Chickasaw History Resources
Carroll County was formed following the Chickasaw Cessions.
While the Chickasaw Indians lived primarily in northern Mississippi during historic times, their extensive land claims included parts of northern Alabama, West and parts of Middle Tennessee, and western Kentucky. Those Tennessee and Kentucky claims were primarily for hunting grounds.
Chickasaw claims overlapped Cherokee claims in Middle Tennessee. Chickasaw land was roughly bounded by the Ohio River in western Kentucky, south with the east side of the Mississippi River through Tennessee into Mississippi to approximately the 34th or 33rd parallel, south-eastward with the northern boundary of their often-unfriendly Choctaw neighbors and into Alabama and to Creek Country, then northward to the Tennessee River. The easternmost border of their land claim ran to the Chickasaw Old Fields, near Chickasaw Island on the Tennessee River east of Muscle Shoals, almost directly south of today’s Huntsville, Alabama. Here the Chickasaw lands met and overlapped the Cherokee lands. Their claim meandered north and west — including some parts of the Elk River and Duck River — through western Middle Tennessee — where much of this land was also claimed by the Cherokee — and finally running to the Ohio River.
The main purpose here is to consider the Chickasaw’s loss of their Tennessee land. Yet, because the Chickasaw and their Cessions did not occur in a vacuum, it is reasonable to also consider here some Cherokee Cessions, Tennessee laws, Federal laws, and Chickasaw history.
Source: Frederick Smoot, “Chickasaw People and Their Homeland”
This page contains links to some resources if you are interested in learning more about the Indigenous residents of the county.
- The Chickasaw and Their Cessions — a TNGenWeb site
- Chicksaw History — from the Chickasaw Nation Video Network
- Chickasaw Historical Research Page — site moved to ChickasawHistory, but the original site by K. M. Armstrong had a significant number of original documentary history. This link is to the Internet Archive mirror from December, 2003, which is about the time the changeover occurred.