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Kentucky's Dark and Bloody 1600s Timeline

The Dark and Bloody 1600s in Kentucky

1,630-1700. The Beaver Wars. The Shawnee warred in the Ohio Valley during the first part of the Beaver Wars (1630-1700) against the Iroquois, most likely, or perhaps, the Erie and Neutrals.

1,650. The first recorded Imperial British crown explorations of the mountains were those of Abraham “Abram” Wood, which began around 1650. Later, Abraham Wood sent exploring parties into the mountains.

In Year 1,654, Virginian Colonel Abram Wood surveyed Kentucky.

1,656. By 1656, the Iroquois had conquered and assimilated their Iroquian-speaking rivals except the Susquehannock, and had started to clear the Algonquin tribes from the Ohio Valley, and lower Michigan. Most of these enemies ended up as refugees in Wisconsin, but some of the Shawnee apparently were able to hold on for a few years as Susquehannock allies.

1658-1675. The Iroquois War Against The Susquehannock. In 1658 the western Iroquois (Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga) attacked the Susquehannock in what would be the final chapter of many years of warfare between them. It took the Iroquois until 1675 to defeat the Susquehannock, but the Shawnee lacked firearms and were forced to abandon most of the upper Ohio Valley during the late 1660s. Rather than retreat enmass to Wisconsin, they dispersed into four groups.

1660. Although the Iroquois prevented permanent settlements, small groups of Shawnee returned frequently to the Ohio Valley to hunt, so during their many years of exile, the Shawnee never completely surrendered the claim to their homeland.

1669 AD. Sieur De La Salle set out to explore the Great Lakes region of North America.

1670 AD. The Shawnee River in Kentucky. When the French began to explore the Ohio Valley in the 1670s, they first met the Shawnee on the Cumberland River, although they were told at the time the Shawnee had lived on the Ohio River. Two of these moved south towards the Cherokee in eastern Tennessee. Although relations between them had not always been friendly, the Cherokee were already beginning to have their own problems with the Iroquois and allowed one group of Shawnee (Chillicothe and Kispoko) to settle in the Cumberland Basin as a buffer against the Chickasaw (traditional Cherokee enemies).

1670 AD. The Jesuit Relations of 1670 states that some of the French were driven out of Illinois and fled southeast, taking refuge with the Shawnee Indians at Eskippakithiki (Woodring).

1671. September 1. The Batts-Fallam expedition reached the New River Valley (formerly known as Woods River, since Abram Woods was credited with its founding in 1654) in 1671. Thomas Batte and Robert Fallom's records are used in negotiations to bolster England's claim to “the Louisiana Purchase” for the end of the 1754-1763 French and Indian War. The explorers who discovered the New River in 1671 weren't the first Europeans to reach the outer edges of what has become West Virginia. But the discovery gave England the clout it needed to lay claim to the entire Ohio Valley. The expedition was undertaken at the behest of Major General Abraham Wood, an Englishman interested in developing the western fur trade. He had been directed by the British Imperial Governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley, for King Charles, to mount the expedition. The leader of the mission, Captain Thomas Batts, was accompanied by an Indian guide, an indentured servant, Thomas Wood, and Robert Fallam, who kept a journal of the trip. The French claimed the famous explorer La Salle had reached the Ohio country in 1669, two years before Batts and Fallam discovered the New River. At the Totero town, on the upper Roanoke, near the mountains, they learned that Captain William Byrd of James River Falls was in the neighborhood with a company of explorers. Captain Byrd and General Wood were in 1671 competitors in the Indian Trade to the south. Thomas Batts, Thomas Woods, and Robert Fallam accompanied with Penecute a great man of the Apomatack Indians and Jack Weason, formerly a servant to Major General Wood with five horses set forth from the Apomatacks town about eight of the clock in the morning, being Friday Sept. 1, 1671. That day we traveled above forty miles, took up our quarters and found that we had traveled from the Okenecheepath due west.

1673. This time it was the French in the form of the small party of Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet exploring the Mississippi River in 1673. Somewhat wary because of Hernando De Soto's encounter with the Chickasaw was well-known in Europe, Marquette and Joliet merely noted their location at the bluffs near Memphis, Tennessee. Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette and French fur trader Louis Joliet paddled the Mississippi down to the mouth of the Arkansas River. There they turned back, fearful of the Spanish in the region, unaware that they were only ten days away from the Gulf of Mexico. They also lost most of their notes.

