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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