The Kentucky Beaver Wars (1600s): A Premodern Historical Timeline

14,000 BP. Paleo-Indians lived in the American Midwest, including Kentucky, even though no skeletal remains of Paleo-Indians have ever been found in Kentucky. Paleo-Indians were hunter-gatherer Kentucky-Indians who hunted a wide range of animals, including the megafauna, which became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age. Scholars believe that Paleo-Indians were specialized, highly mobile foragers who hunted late Pleistocene fauna such as BISON, MASTODONS, CARIBOU, and MAMMOTHS.

Year O. Nothing significant happened.

1000 AD. The Monongahela Culture. Beginning about 1000 AD, a period in Ohio Country Native American history known as “Fort Ancient”, groups in the Middle Ohio Valley adopted an agrarian culture, with maize as their primary crop. These mound builders began settling in small, year-round settlements of no more than forty to fifty individuals. Aka Adena Culture.

1050-1635 AD. To their northeast, in present-day Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio and West Virginia were the peoples of the Monongahela Culture, who inhabited the Monongahela River Valley from 1050 to 1635. They were maize agriculturalists and lived in well laid out palisaded villages with central oval plazas, some of which consisted of as many as 50-100 structures.

1200 AD. These small villages began to coalesce into larger settlements of up to 300 people. Settlements were rarely permanent, as the people commonly moved to a new location after one or two generations, when the natural resources surrounding the previous village were exhausted.

1400AD-. From 1400 onwards, the formerly dispersed populations began to coalesce. Villages became much larger, with populations as high as 500. This was a time when warfare and intergroup strife increased, leading the tribes to consolidate their villages for better protection. The simple, soulful, native Kentuckians rummaging through the Bluegrass hills, plains, streams, creeks, mountains, hills, valleys, farms, villages, were Mosopelea, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Shawnee, Yuchi, Lenape (Delaware), and to a lesser extant, the Miami, Wyandot, Mingo, Mohawk, and Illinois, and at least, these folks bled on Kentucky's dirt, which should account for citizenship, bleeding for your country, your nation, your homeland, moreso than just being born here, like all of these illegal white anchor babies,

1525 AD. The Fort Ancient people (the Adena, and Shawnee). Most likely their society, like the Mississippian culture to the south, was severely disrupted by waves of epidemics from new infectious diseases carried by the very first Spanish explorers in the 16th century. After 1525 at Madisonville, the type site, the village's house sizes became smaller and fewer, with evidence showing they became “a less horticulture-centered, sedentary way of life”. The Shawnee traditionally considered the Lenape (or Delaware) of the East Coast mid-Atlantic region, who were also Algonquian speaking, as their "grandfathers." The Algonquian nations of present-day Canada regarded the Shawnee as their southernmost branch. Along the East Coast, the Algonquian-speaking tribes were mostly located in coastal areas, from Quebec to the Carolinas. Algonquian languages have words similar to the archaic shawano (now: shaawanwa) meaning "south". However, the stem shaawa- does not mean "south" in Shawnee, but "moderate, warm (of weather)". In one Shawnee tale, Shaawaki is the deity of the south.

1540 AD. A party of Cherokee warriors successfully defended the northwestern border of the Cherokee country against the advances of Hernando DeSoto and his Spanish soldiers. The Spanish were forced to retreat to the north side of the Ohio River at present-day Fort Massac, Illinois.

1557. The word Cherokee comes from the 1557 Portuguese narrative of DeSoto's expedition, which was then written as Chalaque. Kentucky is the land of caves, home to the longest cave in the world, and home of the Cherokee, and their salt and crystal mines. The Cherokee mined minerals, disposed of their dead, conducted ceremonies, and explored the unknown, as indicated by the footprints, pictographs, petroglyphs, mud glyphs, stone tools, and sculptures they left behind. Wherever the Cherokee found a dry cave in Kentucky with a reasonably accessible opening, they entered and explored it systematically. Kentucky has been in Cherokee territory for centuries, representing the northern quarter of the Cherokee Nation since time immemorial, ad nauseum, eternity, infinite. The boundaries of the ancient premodern Cherokee nation extended to the Ohio River in the north, the Cumberland River in the west, and the Great Kanawha River in the east.

1570. Or 1580-1600. Iroquois oral tradition, as recorded in the Jesuit Relations, speaks of a draining war between the Mohawk Iroquois and an alliance of the Susquehannock and Algonquin sometime between 1580 and 1600. This was perhaps in response to the formation of the League of the Iroquois. NABoI puts this at about 1570. From wikipedia, like most of this document is.

The 1600s!

1600s AD. Kentucky was uncharted wilderness, a Garden of Eden, plush with large game, small game, waters, creeks, streams, trees for lumber, berries for gathering, fertile land for planting, and lots of native Americans, living in small bands of decentralized tribes, organized by gender, some male-dominated, others female, all by family, some war tribes, no worker councils, scattered all throughout Kentucky. The Iroquois and the Iroquoian-speaking Huron sometimes used Kentucky as hunting grounds.

1601 AD. When the French returned in 1601, the St. Lawrence Valley had already been the site of generations of blood-feud-style warfare, as indeed characterized the relations of the Iroquois with virtually all neighboring peoples. When Samuel de Champlain landed at Tadoussac on the St. Lawrence, the Montagnais, Algonquin, and Huron almost immediately recruited him and his small company of French adventurers to assist in attacking their Iroquois enemies upriver. The Iroquois lands comprised an ethnic island, surrounded on all sides, but the south, by Algonquian-speaking nations, all traditional enemies—including the Shawnee to the west in the Ohio Country. Their rivals also included the Iroquoian-speaking Huron and Neutral Nation Confederacies, who lived on the southern shore of Lake Huron and the western shore of Lake Ontario, respectively, and the Susquehannocks to their south but all of which while sometimes allies were also sometimes enemies, so were not part of the Iroquois Confederation, despite shared linguistic heritages.

1603 AD. Before 1603, Samuel de Champlain had formed an offensive alliance against the Iroquois, and a precedent was set that the French would not trade firearms to the Iroquois. He had a commercial rationale: the northern Natives provided the French with valuable furs and the Iroquois, based in present-day New York, interfered with that trade.

1607 AD. After the English arrived on the present site of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, there was continuous contact with Cherokee from Kentucky as English traders strengthened their alliances, and worked their way into the Appalachian Mountains.

1608-1626 AD. Most Iroquois tribes ally with the Dutch Fur Traders over the French. In 1608, French explorer Samuel Champlain sided with the Huron people living along the St. Lawrence River against the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (“The Five Nations”, aka The Iroquois Confederacy) living in what is now upper and western New York state. The result was a lasting enmity by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy towards the French, which caused them to side with the Dutch Fur Traders coming up the Hudson River in about 1626. The Dutch offered better prices than the French and traded firearms, hatchets, and knives to the Iroquois in exchange for furs.

1609 AD. This settlement was identical with the "Mowhemenchouch" or "Massinacack" found by Newport's expedition from Jamestown in 1609. The English, settled on their border at the falls of the James (Richmond), of course were constantly encroaching upon them, and they rapidly wasted away. The English, the Powhatans, and the Iroquois all waged war against them. Mention has just been made of the Shawnees, that tribe that was such a scourge to our early settlers. Of the Algonkian stock, they originated along the Savannah River, in Georgia, and southward from the Ashley River, in South Carolina.

