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Early Settlement. Fusion and Displacement. By the middle of the 17 th century, trade between the southeastern natives and the Spanish was extensive. From the Spanish natives received knives, axes, scissors, hoes, glass beads, brass bells, trinkets, blankets, and cloth.
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Early Settlement Fusion and Displacement
By the middle of the 17th century, trade between the southeastern natives and the Spanish was extensive. • From the Spanish natives received knives, axes, scissors, hoes, glass beads, brass bells, trinkets, blankets, and cloth. • In exchange the Spanish received skins, wild turkey, maize, and beans.
The arrival of the English only intensified a trade that already existed. • That trade had a long transformative effect on the native culture. • Before English arrival, the Dutch were already buying furs from the Spanish. • This must have significantly reduced the game population.
Under the impact of European disease, significant restructuring of native life occurred. • The Qualla, ancestors of the Cherokee, formed out of the Mississippian Pisgah. • Surviving Moose Creek and Dallas peoples, among others, formed the Creek Confederacy. • The Shawnee evolve out of the Fort Ancient peoples.
In this process, not doubt some Spanish, Portuguese and Africans were absorbed into the native Americans of the southeast. • Food crops introduced through Spanish contact included peaches, oranges, grapes, figs, wheat, watermelon, muskmelon, barley, chickpeas, garlic, pears, yams, sorghum and okra.
Peaches were one of the most popular of these crops. Jamestown settlers found natives already cultivating them in 1607. • By the 18th century, English and French trade with the natives replaced trade with the Spanish. • Possibly because of the lower population of natives, bison made their way into the mountains during the 18th century, creating trails later used by settlers.
By the beginning of the 18th century, the southern Appalachian area is dominated by the Cherokee, numbering about 30,000. • The Lower Towns: along the Chattooga, Tugaloo and Keowee Rivers. • The Middle Towns: along the upper tributaries of the Little Tennessee River. • The Valley Towns: along the Has and Knightly Rivers. • The Overhill Towns: west of the Great Smokey Mountains.
An increasing number of English traders began to live among the Cherokee, many marrying into the tribes. • Guns and steel traps became the tools of the hunt. • Ginseng also became a major export to European (and then Asian) markets, as did Seneca snakeroot.
Domestic livestock began to graze the river cane. • Supplies of wild game became increasingly difficult to find. • While Creeks adopted Spanish patterns of cattle raising, many Cherokee preferred hogs. • Hogs could be penned during the growing season, and free ranged during the fall and winter months.
As population increased in the colonies, the interests of the colonists and the crown increasingly diverged. • The British crown was interested in maintaining trade with the colonies. • Colonists were interested in land acquisition and relieving the population pressure building up in the coastal cities.
The crown would make treaties with the natives, hoping for the continuation of peaceful trade. • Colonists would then push westward beyond the treaty boundaries. • When the colonies revolted against the British, the Cherokee, along with several other tribes, sided with the British.
American independence was, consequently no victory for natives. • Nor was it a victory for those who had already settled in the frontier. • It was, however, a great victory for generations of lawyers!
The sons of colonial nobility, as officers during the many wars on the frontier, were on constant lookout for prime lands. Wherever and whenever possible, they secured grants or titles to vast tracts of lands. • As Revolutionary War officers, they were often paid in land grants by their respective governors.
The grants, poorly surveyed or not at all, were ill defined and often overlapped. • As the original colonies were carved into separate states—Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and eventually West Virginia—new capitols and courthouses became the centers of land records, and new courts mediated land disputes. • Some of these disputes continue today.
The political boundaries of the separate states separated the Appalachian portion of the states from the respective state capitals. • Appalachians of limited means could ill afford to argue their land claims in Richmond, Frankfort, or Nashville. • Yet landholding companies had lawyers on permanent retainer in the state capitals, and powerful friends in the state legislatures.
The election of Andrew Jackson as president of the United States, the subsequent passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, and the discovery of gold on Cherokee land, led to the Trail of Tears, the forced march of Cherokee from Appalachia to the Oklahoma Territory.
