From
5 Billion Years ago to Hernando De Soto and the 1500s.
5,000,000,000 years
BP (Before Present). The Birth of the Sun. The sun forms within a
cloud of gas in a spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. A vast disk of
gas and debris that swirls around this new star gives birth to
planets, moons, and asteroids . Earth is the third planet out.
3,800,000,000 years
BP. The Earth has cooled and an atmosphere develops. Microscopic
living cells, neither plants nor animals, begin to evolve and
flourish in earth's many volcanic environments.
700,000,000 years
BP. Primitive Animals Appear. These are mostly flatworms, jelly
fish, and algae. By 570 million years before the present, large
numbers of creatures with hard shells suddenly appear.
300,000,000 BCE.
Brachiopod fossils are plentiful in Kentucky's subsurface,
since this land mass was completely submerged under water during
this time period.
200,000,000 years
BP. The First Mammals Appear. The first mammals evolved from a
class of reptiles that evolved mammalian traits, such as a segmented
jaw and a series of bones that make up the inner ear.
65,000,000 years BP.
Dinosaurs Become Extinct. An asteroid or comet slams into the
northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This world-wide
cataclysm brings to an end the long age of the dinosaurs, and
allows mammals to diversify and expand their ranges.
600,000 years BP.
Homo Sapiens Evolve. Our earliest ancestors evolve in Africa from a
line of creatures that descended from apes.
170,000 years BP.
Supernova 1987A Explodes. A star explodes in a dwarf galaxy known
as the Large Magellanic Cloud that lies just beyond the Milky Way.
The star, known in modern times as Sanduleak 69-202, is a blue
supergiant 25 times more massive than the Sun. Such explosions
distribute all the common elements such as Oxygen, Carbon,
Nitrogen, Calcium and Iron into interstellar space where they
enrich clouds of Hydrogen and Helium that are about to form new
stars. They also create the heavier elements (such as gold,
silver, lead, and uranium) and distribute these as well. Their
remnants generate the cosmic rays which lead to mutation and
evolution in living cells. These supernovae, then, are key to the
evolution of the Universe and to life itself.
12,000 BCE or 14,014
years BP. Human beings first wander into Kentucky. The Paleo-Indian
period begins (12,000-7500 B.C.). Mastodons, only the North
American variety had a coat of hair, which is one of the reasons it's
so often confused with the Woolly Mammoth. European and Asian
mastodons died out millions of years ago, during the Pleistocene
epoch, but Mammut americanum persisted well into the Ice Age (around
10,000 B.C.), when it was hunted to death by early human settlers,
who coveted its meat, its fur, and its five-foot-long horns—which
doubtlessly were employed as ornaments or ground up into “magical”
powders. The recovery of soft tissues, with near-intact DNA, may yet
enable the Mastodon to be “resurrected” under the
controversial scientific program known as de-extinction. No remains
of Mastodons in South America have been found. Went extinct about
11,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. No one knows for
sure what precipitated their demise, though it was likely a
combination of climate change, increased competition for their
accustomed food sources, and (possibly) hunting by early human
settlers, who knew that a single Mastodon could feed an entire tribe
for a week!
7,500 BC.
Kentucky’s Indian culture changed. Large game animals died out, and
the Archaic Indians (7500-1500 B.C.) now depended on fishing and
efficient gathering of wild foods as well as hunting. The
white-tailed deer and the elk became the dominant game animals.
1,500 BC.. The
People of the Woodland culture (1500 B.C.-900 A.D.) entered Kentucky.
They occupied the area for about 600 years. Efficient hunters and
gatherers, the Woodland Indians also participated in an intricate
trade network to obtain such things as copper from Lake
Superior, obsidian from the Rocky Mountains, and conch
shells from the Gulf of Mexico. They mined both Mammoth Cave and
Salts Cave for gypsum and mirabilite, a salty seasoning. The
Woodland people cultivated corn, sunflowers, giant ragweeds, and
amaranth (pigweed), and they raised squash and gourds for
containers rather than as a food source. The Woodland Indians buried
their dead in conical and later flat or oval-shaped burial
mounds, which were often 10 to 20 feet high (like Serpent Mound);
this practice resulted in their being called the Mound Builders by
19th-century observers. The remains of two distinct Woodland groups,
the Adena (early Woodland) and the Hopewell (middle Woodland), have
been found in northcentral Kentucky.