1609. The first deliberate battle in 1609 was fought at Samuel dec Champlain's initiative. Champlain wrote, "I had come with no other intention than to make war". In the company of his Huron and Algonkin allies, Samuel de Champlain and his forces fought a pitched battle with the Mohawk on the shores of Lake Champlain. Samuel de Champlain singlehandedly killed three Iroquois chiefs with an ARQUEBUS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arquebus despite the war chiefs having worn “arrowproof body armor made of PLAITED STICKS”.

1610. In 1610, Samuel dec Champlain and his arquebus-wielding French companions helped the Algonquin and the Huron defeat a large Iroquois raiding party. In 1615, Samuel de Champlain joined a Huron raiding party and took part in a siege on an Iroquois town, probably among the Onondaga, south of Lake Ontario in present-day New York State. The attack ultimately failed, and Samuel de Champlain was injured.

1610-1614. In 1610-1614, with eyes long aware of French fur sales, the Dutch established a series impermanent (seasonal) trading posts on the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, one on Castle Island at the edge of Iroquois territory near present day Albany, giving the Iroquois direct access to European markets. Their trading efforts and eventual colonies in New Jersey and Delaware soon also gave the Delaware nation and Susquehannocks trade with the Dutch, which for their own reasons were reluctant to trade firearms to the Delaware.

1610. The Beaver Wars (1610-1701) were a series of conflicts fought in the mid-17th century in eastern North America. Encouraged and armed by their Dutch and English trading partners, the Iroquois sought to expand their territory and monopolize the fur trade, and the trade between European markets, and the tribes of the western Great Lakes region. Cherokee, Creek, and Shawnee Indians lived in Kentucky, and maybe Iroquois too, and others. The Traditional story was that the Iroquios were so ferocious and terrifying, that all native Kentuckians, picked up their houses, and moved out of their homeland for good. Without occupation. Just because. Hey man. It's the Iroquois. The conflict pitted the nations of the Iroquois Confederation, led by the dominant Mohawk, against the French and French-backed Algonquin tribes. As the Iroquois swept westward, the Ohio Country was virtually emptied of Native people as refugees fled westward to escape the marauding warriors. Much of this region was later repopulated by Native peoples nominally subjected to the Six Nations. The Beaver Wars—also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars—encompass a series of conflicts fought in the mid-17th century in eastern North America. Encouraged and armed by their Dutch and English trading partners, the Iroquois sought to expand their territory and monopolize the fur trade and the trade between European markets and the tribes of the western Great Lakes region. The Beaver Wars were brutal, and are considered one of the bloodiest series of conflicts in the history of North America. As the Iroquois succeeded in the war and enlarged their territory, they realigned the tribal geography of North America, and destroyed several large tribal confederacies—including the Huron, Neutral, Erie, Susquehannock, and Shawnee—and pushed some eastern tribes west of the Mississippi River, or southward into the Carolinas. Both Algonquian and Iroquoian societies were greatly disrupted by these wars. The conflict subsided with the loss by the Iroquois of their Dutch allies in the New Netherland colony, and with a growing French objective to gain the Iroquois as an ally against English encroachment. After the Iroquois became trading partners with the English, their alliance was a crucial component of the later English expansion. They used the Iroquois conquests as a claim to the old Northwest Territory. Editors of the American Heritage Book of Indians (AMBoI) note that some anthropologists and historians have suggested that the Mohawk Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy destroyed, and drove out the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, based on analysis of political and economic conditions at the time.

1614 AD. Europeans reported encountering Shawnee over a widespread geographic area. One of the earliest mentions of the Shawnee may be a 1614 Dutch map showing some “Sawwanew” located just east of the Delaware River. Later 17th-century Dutch sources also place them in this general location. Accounts by French explorers in the same century usually located the Shawnee along the Ohio River, where the French encountered them on forays from eastern Canada and the Illinois Country. A Shawnee town might have from forty to one hundred BARK-COVERED houses, similar in construction to Iroquois longhouses. Each village usually had a meeting house or council house, perhaps sixty to ninety feet long, where public deliberations took place, unlike at Occupy Louisville.

1614 AD. The 1614 founding of Fort Nassau and its 1624 replacement by Fort Orange (both at Albany) removed the Iroquois' need to rely on the French and their allied tribes nor on traveling through the lands of the more southern Susquehannock or more coastally positioned Delaware Nations (whom the Shawnee considered their “Grandfathers”, or “Uncles”) to trade with the Dutch— all of whom had functioned as middlemen in the trading of goods, in particular firearms, which the Dutch were happy to supply whereas the French only reluctantly supplied them to non-Huron tribes. The new post offered valuable tools that the Iroquois could receive in exchange for animal pelts. This began the Iroquois' large-scale hunting for furs. At this time, conflict began to grow quickly between the Iroquois and the Canadian Indian peoples supported by the French. The Iroquois inhabited the region of present-day New York south of Lake Ontario, and west of the Hudson River.

1618 AD. Chief Openchancanough is born. http://www.mytrees.com/ancestry/Virginia/Born-1560/Op/Openchancanough-family/Chief-Openchancanough-ro004047-4282.html http://www.myheritage.com/research?action=query&formId=1&formMode=0&qname=Name+fnmo.2+fnmsvos.1+fnmsmi.1+ln.Openchancanough+lnmo.3+lnmsdm.1+lnmsmf3.1+lnmsrs.1 According to one European legend, some Shawnee were descended from a party sent by Chief Opechancanough, ruler of the Powhatan Confederacy 1618–1644, to settle in the Shenandoah Valley. The party was led by his son, Sheewa-a-nee.

http://home.comcast.net/~wdegidio/Sizemore/Shawnee.htm Opechancanough liked the country so much that he sent his son Sheewa-a-nee with a large party to colonize the valley. Sheewa-a-nee drove Sherando back to his home in the Great Lakes, and descendants of Sheewanee's party, according to this account, became the Shawnee. http://firstsettlersshenandoahvalley.com/history.html

1620s-1630s AD. The Monongahela Culture disappeared some time during the 1620s or 1630s before having significant direct contact with Europeans. Most of the Monongahela were killed by, or assimilated into, either the Iroquois or the Delaware tribes during warfare, as these powerful tribes competed to control area hunting grounds for the fur trade.

1628 AD. In 1628, the Mohawk (Iroquois) defeated the Mahican, and established a monopoly of trade with the Dutch at Fort Orange (later Albany, New York), New Netherland. In the same era, the Susquehannocks, also well armed by the fur trade with Dutch traders, effectively reduced the Delaware's strength, and won a protracted declared war with the Province of Maryland.

1629 AD. British colonists in Virginia establish a trade network with Cherokee living in the Appalachian Mountains.

By the 1630s, the Iroquois had become fully armed with European weaponry through their trade with the Dutch.The Iroquois, particularly the Mohawk, had come to rely on the trade for the purchase of firearms and other highly valued and much coveted European goods for their livelihood and survival. They used their growing expertise with the arquebus to good effect in their continuing wars with the Algonquin, Huron, and other traditional enemies. The French, meanwhile, outlawed the trading of firearms to their native allies, though they occasionally gave arquebuses as gifts to individuals who converted to Christianity. Although the Iroquois first attacked their traditional enemies (the Algonquins, Mahicans, Montagnais, and Hurons), the alliance of these tribes with the French quickly brought the Iroquois into fierce and bloody conflict directly with the European colonists.

