Kevin E. Smith

Among the many accomplishments of the Cherokees was the publication of the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, from 1828 to 1834. Soon after the adoption of the Cherokee Constitution in 1828, the National Council provided for the establishment…

More than eight centuries ago a Native American town flourished atop the steep bluff overlooking the confluence of Sycamore Creek, Buffalo River, and Duck River in Humphreys County. By A.D. 1150 this prosperous town was the political, economic, and religious…

This invaluable collection dates to 1907, when Gates P. Thruston (1835-1912) donated his collection of prehistoric Native American artifacts to Vanderbilt University. Containing about one thousand objects, the collection remains a peerless assemblage of prehistoric Native American art from the…

Almost one thousand years ago, a thriving city of several thousand Native Americans was situated in a bend of the Harpeth River not far downstream from Kingston Springs in Cheatham County. Around A.D. 950 Mound Bottom emerged as a sacred…

William E. Myer was a leading figure in the early twentieth-century transformation of Tennessee archaeology from a casual hobby to a professional science and in the development of both overland and river transportation systems. Myer was born in Kentucky in…

Sequoyah, the originator of the Cherokee syllabary, was born in the Cherokee town of Tuskegee (or Taskigi) on the Little Tennessee River in what is now Monroe County. The son of Nathaniel Gist (or Guess), a Virginia fur trader, and…