1673. Abraham “Abram” Wood sent Gabriel Arthur and James Needham to the Overhill Cherokee of modern Tennessee for the self-interests of the British Imperial Crown and Redcoats. The purpose was to try to make direct contact with the Cherokee for trade, so as to bypass the Ocaneechee “middlemen” traders. The expedition did reach the Overhill Cherokee area, but James Needham was killed on their return trip. Gabriel Arthur was almost killed, but was rescued by being adopted by a Cherokee chief. For his own safety, Arthur was then sent with one of the chief's raiding parties. For about a year, he traveled with the Cherokee, throughout the Appalachians. He was probably the first European to visit modern West Virginia and cross the Cumberland Gap.

1675. The Iroquois Confederacy defeated the Susquehannock, ending the 17 Year Iroquois and Susquehannock War, and expanding the Iroquois Confederacy in population, culture, land, resources, and power.

1680. Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle conquers the Mississippi River, and declares all land adjacent to the Mississippi River as land for the French Imperial crown. Napoleon will sell this “Louisiana Purchase” to Thomas Jefferson in 1803.

1680. “Shawnees had built homes along the Savannah (some speculate it was from the Savannah basin that the earliest Shawnees came), where they resided until 1715; the Yamasee Wars drove them to the river's end, where they pushed out the Westos and served as slave catchers for Englishmen who swapped guns for humans. Shawnees traded at St. Augustine, bartering deerskins for cloth, yaupon leaves, egret and crane feathers, BLUE and WHITE duffels, for miquelet muskets and powder and lead to war against Catawbas.” (Belue, pg. 11).

1682. February and April. Actual contact came in February, 1682 during the expedition of Robert La Salle and Henri Tonti. Stopping at the Chickasaw Bluffs because Rene-Robert De La Salle was ill, and the expedition armorer, Pierre Prudehomme, wandered off into the woods and became lost. While searching for him, the French built a small fort (Fort Prudehomme) as a supply base for their push south. They also encountered two Chickasaw, who were given presents and asked to help. Prudehomme was finally found almost starved 9-10 days later, and after recovering his strength, La Salle left for the Gulf in March. On his return that April, La Salle chose to stop at the Quapaw villages (Chickasaw enemies) on the opposite side of the river.

1682. Frenchman Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, set up trading posts down the Mississippi River. Reaching the mouth of the river, he claimed the entire river basin for King Louis XIV (the 14th aka “the King Louis who got to keep his head”). La Salle had reached the Illinois country, establishing trading posts along the way. From the mouth of the Illinois River, he began a journey of more than a thousand miles, following the Mississippi River to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. There he laid claim, in the name of Louis XIV, king of France, to roughly one-third of the territory of today’s continental United States. In light of such monumental successes and the hope of conquering more territory—including the Spanish silver mines in northern Mexico—the king was persuaded to back La Salle’s grandiose plan, providing ships, supplies, and personnel to carry out his vision. The king’s largesse, however, had limits. Whereas La Salle saw a need for four ships, the monarch agreed to provide only two: the small frigate Belle and the escorting warship Joly. With the settlement complete, La Salle loaded the Belle in readiness for making a sea search for the Mississippi. He placed on board items that would be needed if he should find his river and fulfill his plan to move the settlement there. He then embarked on a mysterious journey westward, leaving the Belle in an insecure anchorage in the charge of the ship's mate, Tessier, who was often in a drunken state. In La Salle’s absence, misfortune plagued the Belle. Already the ship’s complement of 27 men had been reduced by the death of the Captain and five (5) members of his crew who were caught away from the ship and murdered by the vengeful Karankawa. Six others, including the most experienced sailors who gone ashore in the ship’s lifeboat for water, either drowned in the bay while returning to the ship at night or were slain by  Indians. Loss of the lifeboat proved crucial. Without water, the remaining crew suffered severe hydration—all except Tessier, who took charge of the store of sacramental wine. At last anchor was weighed to seek a more favorable location, but too late. A fierce northernly wind arose, and the unskilled and enfeebled crew was unable to work the rigging. In desperation, they dropped the bow anchor, but it failed to hold. As the ship was driven southward across the bay, the anchor dragged until the ship plunged stern first into the reef of barrier sand known today as Matagorda Peninsula. Still some distance from shore, the crew was unable to free the ship. Lacking the lifeboat, two men attempted to reach the shore with a poorly constructed raft. The raft came apart; one man swam ashore, but the other drowned. At last a more solid raft was built, and the crew was able to set up camp on the beach and ferry supplies from the wreck until the ship began to settle into the bottom and the cargo became submerged. For three months the Belle’s castaways remained isolated on the peninsular strip of sand, lacking the leadership of a resolute captain and a boat for crossing the bay. For sustenance, they supplemented provisions saved from the ship by fishing, gathering oysters, and shooting ducks. At last, however, they began to feel the pinch of hunger and set out to look for the means of escape. By good fortune, a canoe that had escaped the French on the far side of Pass Cavallo turned up at the water’s edge. Thus, the castaways were finally able to cross the bay to reach the settlement. Of all those whom La Salle had left on board the Belle—including the original crew of 27 and several men he had placed there in irons—only half a dozen (6) survived: the mate Tessier, the Abbé Chefdeville, the useless Marquis de Sablonnière, a soldier, a young lad, and a servant girl from Saint-Jean-d’-Angély. Meanwhile, La Salle himself, with a few followers, had marched eastward, hoping to reach the post on the Illinois River. When nearing the country of the “Cenis,” or Hasinai, in eastern Texas, La Salle was brutally murdered by his own men.