1635 AD. As early as 1635, the Iroquois and Huron came into conflict as war parties met and fought, and villages on both sides were raided and burned. The conflict mounted as the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy spread out, and invaded Huron lands to the north and west. Huron Jesuit towns and villages were attacked and burned, and those not killed, were taken captive.

1638. Iroquois attack Wenro. With the decline of beaver as a vital natural resource for trade relations, the Iroquois began to conquer their smaller neighbors. They attacked the Wenro in 1638 and took all of their territory. Survivors fled to the Hurons for refuge. The Wenro had served as a buffer between the Iroquois, and the Neutral tribe and Erie allies. These two tribes were considerably larger and more powerful than the Iroquois. With expansion to the west blocked, the Iroquois turned their attention to the north. The Dutch also encouraged the Iroquois in this strategy. At that time, the Dutch were the Iroquois' primary European trading partners, with their goods passing through Dutch trading posts down the Hudson River, and from there sent back to Europe. As the Iroquois' sources of furs declined, so did the income of the trading posts.The rivalry among the French, Dutch, and English for control of the fur trade in North America encouraged intertribal warfare among the Indians. In the early 1600s the supply of beavers in the East was dwindling, and Iroquois trade with the Dutch and English was diminishing. The Iroquois looked to western lands around the Great Lakes, where beavers still flourished. In that region the French were allied with the Huron in the fur trade, while Jesuit priests established missions and worked to Christianize the Huron.

1640. The expansion of hunting for trade with Europe accelerated the decline of the beaver population. By 1640 the animal had largely disappeared from the Hudson Valley. Historian-editors of American Heritage Magazine have argued that the growing scarcity of the beaver in the lands controlled by the Iroquois in the middle 17th-century accelerated the wars. The center of the fur trade shifted northward to the colder regions of present-day southern Ontario, an area controlled by the Neutrals as well as by the Hurons - the close trading partners of the French. The Iroquois, displaced in the fur trade by other nations in the region, and threatened by disease and with a declining population, began an aggressive campaign to expand their area of control.

1640. With these more sophisticated weapons, the Five Nations (Iroquois Confederacy) nearly exterminated the Huron, and all of other Native Americans living immediately to their west in the Ohio country in the Beaver Wars. Historians consider the Beaver Wars to have been one of the bloodiest conflicts in the history of North America.

1641 AD. In 1641, the Mohawks traveled to Trois-Rivières in New France to propose peace with the French and their allied tribes. They asked the French to set up a trading post in Iroquoia. Governor Montmagny rejected this proposal.

1645 AD. In the early 1640s, the war began in earnest with Iroquois attacks on frontier Huron villages along the St. Lawrence River; their intent was disruption of the trade with the French. In 1645 the French called the tribes together to negotiate a treaty to end the conflict. Two Iroquois leaders, Deganaweida and Koiseaton, traveled to New France to take part in the negotiations. The French agreed to most of the Iroquois demands, granting them trading rights in New France. The next summer a fleet of eighty canoes carrying a large harvest of furs traveled through Iroquois territory to be sold in New France. When the Iroquois arrived, the French refused to purchase the furs, and told the Iroquois to sell them to the Huron, who would act as a middleman. Outraged, the Iroquois resumed the war. The French decided to become directly involved in the conflict. The Huron and the Iroquois had similar access to manpower, each tribe having an estimated 25,000–30,000 members.

1647-1648 AD. To gain the upper hand, in 1647 the Huron and Susquehannock formed an alliance to counter Iroquois aggression. Together their warriors greatly outnumbered those of the Iroquois. The Huron tried to break the Iroquois Confederacy by negotiating separate peaces with the Onondaga and the Cayuga. When the other tribes intercepted their messengers, they put an end to the negotiations. During the summer of 1647 there were several small skirmishes between the tribes. In 1648 a more significant battle occurred when the two Algonquin tribes attempted to pass a fur convoy through an Iroquois blockade. Their attempt succeeded and they inflicted high casualties on the Iroquois. During the following years, the Iroquois strengthened their confederacy to work more closely and create an effective central leadership.

1649. March. AD. In March 1649, a force of 1,000 Seneca and Mohawk, two tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, descended on a group of Huron towns east of Georgian Bay near present-day Toronto, Canada. The attackers burned outlying settlements and overwhelmed the towns of Saint Ignace and Saint Louis, killing or capturing their defenders and burning the towns. The Iroquois were repulsed at the town of Sainte Marie by Huron warriors and some French soldiers stationed at the town. However, the Iroquois retreated with supplies and prisoners. The Huron who survived fled. By the end of March, 15 Huron towns were empty as a result of the fighting. This Iroquois invasion destroyed the Huron Nation. Huron survivors fled into the wilderness and scattered westward, taking refuge with tribes along the shores of Lakes Huron and Erie. Many Huron asked for adoption into the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy and became part of the Mohawk, Seneca, and Onondaga peoples, as per Iroquois tradition. It was customary among the Iroquois to adopt children and young men and women into the tribes to make up for Iroquois losses in warfare. With the destruction of the Huron Nation, the Iroquois turned to other tribes in the Great Lakes region.

1649. December. AD. The Iroquois Break and Destroy the Tobacco People. First to fall were the Tobacco people, who were crushed by a force of Mohawk and Seneca in December 1649.

1650 AD. Edward Bland, an explorer who accompanied Abraham Wood's expedition in 1650, wrote that in Opechancanough's day, there had been a falling-out between the Chawan chief, and the weroance of the Powhatan (also a relative of Opechancanough's family). The latter (weroance of the Powhatan) had murdered the former (Chawan Chief).

1650-1651 AD. The Iroquois break, and destroy the Neutral Nation in 1650. By the end of 1651, they had completely driven the tribe from traditional territory, killing or assimilating thousands. At the time, the Neutrals inhabited a territory ranging from the present-day Niagara Peninsula, westward to the Grand River valley.

1650s AD. In the early 1650s, the Iroquois began to attack the French. Some of the Iroquois Nations, notably the Oneida and Onondaga, had peaceful relations with the French, but were under control of the Mohawk. The latter were the strongest nation in the Confederacy and were hostile to the French presence. After a failed peace treaty negotiated by Chief Canaqueese, Iroquois war parties moved north into New France along Lake Champlain, and the Richelieu River. They attacked, and blockaded Montreal. Typically a raid on an isolated farm or settlement consisted of a war party moving swiftly, and silently through the woods, swooping down suddenly and without warning. In many cases, prisoners, especially women and children, were brought back to the Iroquois homelands, and were adopted into the nations.

1654-1656 AD. The Iroquois-Erie Indians War. In 1654, the Iroquois attacked the Erie, but with less success. The war between the Erie and the Iroquois lasted for two years. The Erie people suffered the same fate as the other tribes when a force of 1,800 Iroquois attacked an Erie town near present-day Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1654. Although the town fell, the Erie regrouped and fought the Iroquois for two years until they too were conquered. By 1656 the Iroquois had almost completely destroyed the Erie confederacy, whose members refused to flee to the west. The Erie territory was located on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie and was estimated to have 12,000 members in 1650. Greatly outnumbered by the tribes they had subdued, the Iroquois had been able to achieve their victories through the use of firearms purchased from the Dutch.

1655. Martin Chartier, a glovemaker, is born in France. Peter Chartier was born Pierre Chartier, and was the son of Martin Chartier (1655-1718), a glovemaker born in St-Jean-de-Montierneuf, Poitiers, Vienne, Poitou-Charentes, France.

