Bussell Island

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Coordinates: 35 ° 46 ′ 43.3 "  N , 84 ° 15 ′ 18.7"  W.

Map: Tennessee
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Bussell Island​
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Tennessee

Bussell Island , formerly Lenoir Island , is an island at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River near Lenoir City , Tennessee . Before the arrival of European settlers, the island was populated by different cultures of the North American Indians for thousands of years . Today the Tellico Dam and a recreation area are located here . Part of the island was inscribed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 because of its archaeological potential .

The history of the settlement of Bussell Island goes back to the Archaic Period (about 3000-1000 years BC).

The island was probably home to the capital of Coste - a settlement area of ​​the Mississippi period visited in 1540 by the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto - and later part of the settlement area of ​​the Overhill Cherokee .

In 1887 and 1919, archaeologists carried out extensive excavations on Bussell Island and determined the archaeological importance of this site. The island was drastically changed in the 1970s when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) built the Tellico Dam.

location

Bussell Island Area; the dotted blue line shows the original shores of the island to the east and southwest.

Bussell Island is located at the point where the Little Tennessee River joins the Tennessee River , 967 km above its confluence with the Mississippi River . The island originally stretched a mile upriver along the Little Tennessee River, but the construction of the Tellico Dam on the river's western arm created a reservoir that flooded the southern two-thirds of the island. To control the reservoir, an earth wall was built on the new south bank of the island and over the eastern arm of the river, which connects the island with the river bank. The TVA built a canal between the lakes at Tellico Dam and Fort Loudoun, creating a new island that extends for about a mile from east to west and touches three lakes, Fort Loudoun Lake, Watts Bar Lake, and Tellico Lake.

Lenoir City is on the Tennessee River across from Bussell Island. US Route 321 (Lamar Alexander Parkway) crosses the new eastern half of the island and Tennessee State Route 444 (Tellico Parkway) passes through the center of the island, both roads intersecting at the eastern tip. US-321 runs over the J. Carmichael Bridge, which leads over both Fort Loudoun Dam and the canal. John W. Emmert, who carried out excavations on the island in 1887, found that the island originally had an area of ​​200 acres (around 80  hectares ) and rose up to 4.5 m above the shoreline. Emmert described the shores of the island as "steep" and with "dense wood and a lot of cane growing on it". Emmert wrote that the island was occasionally flooded when the Little Tennessee River flooded, noting that his excavations were interrupted by one such flood that flooded the island more than four meters.

history

Prehistoric time

Round grave excavated on Bussell Island in 1919
Soapstone vessel fragment that was excavated in 1919

The earliest known residents of Bussell Island lived in the late Archaic Period, around 3000–1000 BC. The island was sporadically inhabited in the Woodland period (1000 BC – 1000 AD). Archaeologist Mark R. Harrington, who carried out extensive excavations in 1919, referred to these early residents as "round grave people" because of their habit of burying their dead in small, round graves. These people used tools made from animal bones and stone, and both soapstone vessels and simple pottery.

The successors of these people on Bussell Island were called "Second Culture" by Harrington. These people belonged to what is now known as the Mississippi Culture, which had its wedding in the upper Tennessee Valley between 900 and 1600. The members of these peoples are known for elongated mound platforms and conical grave mounds, as they were also found on Bussell Island and the surrounding area. The people of the Mississippian culture that lived on Bussell Iceland, used triangular arrowheads from flint and wore ornaments made of copper and shells , the latter suggesting trade activities with coastal regions.

Coste

Detail from Chiaves' 1584 map showing Chiaha, Coste and Tali

In 1540, the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto set out on an expedition in the southeastern part of what is now the United States, then La Florida . He hoped to find an overland route to Mexico . De Soto marched north through what is now South Carolina and North Carolina before turning west, taking advantage of the Nolichucky Valley, crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains and reaching east to what is now Tennessee . After resting for a few weeks in the well-known Chiaha chieftainship (near what is now Douglas Dam ), de Soto continued his journey by following the French Broad River and Tennessee River downstream to reach the Coste chieftainship, which was on Bussell Island. He reached it on July 1, 1540.

De Soto was on friendly terms with the Chief of Coste on July 2, but relations deteriorated when the Spanish ransacked some of the village's warehouses and several villagers attacked the Spanish with sticks. De Soto then devised a ruse in which he kidnapped the chief and held him hostage for several days. After the elder promised to provide guides and porters, De Soto moved on July 9th. The expedition followed the Little Tennessee River to the village of Tali near present-day Vonore and finally came south to Coosa in northern present-day Georgia .

The residents of Coste, like the residents of Chiaha, spoke a Muskogee language similar to the language used by the later tribes of the Creek and Koasati (the linguist Charles Hudson believes the term "Koasati" comes from "Coste “Could be derived). Coste was believed to be part of the Coosa area of ​​influence, which stretched south from the upper Tennessee Valley to the center of present-day Alabama . In 1567, another Spanish explorer, Juan Pardo, came to the villages of Chalahume and Satapo further up in the Little Tennessee Valley, but turned back before reaching Coste.

Cherokee and European colonization

Cherokee grave uncovered in 1919

By the mid-18th century, there were more than a dozen Cherokee villages - the so-called Overhill Towns - scattered up the river about ninety kilometers from the mouth of the Little Tennessee River, including Chota and Tanasi . The village of Mialoquo , the furthest downstream of these Cherokee villages, was about 17 miles from Bussell Island. Harrington's excavations on Bussell Island had uncovered numerous Cherokee graves, which he identified as grave goods based on the shape and presence of barter goods of European origin , although there was no known Cherokee village on the island. Henry Timberlake , who followed the Little Tennessee River upriver in 1761, reported meeting a Cherokee chief named Slavers near the estuary, but made no mention of the island.

