Crow Town

Dublin Core

Title

Crow Town

Subject

Jackson County, Native Americans, Alabama Historical Commission Markers

Description

One of the Five Lower Towns established by the Chickamauga Cherokees in 1782 under the leadership of Dragging Canoe. Territorial Governor William Blount reported to the Secretary of War in 1792 that: "Crow Town lies on the north side of the Tennessee [River], half a mile from the river, up Crow Creek, 30 miles below the Suck. [It] is the lowest town in the Cherokee Nation and contained 30 huts in 1790. The Creeks and Northward tribes cross [the river] here."

All of the Five Lower Towns were on the extreme Cherokee frontier. Running Water was near Chattanooga and Nickajack was near Haletown, Tennessee. Long Island Town was twenty miles below the Suck, east of Bridgeport, Alabama. Lookout Mountain Town was near Trenton, Georgia.

Crow Town encompassed an area of several miles by the early 1800s as increasing numbers of Cherokee families settled here. With the creation of Jackson County in 1819, many of the Cherokees moved to the south side of the river - some 19th-century maps placed Crow Town near the southeast end of Snodgrass Bridge which takes Highway 117 across the Tennessee River east of Stevenson. The 1782 site of Crow Town, one-half mile from the confluence of Crow Creek and the original channel of the Tennessee River, was flooded with the closing of the spillway gates at Guntersville Dam in 1939.

(From the Historical Marker erected by the Alabama Historical Commission, sponsored by the Jackson County Historical Association)

Creator

Blake Wilhelm

Source

http://www.alabamahistory.net/jackson-historical-markers.html

Street, O.D. "Cherokee Towns and Villages." Publications of the Alabama Historical Society, Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 1.

Publisher

Northeast Alabama Archives and Special Collections

Date

established 1782

Format

text