1659. The Iroquois-Neutral Tribe War. In 1659, the Neutral tribe was broken when the Iroquois destroyed two large towns north of Lake Erie. Those who escaped abandoned their villages and scattered.

The Peace and Love and Freedom Hippie 60s: The 1660s.

1660 AD. Peter Chartier's mother, Sewatha Straight Tail (1660-1759), daughter of Straight Tail Meaurroway Opessa of the Pekowi Shawnee, was born.

1660 AD. The Iroquois are at the Zenith of their Imperial Power, Wealth, and Might. With the tribes to the north and west destroyed, the Iroquois turned their attention southward to the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock.

1660. May. AD. Dollard des Ormeaux, died in May 1660, while resisting an Iroquois raiding force at the Long Sault, the confluence of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa Rivers. According to legend, he succeeded in saving Montreal by his actions.

1661. The Susquehannock had become allied with the English in the Maryland colony in 1661. The English had grown fearful of the Iroquois, and hoped an alliance with Susquehannock would help block the northern tribes' advance on the English colonies.

1663-1674 AD. The Iroquois-Susquehannock War. In 1663 the Iroquois sent an army of 800 warriors into the Susquehannock territory. They repulsed the army, but the invasion prompted the colony of Maryland to declare war on the Iroquois. By supplying Susquehannock forts with artillery, the English in Maryland changed the balance of power away from the Iroquois. The Susquehannock took the upper hand, and began to invade Iroquois territory, where they caused significant damage. This warfare continued intermittently for 11 years.

1664. About 1664, the Five Nations became trading partners with the British, who conquered the New Netherlands (renamed New York) from the Dutch. The Five Nations enlarged their territory by right of conquest. The number of tribes paying tribute to them realigned the tribal map of eastern North America. Several large confederacies were destroyed or relocated, including the Huron, Neutral, Erie, Susquehannock and Shawnee. By the 1660s, the five Iroquois ceased fighting among themselves. They also easily coordinated military and economic plans among all five nations. In so doing, they increased their power and achieved a level of government more advanced than those of the surrounding tribes' decentralized forms of operating. Although Indian raids were not constant, they terrified the inhabitants of New France. Initially, the colonists felt helpless to prevent them. Some of the heroes of French-Canadian folk memory are of individuals who stood up to such attacks. The Beaver Wars continued as the Iroquois moved farther west and north, pushing into the Ohio Valley in the 1660s. People of the Ottawa, Illinois, Miami, and Potawatomi tribes in the upper Ohio Valley fled north as Iroquois warriors raided their villages. Farther south, Shawnee bands were driven west to the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. The Iroquois now dominated tribes and territory from the Ottawa River in Canada south to the Cumberland River in Kentucky, and from Lake Erie to the east. The Iroquois, however, did not gain a monopoly of the fur trade in the western Great Lakes region, and the region east of the Mississippi River. Tribes in those areas, supported by the French, began fighting back, launching attacks and invading Iroquois lands. In the south the Iroquois lost major battles to the Susquehannock and the Lenni Lenape (Delaware).

1667-1680. Martin Chartier, a glovemaker, arrived in Quebec with his brother and sister and his father René in 1667. He accompanied Louis Jolliet on his 1674 journey to the Illinois Territory and La Salle on his 1679-1680 journey to Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. He assisted in the construction of Fort Miami and Fort Crèvecoeur where, on 16 April 1680 he and six other men mutinied, looted and burned the fort, and fled.

1670s. Beginning in the 1670s, the French began to explore and settle the Ohio and Illinois Country from the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. There they discovered the Algonquin tribes of that region were locked in warfare with the Iroquois. The French established the post of Tassinong to trade with the western tribes. The Iroquois destroyed Tassinong.

1670. “Up to 1670, the Monacan (Siouan) tribes had been but little disturbed by the whites, although there is evidence that the wars waged against them by the Iroquois were keeping them constantly shifting about. Their country had not been penetrated, except by a few traders who kept no journals, and only the names of the tribes living on the frontiers of Virginia were known to the whites. Chief among these were the Monacan proper having their village a short distance above (the present) Richmond."

1670 AD. Sometime before 1670, a group of Shawnee migrated to the Savannah River area. The English based in Charles Town, South Carolina were contacted by these Shawnee in 1674. They forged a long-lasting alliance. The Savannah River Shawnee were known to the Carolina English as "Savannah Indians". Around the same time, other Shawnee groups migrated to Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and other regions south and east of the Ohio country. The historian Alan Gallay speculates that the Shawnee migrations of the middle to late 17th century were probably driven by the Beaver Wars....The Shawnee became known for their widespread settlements from modern Illinois and New York to Georgia. Among their known villages were Eskippakithiki in Kentucky, Sonnionto (also known as Lower Shawneetown, aka Shannoah) in Ohio on the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, Chalakagay near what is now Sylacauga, Alabama, Chalahgawtha at the site of present-day Chillicothe, Ohio, Old Shawneetown, Illinois, and Suwanee, Georgia. Their language became a LINGUA FRANCA for trade among numerous tribes. They became leaders among the tribes, initiating and sustaining pan-Indian resistance to European and Euro-American expansion

1671 AD. The explorers Batts and Fallam in 1671 reported that the Shawnee were contesting control of the Shenandoah Valley with the HaudenosauneeConfederacy ("Five Nations") in that year, and were losing.

1672 AD. The Iroquoian tribe, the powerful Cherokee nation, succeeded the Siouians in the control of their former territory in Southwest Virginia. The Cherokees, although of Iroquoian stock, were hostile to the northern Iroquois and to the great Southern Iroquois tribe, the Tuskaroras, who lived along the Neuse River in North Carolina. The original territory of the Cherokees included "all of North Carolina and Virginia west of the Blue Ridge, as far north at least, according to their tradition, as the Peaks of Otter near the headwaters of the James River, together with the upper portion of South Carolina and the mountain section of Georgia and Tennessee". They were driven from the greater portion of their holdings, around 1672, by the northern Iroquois, and settled upon the Savannah River and in the territory south of the Tennessee River. The Cherokees apparently permitted the remnants of the Siouians to live undisturbed in Southwest Virginia, but the Siouians constantly attacked by the northern Iroquois, kept on moving their villages.

1674. In 1674, the English in Maryland changed their Indian Policy, and negotiated peace with the Iroquois. They terminated their alliance with the Susquehannock.

1675-1677 AD. In 1675, the militias of Virginia and Maryland captured and executed the chiefs of the Susquehannock, whose growing power they feared. The Iroquois made quick work of the rest of the nation. They drove the warriors from traditional territory, and absorbed the survivors in 1677.

During the course of this conflict, in 1670 the Iroquois also drove the Siouan-speaking Mannahoac tribe out of the northern Virginia Piedmont region. The Iroquois claimed the land by right of conquest as a hunting ground. The English acknowledged this claim in 1674 and again in 1684. They acquired the land from the Iroquois by a 1722 treaty.

1677 AD. The Shawnee began to move from this region, in 1677, owing to dissatisfaction over their treatment by the whites, and continued their migration for more than 20 years, the main body first settling on the Delaware River at the mouth of the Lehigh River, Pennsylvania, then, after allying themselves with the French, passing to the north bank of the Ohio River, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, extending from the Alleghany River down to the Scioto River.