A long time in the 19th century was Bussell Iceland as Lenoir Iceland known for William Ballard Lenoir , who on the spot a large cotton plantation, where a cotton mill built where Lenoir City is today. In 1887, John W. Emmert carried out the first major excavations on Bussell Island for the Bureau of Ethnology . When Mark Harrington started digging in 1919, the island was already owned by the Bussell family, who operated a ferry across the river in Lenoir City.

Tellico Dam

Earth wall on the new south shore of Bussell Island

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which was commissioned in the 1930s with the construction of a number of dams for flood protection and the generation of electrical energy from hydropower , originally wanted to build the Fort Loudoun Dam below the mouth of the Little Tennessee River and thus create a reservoir that included both the upper reaches of the Tennessee River and the lower reaches of the Little Tennessee River, but engineers were unable to find a suitable site for the dam below the confluence. Therefore, they began planning the dam at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River - this plan was known as the Fort Loudoun Extension - which would lead water into the Fort Loudoun Reservoir and increase the output of the power station at that dam. Due to the lack of funding, this project was delayed until the 1960s.

The TVA renewed its interest in building the Fort Loudoun Extension - the project now renamed Tellico Dam - in 1964, although resistance to the project arose immediately from a group of environmentalists, conservationists and Indians. Construction of the dam began in 1969, but legal proceedings delayed completion until 1979, which allowed the University of Tennessee to carry out extensive excavations in the Tellico Basin. As a result of these excavations, several sites were added to the National Register of Historic Places for their archaeological potential, including Bussell Island, 40LD17 .

Excavations

JW Emmert (1887)

Emmert's excavation for the American Bureau of Ethnology took place in 1887; it was reported by the agency in its 12th Annual Report , published in 1894. Emmert focused on two mounds at the northern end of the island, which were referred to as Mound 1 and Mound 2. Mound 1 had a diameter of 30 m and a height of two meters and was described by Emmert as “carefully worked”. Emmert found 14 skeletons in it, as well as fragments of pottery, flint stones, glass beads and an iron bracelet. Mound 2 was slightly larger than Mound 1 but was surrounded by a diamond-shaped terrace about 170 m long and 2.5 m high, which Emmert believed was man-made. The excavations at Mound 2 uncovered 67 skeletons and a tumulus made of clay surrounded by irregularly arranged cedar stakes.

MR Harrington (1919)

Earthenware exposed by Harrington in 1919

In 1919, Mark Harrington, a state archaeologist from Tennessee, took a boat down the Tennessee River to investigate a series of mounds on the river between Lenoir City and Hiwassee Island (about 100 miles downstream from Bussell Island). Like Emmert, Harrington focused on the north end of the island, but found that the moons that Emmert had dug had leveled. Of the 41 burials that Harrington uncovered, nine came from the older culture with the circular grave, the rest were ascribed to the later residents of the Cherokee. Harrington assumed that the diamond-shaped terrace mentioned by Emmert was an extensive Køkkenmøddinger .

Harrington described the graves as "the circular burial culture" and stated that they were two to three feet in diameter. The bodies were folded to fit into these graves. Typical burial objects were awls made of bones, soapstone bowls and animal teeth. The Cherokee graves were rectangular and the bodies were buried in a hunched position. Typical Cherokee grave goods included clay pottery, glass beads, and pipes.

Web links

Commons : Bussell Island  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ National Register Information System ( English ) In: National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. October 1, 2009. Retrieved June 29, 2011.
  2. ↑ a b c Bobby Braly and Shannon Koerner: A History of Archeology in Tennessee ( English , PDF; 509 kB) In: Tennessee Archeology: A Synthesis . Pp. 12-14. Retrieved June 29, 2011.
  3. ^ David Dye: Soto Expedition ( English ) In: Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture . 2002. Retrieved June 29, 2011.
  4. ↑ a b U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, Twelth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1890-191 (Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office , 1894), 397-403.
  5. ↑ a b c d M.R. Harrington, Cherokee and Earlier Remains on Upper Tennessee River (New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1922), pp. 50, 61-82, 277-279.
  6. ↑ Harrington, pp. 166-167.
  7. ^ A b Charles Hudson, Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1997), pp. 204-207.
  8. ^ Charles Hudson, The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Explorations of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568 (Tuscaloosa, Ala .: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 104.
  9. ^ Hudson, The Juan Pardo Expeditions , p. 10.
  10. ↑ Hudson, The Juan Pardo Expeditions , pp. 36-45.
  11. ↑ Gerald Schroedl: Overhill Cherokees ( English ) In: Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture . 2002. Retrieved June 29, 2011.
  12. Jump up ↑ Kurt Russ and Jefferson Chapman, Archaeological Investigations at the Eighteenth Century Overhill Cherokee Town of Mialoquo (40MR3) (University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology, Report of Investigations 37, 1983).
  13. ^ Henry Timberlake, Samuel Williams (Ed.), Memoirs, 1756-1765 (Marietta, Georgia: Continental Book Co., 1948), p. 56.
  14. ↑ Harrington, p. 34.
  15. ^ A b Kenneth Murchison: The Snail Darter Case: TVA Versus the Endangered Species Act . University Press of Kansas, Lawrence , Kansas 2007, p. 15.
  16. ↑ Jefferson Chapman: Tellico Archeology: 12,000 Years of Native American History . Tennessee Valley Authority , Knoxville , Tenn. 1985.