Memphis, Tennessee

=== Early history ===
Occupying a substantial bluff rising from the Mississippi River, the site of Memphis has been a natural location for human settlement by varying indigenous cultures over thousands of years.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/mississippian-period-overview |title=Mississippian Period: Overview |website= New Georgia Encyclopedia |access-date=July 13, 2017}}</ref> In the first millennium A.D. people of the [[Mississippian culture]] were prominent; the culture influenced a network of communities throughout the Mississippi River Valley and its tributaries. The hierarchical societies built complexes with large earthwork ceremonial and burial mounds as expressions of their sophisticated culture.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://historic-memphis.com/memphis/pickering/pickering.html |title=Historic Fort Pickering, Memphis |website=Historic-memphis.com |access-date=July 13, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131109154251/http://historic-memphis.com/memphis/pickering/pickering.html |archive-date=November 9, 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref> The [[Chickasaw]] people, believed to be their descendants, later inhabited this site and a large territory in the Southeast.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=5436 |title=Chickasaw |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Arkansas |date=October 16, 2012 |access-date=July 13, 2017}}</ref>

French explorers led by [[René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle]],<ref>{{cite journal |author=Magness, Perre |date=2011 |title=Fort Prudhomme and La Salle |journal=Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture (Online, February 16 Update) |location=Knoxville, TN |publisher=[[University of Tennessee Press]]; [[Tennessee Historical Society]] |url=http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=495 |access-date=December 2, 2015}}</ref> and Spanish explorer [[Hernando de Soto]]<ref>WISSLER, Clark (1993) ''Los indios de Estados Unidos de América,'' Paidós Studio, nº 104 Barcelona</ref><ref>HALE, Duane K & GIBSON, Arrell M. (1989) ''The Chickasaw'', Frank W. Porter III, General Editor, Chelsea House, New York.</ref> encountered the historic Chickasaw in this area in the 16th century.

J. D. L. Holmes, writing in Hudson's ''Four Centuries of Southern Indians'' (2007), notes that this site was a third strategic point in the late 18th century through which European powers could control United States encroachment beyond the Appalachians and their interference with Indian matters—after [[History of Vicksburg, Mississippi|Fort Nogales]] (present-day [[Vicksburg, Mississippi|Vicksburg]]) and [[Fort Tombecbe|Fort Confederación]] (present-day [[Epes, Alabama]]): "Chickasaw Bluffs, located on the Mississippi River at the present-day location of Memphis. Spain and the United States vied for control of this site, which was a favorite of the Chickasaws."<ref name=Holmes2007>{{cite book |author=Holmes, Jack D.L. |editor=Hudson, Charles M. |chapter=Spanish Policy Toward the Southern Indians in the 1790s [chapter, pp. 65–82] |title=Four Centuries of Southern Indians |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UcY20I7XXMAC&pg=PA71 |access-date=December 2, 2015 |date=2007 |location=Athens, GA |publisher=[[University of Georgia Press]] |isbn=978-0-8203-3132-4 |page=given in superscript}}</ref>{{rp|71}}

In 1795 the Spanish Governor-General of [[Louisiana]], [[Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet]], sent his lieutenant governor, [[Manuel Gayoso de Lemos]], to negotiate and secure consent from the local Chickasaw so that a Spanish fort could be erected on the bluff; [[Fort San Fernando De Las Barrancas]] was the result.<ref name=Holmes2007 />{{rp|71}}<ref>{{cite journal |author = Harkins, John E. |date = 2010 |title = Fort San Fernando De Las Barrancas |journal = Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture (Online, January 1 Update) |location = Knoxville, Tennessee, USA |publisher = University of Tennessee Press, Tennessee Historical Society |url = http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=496s |access-date = December 2, 2015 |quote = Louisiana Governor-General Carondelet sent Lieutenant Governor Manuel Gayoso de Lemos to secure the Chickasaws' consent and then erect a fort on the bluff site. |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160303193914/http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=496s |archive-date = March 3, 2016 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Holmes notes that consent was reached despite opposition from "disappointed Americans and a pro-American faction of the Chickasaws" when the "pro-Spanish faction signed the Chickasaw Bluffs Cession and Spain provided the Chickasaws with a trading post".<ref name=Holmes2007 />{{rp|71}}

Fort San Fernando de las Barrancas remained a focal point of Spanish activity until, as Holmes summarizes:
<blockquote>{{blockquote|[T]he Treaty of San Lorenzo or [[Pinckney's Treaty]] of 1795 [implemented in March 1797], [had as its result that] all of the careful, diplomatic work by Spanish officials in [[Louisiana territory|Louisiana]] and [[West Florida]], which has succeeded for a decade in controlling the Indians [e.g., the [[Choctaws]]], was undone. The United States gained the right to navigate the [[Mississippi River]] and won control over the [[Yazoo lands|Yazoo Strip]] north of the thirty-first parallel.<ref name=Holmes2007 />{{rp|75,71}}</blockquote>}}

The Spanish dismantled the fort, shipping its lumber and iron to their locations in Arkansas.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2916|title=European Exploration and Settlement, 1541 through 1802 – Encyclopedia of Arkansas|website=Encyclopediaofarkansas.net|access-date=September 10, 2016}}</ref>

In 1796, the site became the westernmost point of the newly admitted state of Tennessee, in what was then called the Southwest United States. The area was still largely occupied and controlled by the Chickasaw nation. Captain Isaac Guion led an American force down the Ohio River to claim the land, arriving on July 20, 1797. By this time, the Spanish had departed.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://wknofm.org/post/fort-san-fernando-de-las-barrancas|title=Fort San Fernando De Las Barrancas|author=Steve Pike|work=wknofm.org|date=July 23, 2013|access-date=December 2, 2015}}</ref> The fort's ruins went unnoticed 20 years later when Memphis was laid out as a city after the United States government paid the Chickasaw for land.<ref name="Patrick1990">{{cite book|last=Patrick|first=James|title=Architecture in Tennessee, 1768–1897|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JOIMXAKnCfAC&pg=PA77|access-date=March 25, 2011|date=March 1990|publisher=Univ. of Tennessee Press |isbn = 978-0-87049-631-8 |page=77}}</ref>