321 BCE. The
Serpent Mound in Ohio is formed. The Serpent Mound is how the Adena
culture buried their dead, near Peeples, Ohio. The Fort Ancient
Culture is neither a fort, nor is it ancient, nor a culture.
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/08/07/rethinking-ohios-history-serpent-mound-older-some-its-dirt-156268
Year 0. Jesus
Christ, the Palestinian Jew, is born in Bethleham, to Mother Mary,
immaculately, and stepfather Joseph buys it.
32 AD. Jesus the
Christ is crucified on a cross of wood by Roman Imperial soldiers.
Roman Imperial soldiers used to ride on the backs of elderly Jews, to
carry them from place to place.
325 AD. The
First Council of Nicaea. Roman Emperor Constantine declares
Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire.
900 AD. The
Mississippian Period (900-1650 A.D.) begins.
1,200 AD.
“Indians were flourishing in central Kentucky, their towns
numbering more than fifty. Village life centered around a plaza and
meetinghouse in the village's midst. Around the pavilion they erected
elm-bark wigwams that resembled shortened, less expansive versions of
Iroquois longhouses. Town populations rarely exceeded 300, and often,
towns were ringed by palisades. As towns grew and as game,
furbearers, shellfish, wood, and fertile land dwindled, the “Big
Men” gave the call to move, usually about once every generation.”
(Belue, pg. 3).
1,400s AD. “Fort
Ancient's artisans were trading limestone-fired ceramics to
Tennessee's Coosa villagers for conch shell gorgets inscribed with
rattlesnakes and weeping eye motifs, and for marginella disk
beads, pendants, and yaupon leaves to roast into caffeinated black
drink.” (Belue, pg. 3).
1,496 AD. Future
Spanish Conquistador Hernando De Soto is birthed in Spain.
1,524 AD. November 14.
Hernando De Soto the Butcher helps Pizzaro the Butcher in
conquering/genociding Nicauragua, just as Ronald Reagan will do in
the same country, over 4 centuries later!
1,532 AD. In 1532,
explorer Francisco Pizarro made Hernando de Soto second in command on
Pizarro’s expedition to explore, massacre, rape, pillage, and
conquer Peru.
1,533 AD. While
exploring the country's highlands in 1533, de Soto came upon a road
leading to Cuzco, the capital of Peru’s Incan Imperial Empire. De
Soto played a fundamental role in organizing the conquest of Peru,
and engaged in a successful battle to capture Cuzco. Pizzaro and De
Soto exterminate the Incan Empire, keeping Manchu Picchu, an
intricate stairway wrapping themselves all around the Andes
Mountains in South America, all for themselves.
1536 AD.
Hernando de Soto returned to Spain a wealthy man. His share of the
Incan Empire's fortune amounted to no less than 18,000 ounces of
gold.
1,539/40. Hernando De
Soto's 6 hundred conquistadores brought war and disease with them to
the Eastern United States natives. The first strains of disease
arrived “after 1539, brought from infected stragglers fleeing
Hernando de Soto's fifty-month, four-thousand-mile death march, which
took him from Tampa Bay to the Father of Waters, almost to the Ohio's
mouth, and back to the Mississippi's fall into the Gulf, de Soto's
Spanish knights raping, torturing, enslaving, and killing countless
Indians along the way, de Soto's swelling (and escaping) swine herd
infecting deer and turkey and forests with zoonotic issues of
anthrax, brucellosis, trichinosis, and tuberculosis.” (Belue, pg.
9).
1,539. July 28. With
100 slaves and 600 mighty strong conquistadors, Hernando De Soto
begins his journey into the southeastern portion of pre-United States
of America. In late May 1539, de Soto landed on the west coast of
Florida with 600 troops, servants, and staff, 200 horses, and a pack
of bloodhounds. From there, the army set about subduing the natives,
seizing any valuables they stumbled upon, and preparing the region
for eventual Spanish colonization. Traveling through Florida,
Georgia, South Carolina, across the Appalachians, and back to
Alabama, de Soto failed to find the gold and silver he desired, but
he did seize a valuable collection of pearls at Cofitachequi, in
present-day Georgia. Decisive conquest also eluded the
Spaniards, as what would become the United States lacked the large,
centralized civilizations of Mexico and Peru.
