A Local Analysis of Early-Eighteenth-Century Cherokee Settlement

Abstract

Results of an original analysis of Cherokee town placement and population c. 1721 are presented. Period and contemporary information were analyzed using local statistics to produce multivalued, mappable characterizations of the intensity of the processes of town placement and population. The analysis focuses on the scale and the space in which these processes took place among the Cherokee in order to open the way for examining the legacy of human-induced environmental change in southern Appalachia.

Resource abundance constraints on the early post-contact Cherokee population

“…1721 map of the Southeast showing the location of individual Cherokee towns (Barnwell, 1721). We discuss the procedures we used in detail elsewhere (Gragson and Bolstad, 2007). While both the enumeration and the map have been independently used by previous authors to estimate total Cherokee population (e.g., Thornton, 1990) or produce lists of town names (e.g., Smith, 1979), to the best of our knowledge they have never been used together nor combined with complementary information from other period sources.…”

“…Existing explanations of Cherokee settlement, of which there are at least four grand theories (Gragson and Bolstad, 2007), also derive from a homeostatic premise and inherently ignore both environmental heterogeneity and ecosystem processes. Production theories emphasize the properties of the physical environment related to agriculture or hunting (e.g., Corkran, 1962;Adair, 1974).…”

“…In this article we model the constraints and trade-offs to satisfying town-specific demands for architectural land, agricultural land, firewood, hard mast, and white-tailed deer. The analysis was possible because of a new synthesis of the location and population of early contact Cherokee towns (Gragson and Bolstad, 2007) and our collation of previously unused information on household size and resource consumption suitable for estimating per capita and aggregate demand for each resource.…”

“…1721dthe first date after the earliest Cherokee contact with the British for which there is substantial eye-witness evidence, yet prior to the major social, economic and political changes the Cherokee underwent over the course of the next half century (Corkran, 1962;Goodwin, 1977;Hatley, 1993). In 1721 the total Cherokee population was approximately 12,000 distributed in 62 towns with populations from 100 to 600 individuals each (Gragson and Bolstad 2007). The Cherokee at this time are believed to have controlled or used near-exclusively some 322,600 km 2 of southern Appalachia (Fig.…”

“…Our results derive from an empirical and mechanistic evaluation of the interaction between location and resource availability rather than an aspatial, net-effects model (Gragson and Bolstad, 2007;Johnson et al, 2005). Our approach allows us to synthesize contributions from multiple disciplines that have not often been used together to better understand the forces that ''shaped the Indians of the eighteenth-century South'' (Hudson, 2002).Our goal is to understand how the legacies of Cherokee activities affected subsequent inhabitants of southern Appalachia (Gaddis, 2002;White and Pickett, 1985;Cronon, 1983;Foster et al, 1997;Little et al, 1997).…”