspicious.

    THE NC MILITARY RESERVATION AND OTHER RESERVES
    THE NC MILITARY RESERVATION LAND FRAUD



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    Last Update 1/07