1680 AD. Then, in 1680, the Iroquois retaliated with an all-out war against French-allied bands along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. However, after some initial victories, the Iroquois were driven back. In the north, the Chippewa took Iroquois lands north of Lake Ontario, and the Miami moved back towards their lands in Indiana.

1681 AD. In 1681, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle negotiated a treaty with the Miami and Illinois tribes. The same year France lifted the ban on the sale of firearms to the native tribes. Colonists quickly armed the Algonquin tribes, evening the odds between the Iroquois and their enemies.

With the renewal of hostilities, the local militia of New France was stiffened after 1683 by a small force of regular French navy troops, the Compagnies Franches de la Marine. The latter were to constitute the longest-serving unit of French regular troops in New France. Over the years, the men identified with the colony. The officer corps became completely Canadian. Essentially, these forces can be considered as Canada's first standing professional armed force. Officers' commissions, both in the militia and in the Compagnie Franches, became coveted amongst the upper class of the colony. The militia together with members of the Compagnie Franches, dressed for woodland travel similarly to their Algonquin Indian allies, and grew to specialize in the swift and mobile brand of warfare termed la petite guerre. It was characterized by long expeditions through the forests and quick raids on enemy encampments —the same kind of warfare practiced by the Iroquois and other Natives.

1682 AD. Martin Chartier. In a letter of 1682, La Salle stated that Martin Chartier “was one of these who incited the others to do as they did.” MUTINY!!!

1684 AD. In 1684, the Iroquois attempted and failed to take the Illinois Indians' town of Fort St. Louis on the Illinois River. This defeat marked the end of the Beaver Wars and the Iroquois' military operations to gain a monopoly of the fur trade. The powerful Iroquois Confederacy remained intact, but the devastation of the wars weakened most of the tribes to the west, making them vulnerable to later white expansion westward. The wars also forged the Indian-European alliances that would continue through the French and Indian War (1754–63), and the American Revolution (1775–83). The area of Kentucky was inhabited by Native Americans in prehistoric times, and French explorers in the Modern Era.

1687 AD. June. In June 1687, Pierre de Troyes commanded a company under Governor Denonville for his attack against the Seneca. This attack resulted in the destruction of Ganondagan, the Seneca's largest village.

1687. September. AD. In September 1687, the French used 3,000 militia and regulars to attack the Iroquois in a punitive raid on their territory. They proceeded down the Richelieu River, and marched through Iroquois territory, but did not find many warriors. They burned their villages and stored crops, destroying an estimated 1.2 million bushels of corn. Many Iroquois died from starvation during the following winter. 1687, Denonville set out with a well-organized force to Fort Frontenac, where they met with the 50 hereditary SACHEMS of the Iroquois Confederacy from their Onondaga council fire. These 50 chiefs constituted the entire decision-making strata of the Iroquois. They had been lulled into meeting under a flag of truce. Denonville seized, chained, and shipped the 50 Iroquois chiefs to Marseilles, France, to be used as galley slaves. He then ravaged the land of the Seneca. Before he returned to New France, he travelled down the shore of Lake Ontario and created Fort Denonville at the site where the Niagara River meets Lake Ontario. This site was previously used by La Salle for a FORT named Fort Conti from 1678 to 1679, and was later used for Fort Niagara, which still exists to this day.

1688-1697. The first 1^st Intercolonial War, fought in North Amerika, the British King William's War, coincides w/ the “War of the Grand Alliance of the League of Augsburg Nine Years' War” in Europe, begins. During King William's War (1689?–1697), the French created raiding parties with native allies to attack English colonial settlements, as the English had used the Iroquois against the French.

1689 AD. During a raid into the Illinois Country in 1689, the Iroquois captured numerous prisoners and destroyed a sizable Miami settlement. The Miami asked for aid from others in the Anishinaabeg Confederacy, and a large force gathered to track down the Iroquois. Using their new firearms, the Confederacy laid an ambush near modern South Bend, Indiana. They attacked and destroyed most of the Iroquois army. Although a large part of the region was left depopulated, the Iroquois were unable to establish a permanent presence. Their own tribe lacked the manpower to colonize the large area. After their setbacks and the local tribes' gaining firearms, the Iroquois' brief control over the region was lost. Many of the former inhabitants of the territory began to return

1689. August 4. AD. The destruction of the Seneca land infuriated the Iroquois Confederacy. This, coupled with the dishonourable loss of their sachems, demanded they set out to terrorize New France as never before. Denonville's regulars were dissolved and dispersed to towns across the land, attempting to protect New France's homes and families. Forts were abandoned. The Iroquois destroyed farmsteads and whole families were slaughtered or captured. On August 4, 1689, Lachine, a small town adjacent to Montreal, was burned to the ground. Fifteen hundred Iroquois warriors had been harassing Montreal defences for many months prior. Denonville was finally exhausted and defeated.

1690. AD. Peter Chartier, a Shawnee-half breed, is born. Wacanackshina is his Shawnee name. Peter Chartier's father is the famous Martin Chartier, who mutinied La Salle, and Peter's mother is Sewatha Straight Tail (1660-1759), daughter of Straight Tail Meaurroway Opessa of the Pekowi Shawnee. PETER CHARTIER: Son of the French-Canadian trader Martin CHARTIER and his Shawnee wife. Peter, brought up among the Shawnees, married a Shawnee wife and traded at Shawnee settlements in Lancaster County, at Paxtang, at the mouth of Shawnee (Yellow Breeches) Creek across the river from present Harrisburg, and on the Conodoguinet near the site of Carlisle. Peter Chartier later went south among the Creek Indians where he was known by the colonies in the south as "Peter Shirty". The father of Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet was a member of his band. The name was Piere Chartier and his father, who had traveled with La Salle from Canada before deserting, was Martin Chartier. Martin had married two Shawnee ladies. I am currently writing a novel based on the lives of the father and son, the research for which was gathered for my Ph.D. dissertation in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University.

Peter was born on the Cumberland River in northern Tennessee where his father ran a trading post for a short time. Peter's Shawnee name was Wacanackshina which means "White One Who Reclines". http://books.google.com/books?id=sNYLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=peter+chartier+shawnee&source=bl&ots=xOXrtEsXIS&sig=Zt0n5rLgP-cPH5gRZ5DHTlnPNXQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xzfyU7_WMIyAygTCxIGABQ&ved=0CFoQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=peter%20chartier%20shawnee&f=false http://boards.ancestry.com/thread.aspx?mv=flat&m=469&p=topics.ethnic.natam.indiancaptives

1690 AD. Some of the most notable of the French-sponsored raids in 1690 were the Schenectady massacre in the Province of New York; Salmon Falls, New Hampshire; and Falmouth Neck (present-day Portland, Maine). The French and their allies killed settlers in the raids and carried some back to Canada. Settlers in New England raised money to redeem their captives, but some were adopted into the Native tribes. The French government generally did not intervene when the Natives kept the captives. Throughout the 1690s the French and their allies also continued to raid deep into Iroquois, destroying Mohawk villages in 1692, and later raiding Seneca, Oneida, and Onondaga villages. The English and Iroquois banded together for operations aimed at New France, but these were largely ineffectual.

1691 AD. The most successful incursion resulted in the 1691 Battle of La Prairie.

1692 AD. HERO [MADELEINE DE VERCHERES] Madeleine de Verchères, who in 1692 at age 14, led the defense of her family farm against Iroquois attack. Viewing the Iroquois as pawns of the Dutch and English, their traditional Protestant enemies, the super-ultra-devout-faithful Catholic French refused to make peace with the Natives.