1,540. The Chickasaw
also controlled western Tennessee and Kentucky (the Kentucky
Chickasaw Lands is the western most region in Kentucky) west
of the divide between the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers including
the Chickasaw Bluffs which overlook the Mississippi River at
Memphis. Of the two, the Choctaw were by far the larger by a
factor of four to five times, but the Chickasaw were still
sizeable, numbering as many as 15,000 before their contact
with Europeans in 1540.
1,540 AD. Tuskaloosa
(Tuskalusa, Tastaluca, Tuskaluza) (died 1540) was a paramount chief
of a Mississippian chiefdom in what is now the U.S. State of
Alabama. His people were possibly ancestors to the several southern
Native American confederacies (the Choctaw and Creek peoples) who
later emerged in the region. The modern city of Tuscaloosa,
Alabama is named for him. Tuskaloosa is notable for leading the
Battle of Mabila at his fortified village against the Spanish
conquistador Hernando de Soto. After being taken hostage by the
Spanish as they passed through his territory, Tuskaloosa organized a
surprise attack on his captors at Mabila, but was ultimately
defeated. Contemporary records
describe the paramount chief as being very tall and well built, with
some of the chroniclers saying Tuaskaloosa stood a foot and a half
taller than the Spaniards. His name, derived from the western
Muskogean language elements taska and losa, means "Black
Warrior". “[Tuskaloosa]'s appearance was full of dignity
he was tall of person, muscular, lean, and symmetrical. He was the
suzerain of many territories, and of numerous people, being equally
feared by his vassals and the neighbouring nations.” —Gentleman
of Elvas.
1,540. October 18.
AD. The Battle of Mabila. De Soto vs. Tuskaloosa. Hernando de Soto
and his slaves and warriors expedition arrived at Mabila,
Alabama, which was a heavily fortified village situated on a plain.
The native American village had a wooden palisade encircling it, with
bastions every so often for archers to shoot their longbows. Upon
arriving at Mabila, the Spaniards knew something was amiss. The
population of the town was almost exclusively male, young warriors
and men of status. There were several women, but no children. The
Spaniards also noticed the palisade had been recently strengthened,
and that all trees, bushes and even weeds, had been cleared from
outside the settlement for the length of a crossbow shot. Outside the
palisade, in the field an older warrior had been seen haranguing
younger warriors, and leading them in mock skirmishes and military
exercises. When the Spaniards reached the town of Mabila, ruled by
one of Tuskaloosa's vassals, the Chief asked de Soto to allow him to
remain there. When de Soto refused, Tuskaloosa warned him to leave
the town, then withdrew to another room, and refused to talk further.
A lesser chief was asked to intercede, but he would not. One of the
Spaniards, according to Elvas, “seized him by the cloak of
marten-skins that he had on, drew it off over his head, and left it
in his hands; whereupon, the Indians all beginning to rise, he gave
him a stroke with a cutlass, that laid open his back, when they, with
loud yells, came out of the houses, discharging their bows.” The
Spaniards barely escaped from the well-fortified town. The Indians
closed the gates and “beating their drums, they raised flags, with
great shouting.” De Soto determined to attack the town, and in the
battle that followed, Elvas records: “The Indians fought with so
great spirit that they, many times, drove our people back out of the
town. The struggle lasted so long that many Christians, weary and
very thirsty, went to drink at a pond near by, tinged with the blood
of the killed, and returned to the combat.” Hernando De Soto had
his men set fire to the town, then by Elvas's account, “breaking
in upon the Indians and beating them down, they fled out of the
place, the cavalry and infantry driving them back through the gates,
where losing the hope of escape, they fought valiantly; and the
Christians getting among them with cutlasses, they found themselves
met on all sides by their strokes, when many, dashing headlong into
the flaming houses, were smothered, and, heaped one upon another,
burned to death. They who perished there were in all two thousand
five hundred, a few more or less: of the Christians there fell
two hundred... Of the living, one hundred and fifty (150) Christians
had received seven hundred wounds...” Elvas noted later that four
hundred hogs died in the conflagration. The exact count of the dead
is not known, but Spanish accounts at the time put the number of
Indian dead at between 2,500 and 3,000. This range would make the
battle one of the bloodiest in recorded North American history.
All the Indians were killed, along with 20 -200 of de Soto's men.
