Nashville will celebrate its 245th birthday this year on Christmas Eve, in honor of the day when explorers James Robertson and John Donelson founded the Fort Nashborough settlement, which later became known as Nashville. Of course, the history of Nashville extends much further. Here’s a history of our troublesome holiday origin story.
Nashville’s Early Beginnings
Before European colonizers and explorers came to Tennessee, Native Americans thrived in the area. Nashville was home to a large Shawnee city on the banks of the Cumberland River. Buffalo grazed on what is now the Bicentennial Mall. 800-900 years ago, there was a significant Native American salt manufacturing and distribution center at the location that now hosts the Nashville Sounds stadium. When Europeans arrived in the 1700s, the Cherokee and Chickasaw tribes used the area for hunting.
The First Europeans in Nashville
French fur trappers and traders were the first Europeans to come to Nashville. Charles Charleville established a salt lick near the Bicentennial Mall in 1710. Timothy Demonbreun built his home on the banks of the Cumberland River. By 1750, the area was known as French Lick. The ‘ville’ in Nashville is a remnant of this French presence.
A City Is Founded
British and Cherokee representatives signed the Treaty of Lochaber in 1770, relinquishing the Cherokee claim on lands that include present-day Tennessee. British colonizers could now settle in Tennessee, though it took several more years until they arrived.
The Watauga Association was an early self-governed collection of settlements west of Appalachia. Watauga Association member James Robertson began scouting land in Middle Tennessee for a settlement in 1778, and the Nashville area appealed to him. He brought a party of settlers to Nashville on Christmas Eve of 1779, what is now considered the date of Nashville’s founding. John Donelson followed months later with the settlers’ wives and children. The settlement was named Fort Nashborough after Revolutionary War hero Francis Nash.
Resistance
The Cherokee who called Middle Tennessee home were unhappy with the Treaty of Lochaber, and believed it would lead to the extinction of the Cherokee tribe. Led by Cherokee war leader Dragging Canoe, they attacked Fort Nashborough in 1781 in the Battle of the Bluffs. They would continue to harry white settlements across Tennessee until Dragging Canoe’s death in 1792.
Nashville’s founding is fraught with a conflict mirrored throughout the United States in one form or another, as white Europeans ‘founded’ cities on land already inhabited by Native Americans.