1693 AD. Martin Chartier went east, and married a Shawnee woman in either Illinois or Maryland in 1693. Peter Chartier's mother was Sewatha Straight Tail (1660-1759), daughter of Straight Tail Meaurroway Opessa of the Pekowi Shawnee.

1697 AD. The Treaty of Ryswick ends British King William's War, with France, but it doesn't provide peace for the native Americans. The Ryswick Treaty is signed at the end of King William's War. Territories remain the same as before the War. Because France claimed dominion over the Iroquois, the French offensive was not halted by the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick that brought peace between France and England, and ended overt English participation in the conflict. Around 1697, Martin Chartier (with 7 year old Peter) moved with his family to Pequea Creek in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

1698. October. AD. Denonville's tenure was followed by the return of Frontenac, who replaced Denonville as governor for the next nine years (1689–1698). Frontenac had been arranging a new plan of attack to mollify the effects of the Iroquois in North America, and realized the true danger the imprisonment of the sachems created. He located the 13 surviving leaders, and they returned with him to New France in October 1698. Finally in 1698, the Iroquois began to see the English as becoming a greater threat than the French. The English had begun colonizing Pennsylvania in 1681. The continued colonial growth there began to encroach on the southern border of the Iroquois territory. The French policy began to change towards the Iroquois. After nearly 50 years of warfare, they began to believe that it would be impossible to ever destroy them. They decided that befriending the Iroquois would be the easiest way to ensure their monopoly on the northern fur trade and help stop English expansion. As soon as the English heard of the treaty they immediately set about to prevent it from being agreed to. It would result in the loss of Albany's monopoly on the fur trade with the Iroquois and, without their protection, the northern flank of the English colonies would be open to French attack. Despite English interference, the Treaty was agreed to.

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Random Scattered Notes: Needs to be Organized (Post 1600s), below:

The peace treaty, Great Peace of Montreal was signed in 1701 in Montreal by 39 Indian chiefs and the French. In the treaty, the Iroquois agreed to stop marauding and to allow refugees from the Great Lakes to return east. The Shawnee eventually regained control of the Ohio Country and the lower Allegheny River. The Miami tribe returned to take control of modern Indiana and north-west Ohio. The Pottawatomie went to Michigan, and the Illinois tribe to Illinois.[34] With the Dutch long removed from North America, the English had become just as powerful as the French. The Iroquois came to see that they held the balance of power between the two European powers and they used that position to their benefit for the decades to come. Their society began to quickly change as the tribes began to focus on building up a strong nation, improving their farming technology, and educating their population. The peace was lasting and it would not be until the 1720s that their territory would again be threatened by the Europeans.

A major cause of the wars was the desire of each country to take control of the interior territories of North America, as well as the region around Hudson Bay; both were deemed essential to domination of the fur trade. Whenever the European countries went to war, military conflict also occurred in North America in their colonies, although the dates of the conflicts did not necessarily exactly coincide with those of the larger conflicts.

1712. First child by Peter Chartier. In 1712 his father established a trading post in Conestoga. In 1718 Peter moved to Dekanoagah, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and obtained title to 300 acres on the Yellow Breeches Creek near the Susquehanna River[11] where his father died in April of that year.[12][13][14] A 1736 map of Paxtang Manor by surveyor Edward Smout shows Chartier's home in what is today Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Chartier married his first cousin, Blanceneige-Wapakonee Opessa (1695-1737), about 1710.[16] They had three children: Francois "Pale Croucher" (b. 1712), René "Pale Stalker" (b. 1720), and Anna (b. 1730).[9][17]

1701. Also in 1701, the Iroquois nominally gave the English much of the disputed territory north of the Ohio in the Nanfan Treaty, although this transfer was not recognised by the French, who were the strongest actual presence there at the time. In that treaty, the Iroquois leadership claimed to have conquered this "Beaver Hunting Ground" 80 years previously, or in ca. 1621. The Beaver Wars joined the Powhatan wars of 1610–14, 1622–32 and 1644–46[38] in Virginia, the Pequot War of 1637 in Connecticut, the Dutch-Indian War of 1643 along theHudson River[39] and King Philip's War in a list of ongoing uprisings and conflicts between various Native American tribes and the French, Dutch, and English colonial settlements of Canada, New York, and New England. Native American tribes would continue to be embroiled in conflicts involving England, France, and their colonists during the ensuing French and Indian Wars.The French and Indian Wars is a name used in the United States for a series of intermittent conflicts between the years 1689 and 1763 in North America that represented colonial events related to the European dynastic wars. The title French and Indian War, in the singular, is used in the United States specifically for the warfare of 1754–1763, the North American colonial counterpart to the Seven Years' War in Europe. The French and Indian Wars were preceded by the Beaver Wars. In Quebec, Canada, a former French colony, the wars are generally referred to as the Intercolonial Wars. While some conflicts involved Spanish and Dutch forces, all pitted theKingdom of Great Britain, its colonies and Native American allies on one side against France, its colonies and Native American allies on the other.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, both Britain and France claimed ownership of the Ohio Country, in competition with the Five Nations (who became the "Six Nations" after the admission of the Tuscarora in 1723), and by the mid-18th century had sent merchants and fur traders into the area to trade with local Natives. Violence quickly erupted. During the French and Indian War, an extension in North America of the Seven Years' War in Europe, Native tribes allied with either the French or British, often depending on trading priorities, and warred with each other and the colonists. With its defeat, France relinquished all claims to Britain in the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

The British still faced competition from numerous Native American tribes, including in the Great Lakes region: the Ottawa, Ojibwa, Pottawatomi, and Huron; in the eastern Illinois Country: the Miami, Wea, Kickapoo, Mascouten, and Piankashaw; and in the Ohio Country: the Delaware (Lenape), Shawnee, Mingo, and Wyandot. The tribes were angered by British colonials moving to settle in their territories. They attacked during Pontiac's Rebellion of 1763–66, when the Natives succeeded in burning several British forts. They killed and drove many settlers out of the Northwest Territory. Britain had to send troops to reinforce Fort Pitt and finally defeated the Natives in the Battle of Bushy Run. The war came to a close with nothing resolved.

Britain officially closed the Northwest Territories to colonial settlement by the Proclamation of 1763, in an effort to create peace with the tribes west of the Appalachian Mountains. On June 22, 1774, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act, which annexed the Northwest Territories to the province of Quebec. Some colonials, wanting to move to "new lands," described this as one of the Intolerable Acts that contributed to the American Revolution.

1713. The Treaty of Utrecht ends British Queen Anne's War.

1748. Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends British King George 1's War.

1763. The 1^st Treaty of Paris ends the French and Indian War.

During the American Revolution, four of the now Six Nations of the Iroquois League sided with the British. The Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Tuscarora fought against colonists in the Battle of Oriskany, aided the British in the Battle of Wyoming in Pennsylvania, and at Saratoga, the Cherry Valley, and raids throughout the Mohawk Valley in New York, as well as in numerous other actions on the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania. As the British concentrated on the southern United States in 1779, General George Washingtontook action against the Six Nations.