1683. There were almost 3,000 of this western group of Shawnee living in the vicinity of the French trading post at Fort St. Louis on the upper Illinois River. Allied with the Miami and Illinois, the Shawnee Imperial Confederacy continued their war against/with the Iroquois Imperial Confederacy.

1684. The Seneca attacked the Miami, because they had allowed some of these hostile Shawnee to settle near their villages in northwest Indiana.

1686 AD. When one of La Salle's ships—La Belle—had sunk during a storm in 1686 off the coast of what is now Texas in 1686, she took a would-be colony's worth of goods to the seafloor. On a cold winter day in 1687?, the small French ship Belle ran aground on the Texas coast, the victim of a run of bad luck and a howling north wind. The Belle was the last of four ships of the expedition led by Robert Cavelier, Sieur De La Salle. Sieur De La Salle had come to establish a colony near the mouth of the Mississippi River with multiple aims that included providing a warm-water port to serve the fur trade and a base for invading Mexico. France and Spain were then at war, and La Salle, with the backing of his King, intended to challenge Spain's domination of the Gulf of Mexico.

1687. Five years later, Cavelier, La Salle returned to America with four ships and 300 colonists. He missed the mouth of the Mississippi by over 400 miles, and landed near present-day Corpus Christi, Texas. Shipwrecks, smallpox and hostile natives nearly destroyed the colony. As 36 survivors struggled north to reach established French trading posts, La Salle was murdered by his own men.

1689. The Illinois and Shawnee war on each other. Despite the common threat posed by the Iroquois at the time, the crowded conditions near the French trading posts in Illinois eventually provoked a violent confrontation between the Shawnee Imperial Confederacy and Illinois Imperial Confederacy in 1689. The Shawnee soon left the area to join their relatives in Tennessee, but forever afterwards, they had a strong dislike for the Illinois, and often returned to raid their villages.

1690. The Iroquois Fur Wars, a continuance of the nearly 100 year Beaver Wars that engrossed most of the eastern portion of the United States, most especially around the Great Lakes region, during the 1600s. Kentucky felt reverberations of the Beaver Wars, and probably, similar hostilities existed in Kentucky, between the Iroquois, Shawnee, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Yuchi, Lenape, and other native Americans whose also native to Kentucky, for control of land, resources, rivers, creeks, ponds, streams, trees, plains, etc.

1690. Doherty lived with the Kentucky Cherokee in 1690. “"As early as the year 1690," says Abbott, " a trader from Virginia named Doherty crossed the mountains into what is now Kentucky, where he resided with the Indians. He visited the friendly Cherokee nation within the present bounds of Georgia and resided with them for several years." https://archive.org/stream/cu31924028846074/cu31924028846074_djvu.txt

1693. The Total Population of Chickasaw in America at this time is 10,000. The depopulation of the region's native populations by epidemics left by the Hernando De Soto expedition reduced the Chickasaw, but because of their small, scattered villages, the Chickasaw appear to have suffered less than their neighbors. In 1693 the French (Tonti) estimated the total population of the Chickasaw at 10,000. Iberville's later report in 1702 (based on figures provided by the Chickasaw) gave 580 cabins and 2,000 warriors, also which is about 10,000.

1694. After making peace with the Iroquois in 1694, the Shawnee in eastern Pennsylvania joined the Covenant Chain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_Chain

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