Tennessee's Indian Peoples

Hernando De Soto’s invasion of Native lands in 1540 marked the onslaught of great change in the lives of Tennessee’s Native Americans. Although these first Tennesseans boasted a cultural heritage of thousands of years, only three centuries of contact with the white man elapsed before their population was decimated and the remnants driven out. The Indians were a settled people when de Soto visited, not the savage or exotic woods creatures so often depicted. Tennessee’s Indian Peoples , then, is a