From the Distant Past
The story of Kentucky's
earliest inhabitants -- from the dawn of civilization
to the rugged pioneers.
 

KENTUCKY'S EARLIEST INHABITANTS Long before any Europeans sat foot on the land now known as Kentucky, pre-historic peoples were settling here.  Nearly 18,000 archaeological sites across Kentucky have been identified as showing signs of these settlements.
Probably the fewest sites from any particular age are the oldest, those from the Paleoindian period from around 1 1,000 B.C. to 9,000 B.C. T'hese early peoples were foragers and hunters who migrated with the mastodons, mammoths, bufffilo, and etc.  Few sites exist showing their time in Kentucky, with most of these being found in Christian County and near the Falls of the Ohio.
Next came the Archaic period from 9,000 B.C. to 1,000 B.C., and with this, the people known as the Native Americans, or the Indians.  These peoples mostly hunted small game and fished along the streams and rivers of the area.  Many of these settlement sites have been found in the Cumberland Plateau and in western Kentucky.
With the coming of the Woodland period, from 1,000 B.C. to 900 B.C., came the cultivation of plants by theses Woodland peoples.  Their main crops were squash, gourds, sunflowers and tobacco.  Woodland sites are found throughout the state fairly evenly distributed.  These Woodland peoples were actually two distinct cultures.  One, known as the Adena, mostly found in central and northeastern parts of the state, were mound builders, and the Baumer and Crab Orchard cultures which were mostly predominant in the far western areas of the state.
With the coming of the Late Prehistoric period came two entirely different cultures.  T'hese were the western Kentucky mound building Mississippian Culture and the northeastern Fort Ancient Culture.  The Mississippians, with

new farming abilities, built many huge settlements along the river banks of the Ohio, Mississippi, and Tennessee rivers.  Maize and beans had been introduced to these peoples from Mexico and became staples in their diets.  They built enclosed villages with stockades around their flat-topped temple mounds.  These peoples were most likely related to the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes.  Across the state, the Fort Ancient peoples were ancestors of the Delaware, Miami, and Shawnee tribes.
As the years past, many tribes lived and hunted in Kentucky.  When the white man made his appearance, several different cultures were associated with certain areas.  Cherokees were mostly known to inhabit land in the Cumberland Plateau, while the Chickasaw lived in far-western Kentucky; between the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers.  Also at this time, the Shawnee were constantly coming into Kentucky from the north.

THE TRAIL OF TEARS
President Martin Van Buren, in 1938, issued an order for removal of the Cherokee from North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia, with their subsequent placement in Oklahoma.  Nearly 20,000 Cherokee were evicted from their lands and put in stockades.  General Winfield Scott was ordered to supervise this task.  The first group were sent on steamboats and barges up the Tennessee River and through western Kentucky.  They were to arrive in Oklahoma during the summer of that year.
The Trail of Tears forced many American Indians of the Cherokee Nation to move to new homelands against their wishes.  Many died on the route.

"Trail of Tears" and has gone down in American history as one of this country's darkest days; as thousands of Cherokees died on these trails.

EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT

Probably the first "owners" of Kentucky by Europeans were the Virginia Company, given the land in 1603 by James 1, and Robert Heath, who was given the land by Charles I in 1629.  However, the Revolutionary War and independence from England opened new claims to the frontier.
In 1750, Dr. Thomas Walker traveled through the Cumberland Gap and built the first white marf s cabin, in what was to become Kentucky, near present day Barbourville.  Soon, the frontier would see others make their path this way.
After an earlier attempt that took him into the mountains on the eastern border of the Kentucky wilderness, Daniel Boone ventured back into Kentucky in 1769.  Following Boone, in 1774, Captain James Harrod and his company founded the first white settlement in this wilderness territory at Harrodsburg.  Boone would return in 1776 and found Fort Boonesboro.
Originally, Kentucky was part of Fincastle

County, Virginia, formed in 1772.  Four years later, in 1776, at a meeting in Harrodsburg, George Rogers Clark and John Gabriel Jones were elected to petition the Virginia Legislature to form a new county, called Kentucky County, from the western section of Fincastle County.  This petition was granted, and except for the Jackson Purchase, made later, the future state of Kentucky had been formed.  Kentucky county, later the Commonwealth of Kentucky, included all the lands from the Big Sandy River and the Cumberland Mountain to the mighty Mississippi River.
In 1792, Kentucky was granted statehood; making it the fifteenth state and the first west of the Alleghenies.  Isaac Shelby was inaugurated as governor at Lexington, where the first legislature met.  Frankfort was chosen as the first permanent capitol over Louisville, Lexington, and Bardstown, and the first capitol building was erected in Frankfort's public square in 1793.
Kentucky is a "Commonwealth"; one of only four in the United States.  The others are Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts.  The term Commonwealth comes from the English word "commonweal" and means "for the common good of all."

WRITTEN BY RON PUCKETT
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