|
SALTVILLE INDIANS
Saltville is one of about half a dozen of the oldest
identified sites of human settlement in the Western Hemisphere,
dating to 14,000 years ago.
This date is before the existence of the Bering Sea land
bridge, which for many years was thought to have been the avenue
of immigration for New World Indians.
Bone and stone tools excavated at two closely situated
sites at the junction of Henrytown Road and State 91 at the Salt
Lick are said to be of the style of the primitive people of
Spain and of France.
Whether these peoples made direct use of the Salt Lick itself,
or if they merely hunted the large game that came there is
unknown.
This is a very exciting concept, because it implies that
the earliest inhabitants of North America were Caucasian, and
not Asiatic Orientals.
DNA analysis is an explosively developing field, but
there are disputed concurrences between some stray DNA found in
American Indians, and the earliest peoples of France and Spain.
Virginia is fortunate to have a second such site, at
Cactus Hill, which is 45 miles south of Richmond, Va.
Stone tools found there, together with charcoal found
with them, are reliably dated to 14,510 years ago.
Some evidence pushes the dates of occupation of that site
back to 18,000-20,000 years ago.
In 1540 Hernando de Soto and his expedition of
exploration may have come up the Holston from Knoxville, TN to
its headwaters, thus either going through
Chilhowie, VA or
Saltville.
De Soto’s
historian, de Biedma, made careful note of structural features
of the houses and villages they encountered, and they were
clearly not Cherokee.
In 1566 the Spanish set up St. Elena at
Parris Island, South Carolina as capital of Florida.
Officer Juan Pardo extended the Spanish presence into
western North Carolina by building a chain of six forts
extending into Tennessee.
The easternmost of these fort colonies was built at
Morganton in 1567 next to an important Indian Village named
Joara.
The fort was
named San Juan.
Pardo sent two expeditions against the Yuchi at Saltville lead
by Alferez Moyano.
It began when the Yuchi chief sent word to
Joara that he would come there and eat both Moyano and his dog.
So in 1567 Moyano
took thirty men from Fort San Juan and attacked either
Chilhowie, or Saltville, or both, and killed hundreds.
By this time these Saltville Indians were known as
“Yuchi” (various spellings), or as the “Hogoheegee”, a term used
for them by the Shawnee and Powhatan.
Indeed, the earliest term used by the Europeans of
Tidewater Virginia for the Holston River was the “Hogoheegee”,
referring to the tribe of people that lived there.
This name for the river was used from its source all the
way to Knoxville, suggesting that this was the territory of the
Yuchi.
4
Continue to Page 5
Return to Big Stone Gap Publishing.com
Copyright © 2014 Lawrence J. Fleenor, Jr.
All Rights Reserved
|