In 1796, the site became the westernmost point of the newly admitted "state" of Tennessee in the newly independent United States. The boundaries of what would become Tennessee continued to evolve from its parent - the Carolina Colony, later North Carolina and South Carolina. ĭespite such early outposts, the land comprising present-day Memphis remained in a largely unorganized territory throughout most of the 18th century in terms of European settlement. The fort was used as a base against the Chickasaw in the abortive Campaign of 1739.
Fort Assumption was a French fortification constructed in 1739 on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff on the Mississippi River by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville's French army.
īy the 1680s, French explorers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle built Fort Prudhomme in the vicinity, the first European settlement in what would become Memphis, predating English settlements in East Tennessee by more than 70 years. Hudson map of 1997 European explorers - 16th/17th centuries Įuropean exploration came years later, with Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto believed to have visited what is now the Memphis area as early as the 1540s. These people (the choctaw) are the only nation from whom I could learn any idea of a traditional account of a first origin and that is their coming out of a hole in the ground, which they shew between their nation and the Chickasaws they tell us also that their neighbou rs were surprised at seeing a people rise at once out of the earth."Ī proposed route for the de Soto Expedition, based on Charles M. Their oral history supports this, indicating they moved along with the Choctaw from west of the Mississippi in pre-history. Twentieth-century scholar Patricia Galloway says that the Chickasaw may have been migrants to the area from the west and may not have been descendants of the pre-historic Mississippian culture. When Europeans first encountered them, the Chickasaw were living in villages in what is now Mississippi, with a smaller number in the area of Savannah Town, South Carolina. Noted historian Horatio Cushman indicates that the Chickasaw, along with the Choctaw, may have had origins in present-day Mexico and migrated north. The exact origins of the Chickasaw are uncertain. They inhabited the region of modern-day Tipton, Lauderdale and Shelby counties during the time of first contact with Europeans, at the arrival of the de Soto Expedition.īy the end of the Mississippian period, the land was claimed and populated by the Chickasaw tribe. The Tipton Phase people were a local expression of the Mississippian culture. Approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE, the Mississippi River Delta was populated by tribes of the Mississippian culture, a mound-building Native American people who had developed in the late Woodland Indian period. King, Howlin' Wolf, Isaac Hayes, Andrew Hayes Tay Keith, and Elvis Presleyįrom about 10,000 BCE, Paleo-Indians and later Archaic-Indians lived as communities of hunter-gatherers in the area that covers the modern-day southern United States. These included such musical greats as Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, B.B. Many notable blues musicians grew up in and around the Memphis and northern Mississippi area. was assassinated by a lone sniper on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel. Having come to the city to support the workers, Rev. During the 1960s the city was at the center of civil rights actions, with a major strike by city sanitation workers in 1968. In the early 20th century cotton was still a major commodity crop Memphis grew into the world's largest spot cotton market and the world's largest hardwood lumber market. In 1878 tens of thousands of residents fled and more than 5,000 died, with hundreds more dying in the next year's epidemic, causing the city to go bankrupt and give up its charter until 1893. In the 19th century, and especially 18, the city suffered severe yellow fever epidemics.
It rapidly developed as a major trading center for cotton cultivated at the region's large plantations and dependent on the work of enslaved African Americans. The city was named after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River in North Africa. The European-American city of Memphis was not founded until 1819. Later French explorers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle likely encountered the Chickasaw. The earliest European exploration may have encountered remnants of the Mississippian culture by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. The Chickasaw Indian tribe emerged about the 17th century, or migrated into the area.
In the first millennium, it was settled by the Mississippian Culture. The history of Memphis, Tennessee and its area began many thousands of years ago with succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples.