Re: Original inhabitants of what is now known as Kentucky
GLEACH,FREDERIC W. (fgleach@music.transy.edu)
Mon, 6 Mar 1995 17:41:02 EST
I'm not sure anyone really knows the answer to the question of who
originally lived in what is now Kentucky, but those maps showing "no
data" derive from Driver and Massey's _Comparative Studies of North
American Indians_ (1957), as far as I can tell. Kroeber's _Cultural
and Natural Areas of Native North America_ (1939, 1947) shows mostly
Shawnee, with some Cherokee in eastern Kentucky. Swanton's _Indian
Tribes of North America_ (1953) shows pretty much the same thing. And
the map published by National Geographic in 1972 is also pretty much the
same. Looks like mostly Shawnee, with some Chicakasaw in what is now
western Kentucky, Cherokee in the east, and perhaps some Yuchi in the
southeast.
The problem seems to come from when the white explorers went through
the area, and what they bothered to write down. The Shawnee are known
to have moved around a lot in the late prehistoric and early historic
periods, and some people don't think they can be reliably placed there
(in Kentucky, that is). But according to the archaeology, there were
certainly people living in this area! And at least by the eighteenth
century, they were known to be Shawnee.
I hope this helps. I wish there were an easy answer, or a single
source that one could go to, but the above just begins to suggest the
arguments that have gone around. For what it's worth, though, I think
the groups named above, the distribution given on the National
Geographic map, are probably pretty reliable (for this area, for the
late pre-contact to early historic period--it's certainly not perfect!).
There seem to be a lot of recorded Shawnee and Cherokee grandparents and
great-grandparents around here, too!
Best of luck!
Fred
Frederic W. Gleach
Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology
Transylvania University
Lexington, Kentucky