- September 17, 2012-I have always been a searcher for historic items left behind by those that came before us. The area where our old farm house is located is full of ancient history. When the first explorers, the Spanish in the early 1500's, came through our land they found evidence of an unknown culture called the Mound Builders. The later Long Hunters from Virginia came into this part of Sumner County in the mid 1700's and found the same remains of Mounds and when they asked the Indians that frequented the area about the ruins, the Indians simply referred to them as "The Old Ones". From those first Long Hunters, coming to hunt and trap, and the Indians that also used the area for hunting...years of fierce war was fought for the rights to use the land. The English would incite the Indians to attack and kill the American settlers and hunters and the whole area from the Ohio River North to the Tennessee River South and West to the Mississippi was a virtual Killing Ground of hate and violence.
The old farm house of ours sits above a spring fed creek
and a large historic flowing spring just down from the house that was a
perfect place for Indians to gather to camp while they were hunting,
long before the first white men showed up. I have found hundreds of
Indian artifacts in the past 15 years that we have lived here and I
continue to find them about every time a good rain comes through. The
items shown in my picture are as follows: 1-50 caliber rifle ball from a
black powder long rifle, 1-home made flint for a flint lock rifle of
the same vintage, 1-stone axe head from probably Paleolithic time that
my son picked up in the front yard years ago and brought to me, one
Indian stone carved paint pot that Denise picked up on a gravel bar
along the Caney Fork River during a canoe adventure several years ago. I
figure the 50 caliber rifle ball and the homemade flint were from the
English/Indian incitement when the English were supplying the Indians
with Flint Lock rifles, and the Indians did not have a lot of extra
flints so they learned to make their own. It was a dark and bloody
period of American history and I have a deep interest in the happenings
since we live right in the middle of it. Many people were killed,
scalped and mutilated on the beautiful little creek called Deshea that
runs in front of the old farm house. I think about it a lot, on rainy
days like today, wondering how the early settlers could find such
courage as to come into the wilderness, build a house and stockade out
of available materials, hunt and grow enough food for the family, all
the while looking over your shoulder when you are out in the field
working or in the woods hunting for the Indians ambush that can come at
any moment. These brave forefathers and mothers, who risked all to make
a home, tamed the wilderness, fought back the Indians to a standstill
and finally had some peace by the year 1795. Settling the untracked
land of North America has always come with a heavy price and grave
danger, and it's up to us to continue the tradition of protecting our
land from those who would destroy it. As the rain comes down, running
in rivulets down to the creek, which carries the water on down Deshea
Creek to Bledsoe Creek and then into the Cumberland and on. It is a
blessed land. -Stan
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