He instructed General John Sullivan to attack and destroy Six Nations villages in upper New York. Leading about 5,000 troops, Sullivan defeated the Six Nations forces in the Battle of Newtown, then destroyed over 40 Six Nations villages and all their stored crops in the fall of 1779. Because of the social disruption and crop losses, some Six Nations men, women, and children died of starvation that winter. Many Six Nations families retreated to Fort Niagara and other parts of Canada, where they spent a cold and hungry winter. Their power in the present-day United States territory was lessened, and their claim to the Northwest Territories was challenged.

In 1778, American General George Rogers Clark and 178 men captured the British forts on the Ohio River. This gave the United States control of the river and a claim to all the land north of the Ohio. In the Fall of 1779, Natives allied with the British attacked a company of men under Col. David Rogers and Captain Robert Benham near Cincinnati; only a handful of soldiers survived the attack. Benham later served as Packhorse Master under generals Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne during the wars of the

1786. Treaty of Hopewell. The westernmost part of Kentucky, west of the Tennessee River, was recognized as hunting ground belonging to the Chickasaw by the 1786 Treaty of Hopewell, and remained so until they sold it to the U.S. in 1818, albeit under pressure. “Fort Ancient culture” developed independently and was descended from the Hopewell culture (100 BCE—500 CE), also a mound builder people. The group of cultures collectively called Mound Builders were succeeding precontact societies in North America who constructed various styles of complex, massive earthworks: earthen mounds for burial, elite residential, and ceremonial purposes. These included the Pre-Columbian cultures of the Archaic period, Woodland period (Adena, Hopewell, Fort Ancient culture, and the Mississippian cultures. They emerged as cultures from roughly 3000 BCE to the 16th century CE, and lived in regions of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River valley, and the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries, extending into the Southeast of the present-day United States.

1790s.

The Battle of Blue Licks was the last battle of the American Revolutionary War in Kentucky. On a hill next to the Licking River in what is now Robertson County, Kentucky, a force of about 50 British rangers and 300 Natives ambushed and routed 182 pursuing Kentucky militiamen.

With the end of the war, the Treaty of Paris (1783) with Great Britain gave the United States independence and control of the Northwest Territories, at least on paper. The Six Nations' allies were forced to cede most of their land in New York state to the United States, and many Six Nations families moved on to land reserves in old Quebec Province (now southern Ontario).

1730. By the late 1730s pressure from colonial expansion produced repeated conflicts. Shawnee communities were affected by the fur trade in which furs were often traded to European traders for rum or brandy, leading to serious social problems related to alcohol abuse. Several Shawnee communities in the Province of Pennsylvania, led by the half-French trader Peter Chartier, opposed the sale of alcohol in their communities and a conflict with Governor Patrick Gordon arose. As a result, in 1745 some 400 Shawnees migrated from Pennsylvania to Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama and Illinois.

1754. Prior to 1754, the Shawnee had a headquarters at Shawnee Springs at modern-day Cross Junction, Virginia near Winchester. The father of the later chief Cornstalk held his court there. Several other Shawnee villages were located in the Shenandoah Valley: at Moorefield, West Virginia, on the North River, and on the Potomac at Cumberland, Maryland. In 1753, the Shawnee on the Scioto River in the Ohio country sent messengers to those still in the Shenandoah Valley to leave Virginia and cross the Alleghenies to join them, which they did the following year.[17][18] The community known as Shannoah (Lower Shawneetown) on the Ohio River reached a population of around 1,200 by 1750.

Ever since the Beaver Wars, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy ("Five Nations") had claimed the Ohio Country as their hunting ground by right of conquest, and treated the Shawnee and Lenape who resettled there as dependent tribes. Some independent Iroquois bands from various tribes also migrated westward, where they became known in Ohio as the Mingo. These three tribes—the Shawnee, the Delaware, and the Mingo— became closely associated with one another, despite the differences in their languages. The first two were Algonquian speaking and the third Iroquoian.

1758. After taking part in the first phase of the French and Indian War (also known as "Braddock's War") as allies of the French,[20] the Shawnee switched sides in 1758. They made formal peace with the British colonies at the Treaty of Easton, which recognized the Allegheny Ridge (the Eastern Divide) as their mutual border. This peace lasted only untilPontiac's War erupted in 1763. Later that year, the Crown issued the Proclamation of 1763, legally confirming the 1758 border as the limits of British colonization, with the land beyond reserved for Native Americans.

At the time the first European traders and settlers appeared in the region around the fork of the Ohio, the primary occupants of the land were the confederation of the Five Nations, called the Iroquois. The other Indian nations in Ohio Country were the Delaware and the Shawnee.

The Five Nations were comprised of the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugasand the Senecas. In 1712, the Tuscaroras were admitted to the tribal union, and henceforth the confederacy of the Iroquois has been known as the Six Nations.

The Delaware, or Lenape, another nation of Indians occupying this region of the country, were once the formidable enemies of the Iroquois. The Delaware were conquered by the Iroquois in 1617, and since then had been submissive in their dealings with the Iroquois Confederacy.

In 1753, Washington found Shingas, the war chief and ceremonial King of the Delaware, near McKee’s Rocks.

The Shawnee were described as a restless people, who were constantly engaged in war with some of their neighbors. The tribe originated in the South, near the Suwaney River in Florida. Around 1698, they first appeared in Pennsylvania, at Montour’s Island, six miles below Pittsburgh.

Some advanced to Conestoga and others settled on the head waters of the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers. In 1728, they moved west and settled near the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers. In 1732, of seven hundred warriors in the State of Pennsylvania, 350 were Shawnee. They had several villages within the limits of the present counties of Allegheny and Beaver.

1753. George Washington, in 1753, met Tanacharison, the Half-King of the Six Nations, atLogstown, a settlement along the Ohio River only a few miles west of the fork. The Mingos were an independent group in the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy and were mostly made up of Senecas and Cayugas. The name Mingo derives from the Delaware Indian mingwe, meaning treacherous. The Mingos were noted for having a bad reputation and were sometimes referred to as Blue Mingos or Black Mingos for their misdeeds.The people who became known as Mingos migrated to the Ohio Country in the mid-eighteenth century, part of a movement of various Native American tribes to a region that had been sparsely populated for decades but controlled as a hunting ground by the Iroquois.These independant Iroquois bands were found scattered throughout Western Pennsylvania and Ohio.

A peace treaty, the Great Peace of Montreal, was signed in 1701 by thirty-nine Indian chiefs and the French. In the treaty, the Iroquois agreed to stop marauding and to allow refugees to return east.

With the Dutch long removed from North America, and the English becoming as powerful as the French, the Iroquois came to see that they held the balance of power between the two European adversaries. The Iroquois used that position to their benefit for decades to come. Their society began to quickly change as the tribes began to focus on building up a strong nation, improving their farming technology, and educating their population. The Ohio Country, which was nearer to the core of Iroquois territory, remained depopulated for decades, as the Iroquois controlled it by right of c

In 1755, the Shawnees were estimated to number 300 warriors, or about 1,300 souls.

1750. Pine Mountain Range that later became identified as Letcher County. This Portion of the “Dark and Bloody” ground was a natural haven for rare species of plants and animals and indigenous ecosystems found no other place on earth. Rare beauty and diverse splendor abounded around every rock and crevice. Black Bear, deer, elk, and buffalo, roamed wild and free throughout these eastern woodlands. These Buffalo trails became known as the Warrior’s Pathway, which led to the best hunting grounds and trout fishing in the region.  Three of the state’s major rivers-the Cumberland, the North Fork of the Kentucky, and the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy- all have headwaters in the county. Scout and surveyor for George Washington, Christopher Gist, first entered Kentucky in 1750. Early historians say that Capt. Christopher Gist crossed Pine Mountain by way of Pound Gap, camped near the present town of Pound and again on Indian Creek.  On Indian Creek, he was supposed to have camped three days with Indians whose tribal name was Crane. Gist, first mapped out the region and identified the natural doorway of Pound Gap and paved the way westward for other adventurers like Daniel Boone who followed.