Several hundred Spaniards were wounded. In addition, the Indian
conscripts they had come to depend on to bear their supplies had all
fled with baggage.
xxx
Later on... still
healing the wounds from their victory over the Mobile in southern
Alabama, the Spanish were discouraged by the ferocity of the
battle and their failure to find gold. Rumors of mutiny had
forced De Soto to turn northward to find winter quarters rather than
risk wholesale desertions if he proceeded to the supply ships waiting
on the coast. As one-sided as their victory had been, the Spanish
were no longer viewed as invincible by the region's tribes, and
the reception they received from the Chickasaw at a river
crossing in northern Alabama was a shower of arrows from warriors on
the other side. The Spanish finally forced their way across and,
after capturing several hostages, demanded that the Chickasaw
supply them with food. The Chickasaw minko reluctantly agreed,
and with snow already on the ground, the Spanish established their
winter camp. An uneasy truce prevailed throughout the winter with
neither side entirely trusting the other. The Chickasaw supplied the
Spanish with corn but were still trying to find a way way to rid
themselves of their “guests”. To this end, they asked the
Spanish to help them crush a revolt by a tributary tribe to the west,
the Chakchiuma. Hernando De Soto agreed to send 30 horsemen and 80
infantry but, realizing the danger of dividing his army, put the
remainder on alert. The Spanish-Chickasaw expedition found the
Chakchiuma town abandoned, and suspecting a trap, the Spanish
returned to their camp. The remainder of the winter passed
quietly with the Spanish becoming increasingly complacent. De Soto
offered some roast pork to visiting Chickasaw (his army kept a
large herd of pigs as emergency rations), and they loved it.
Since the Chickasaw were sharing their food with De Soto, they saw
nothing wrong with appropriating a few of the Spanish pigs. Three
"hog thieves" were caught, and De Soto dealt with them in
the usual high-handed manner of the conquistador. Two executed by a
crossbow firing squad, and the third was sent to his chief minus his
hands. Spanish soldiers also plundered one of the nearby
Chickasaw towns. Expecting that the Spanish would leave soon, the
minko chose to ignore the abuse, but as the time for departure
approached in March, De Soto made one demand too many …
Now Hernando De Soto
demanded of the Chickasaw, 200 of their Chickasaw women to serve as
tamemes (bearers) and "other purposes." The Chickasaw
minko said that he would "have to think about this" but
that De Soto would receive his answer in the near future. His answer
was in keeping with the Chickasaw's later reputation as a people who
"don't take guff" with a talent of “going for the
jugular” with the sudden and unexpected.
1,541. March 8. De Soto's Spaniards received a defiant answer from
the Chickasaws. The Spanish had slaughtered over a thousand
Indians at the Battle of Mabila somewhere in southern
Alabama during the previous autumn. In an uneasy truce, the
Chickasaws brought supplies and let the Spaniards remain at their
camp until spring 1541. As Hernando de Soto prepared to leave, he
demanded 200 Chickasaw female slaves to carry the troops’ supplies.
Chickasaw warriors made a surprise night attack on the Spanish
encampment bringing along live coals in clay pots to set it afire.
The result was chaos, and De Soto himself was almost killed when
his saddle came loose after mounting a horse to defend the camp.
The Chickasaw withdrew and when the smoke cleared in the morning, the
Spanish had lost 12 men, 57 horses, and 400 of their precious
pigs.... “Chickasaw warriors staged a surprise night attack,
burning the entire camp, killing 50 horses, 400 hogs and
destroying the Spaniard’s weaponry, saddles and clothing and food
stores. At least a dozen Spanish soldiers died and many
more were wounded.” Even worse, almost all of their clothing
and weapons had been destroyed, and the expedition was within a
hair's breadth of being wiped out. Under constant attack, they
gathered what remained and retreated cold, desperate, and almost
entirely naked to an abandoned Chickasaw village where they hastily
built a forge to repair their weapons and saddles. The Spanish
reassembled on a hill some distance away and spent weeks recovering,
camping in defensive formations under the open air in grass sleeping
bags, due to lack of clothing. The Chickasaws had sent a strong
message to their European enemies: do not return to our land. It was
over 150 years until the Chickasaws received another European
exploration party. Once this was done, the conquistadors left the
Chickasaw homeland by the shortest route available.
1,541. June 17.
Hernando De Soto becomes the first white genicidal slaughtering
superhero butcher of native Americans, to reach the Mississippi
River. First white man (plus whatever of De Soto's conquistadors survived up to that point) in Kentucky too.
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