1775. The Treaty of Sycamore Shoals (1775), a Cherokee Chief stated, "Brother, we have given you a fine land. But I believe you will have much trouble settling it."

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1700. After about 1700, some remnants of the Native American tribes began returning to the Northwest Territory. They were often conglomerations of several tribes who paid tribute to the Five Nations (see also Mingo)

1701. Once peace was achieved with the French, the Iroquois returned to their westward conquest in their continued attempt to take control of all the land between the Algonquins and the French. As a result of Iroquois expansion and war with the Anishinaabeg Confederacy (see also,Council of Three Fires), eastern Nations such as the Lakota were pushed across the Mississippi onto the Great Plains. There in the early 18th century, they adopted the horse culture and nomadic lifestyle for which they later became well known. Other refugees flooded the Great Lakes area, resulting in a conflict with existing nations in the region.

In the Ohio Country the Shawnee and Miami tribes were the dominant tribes. The Iroquois quickly overran Shawnee holdings in central Ohio forcing them to flee into Miami territory. The Miami were a powerful tribe and brought together a confederacy of their neighboring allies, including the Pottawatomie and the Illini confederation who inhabited modern Michigan and Illinois. The majority of the fighting was between the Anishininaabeg Confederacy and the Iroquois Confederacy.

The Iroquois improved on their warfare as they continued to attack even farther from their home. War parties often traveled by canoes at night. They would sink their canoes, and fill them with rocks to hold them on the river bottom. After going through the woods to a target, at the appointed time, they would quickly burst from the wood to cause the greatest panic among their enemy. After the attack, the Iroquois could return quickly to their boats and leave before any significant resistance could be put together. The lack of firearms caused the Algonquin tribes the greatest disadvantage. Despite their larger numbers, they were not centralized enough to mount a united defense and were unable to withstand the Iroquois. Several tribes ultimately moved west beyond the Mississippi River, leaving much of the Ohio Valley, southern Michigan, and southern Ontario depopulated. Several large Anishinaabe military forces, numbering in the thousands, remained to the north of Lakes Huron and Superior. They later were decisive in rolling back the Iroquois advance. From west of the Mississippi, displaced groups continued to arm war parties and attempt to retake their homelands.

1717. Perhaps the earliest evidence of an English trader with Cherokee in Kentucky is in Wolfe County, where a date of 1717 and five or six traditional symbols of Anitsisqua, the Cherokee Bird Clan, are incised on a sandstone outcrop overlooking Panther Branch.

1722. Cherokee claims to Kentucky were seriously challenged when the Tuscarawas joined the League of the Iroquois (Iroquois Confederacy, Haudenosaunee, People of the Longhouse including the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas) in 1722. They expanded by alliance, and conquest deep into the state. The newly formed Iroquois Six Nations took over control of all of the land north of the Cumberland River.

1783. By the end of the American Revolution, the northern boundary of the Cherokee country was moved southward to encompass the land below the Cumberland River.

The Final Cession. At the Final Cession, some 38,000 square miles of Cherokee land in Kentucky had been extorted in what some call the Trail of Broken Treaties between the English and United States.

1792. Dragging Canoe dies. After the death of Dragging Canoe in 1792 the hostility in what would become Harlan County did not end. Chickamauga warrior, (or mad man, its according who you ask) Bob Benge continued to attack settlers in the area until his death in 1794. And thus this ends the documented Cherokee history in what would become Harlan County. After 1796 the Cumberland Gap was widened to accommodate larger horse drawn vehicles of the day and thus the wild lands of Kentucky experienced a population boom. After this time period the Native American history undoubtedly begins a new era, the era of mixed relations with the settlers. We do know by Census and Tax records that the majority of our First Families of the Ridgetop Shawnee migrated to the area of modern day Harlan and Clay Counties between 1800 and 1820. 

Peter Chartier: Before 1697 - moved with Opessa Band to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
1707 - living on Pequea Creek, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
1718 - living in Dekanoagah, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and obtained title to 300 acres on the Susquehanna River where his father had died
1732 - witnessed a letter from Neucheconner & other Shawnee Chiefs to the Governor of Pennsylvania and attended Council Philadelphia with others
1734 - founded Chartiers Town in Alleghany County, Pennaylvania
1737 - became a Pekowi Chief in Pennsylvania
1738 - signed petition to Pennsylvania
1744 - left the British of Pennsylvania with about 400 Pekowi & Kishpokotha to join the French of Ohio and moved southwest to the mouth of the Scioto River, establishing Lower Shawnee Town with sons
1745 - moved on to near Winchester KY
1746 - moved to the French Lick area of Tennessee (later became Nashville)
1747 - moved to the Coosa River, Alabama area
1748 - allegedly seen with some of his band in Illinois and Detroit
1749 - met Colonel Celeron De Blainville at the forks of the Ohio (Pittsburgh)
1752 - returned to Kentucky
1754 - present with his Shawnee warriors at the murder of Captain Jumonville and responsible for the French victory over George Washington at Ft . Necessity
1754 to 1759 - active in opposition to the British in the French-Indian War
1758 - in Ohio
He was last seen in a village on the Wabash River. http://archaeologica.boardbot.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3289

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1860. January 19. Whites on a plantation put on a “corn-husking” festival, where they make their slaves do all of the work, and then the whites eat what the Blacks serve them, then the Blacks eat the seconds, and scraps, and then all pray at the end, and go home.

Northeast:Fox, Huron, Mahican, Martha's Vineyard Indians, Mohawk, Objibwe, Shawnee and Shinnecock

Southeast:Atsina, Cherokee, Chesapeake, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Pensacola and Seminole

A Melungeon (during the formative period from about 1700 to 1860) was someone who was free but thought not to be pure White in the area where the word was used - northern North Carolina, southern and western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, southern Ohio, western Louisiana, the eastern edge of Texas, the panhandle of Florida, and northern Alabama. The person might actually be White, but of a darker strain like a Greek or Portuguese. The person might be mixed White and Black, White and Indian or all three. The White might be northern European or Mediterranean or both. A few people may have been of other races, such as South Asian (Tzigane, Asian Indian, etc.).

After becoming a Melungeon by coming to live in one of these areas, these persons tended to intermarry and produce a more uniform mixed population. People who were definitely considered to be Black or Indian or were members of a Black or Indian group probably would not be counted as Melungeon unless they joined or married into a Melungeon group. There are many members of Black and Indian communities who have a lot of Melungeon ancestry and even with Melungeon names, and some are gradually coming to think of themselves as Melungeons. Today, most Melungeons have quite a little of both northern European and Mediterranean white, some Black and at least a trace of American Indian. But anyone who traces back to someone considered Melungeon before the Civil War is definitely Melungeon, and that is many thousands and a very diverse group.

websites:

http://www.davemcgary.com/native-americans-heritage.htm

http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Facts/Indians.html

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~brockfamily/KYs-Native-Past-byKTankersley.html

2014. August 18. Compiled by Johnathan Daniel Masters-Gripshover.