Fort Nashborough

Welcome to Fort Nashborough! This stop will have two parts. The first will focus on ancient and Native American history and the second will focus on the early settlers. Begin at the “Feather Monument” as you enter the park. Archaeological discoveries here in the Cumberland Basin date back to the coming of the first PaleoIndian hunters,12,000 B.C.E. Thousands of years before the first wave of ambitious colonial settlers, nomadic hunters passed through here to hunt herds of wild animals for food. As the climate grew warmer, the area grew into an abundant forest of beech, hickory, and oak trees, which attracted large numbers of elk and deer. In the Central Basin, Shawnees, Chickasaws, and Cherokees hunted because animals were drawn by the salt licks—a place fed by springs where salt comes up to the surface of the land.

The Shawnees had named this river Warioto, but in the 1700s French traders renamed it “le Riviere des Chauouanons” the “River of the Shawnees.” The Shawnees were driven out by the Cherokee and Chickasaw tribes before the first Europeans. By the time the Robertson and Donelson parties arrived in the late 1700s, the Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Creeks still hunted around this ridge line of hills encircling the limestone basin bed. Check out the signage and placards for more information about our Native American history.

This feather monument is a reminder of the Nashville area’s Native American heritage. Circling the base are tribal names as well as important chiefs and warriors. One such individual was Piomingo, a Chickasaw chieftain who negotiated with James Robertson on several occasions. The monument was dedicated by members of the American Indian Coalition when the Fort Nashborough Interpretive Center was opened in July 2017.

 Walk through and around the rest of Fort Nashborough as you listen to part two of this stop.

Imagine what it must have been like to live here with small children and numerous hunting dogs over 200 years ago. No indoor plumbing or water, no electricity, no cars, and certainly no internet! When the Donelson party arrived in April 1780 after their grueling journey, Fort Nashborough became the unofficial headquarters of the settlement. No one considered that the native tribes would contest having new neighbors. Attacks from the Chickamaugans were particularly fierce because they had split from the Cherokees after the Cherokees signed the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals and relinquished control of the land to Richard Henderson.

During the first year of this settlement, the attacks were so fierce that the Donelson family decided to leave their fertile claim where the Stones River flows into the Cumberland upstream from this site. At one point, the Robertson family fled Fort Nashborough for what they believed to be the safer Freeland’s Station, near the present-day location of the Tennessee State Museum.

On the night of April 2, 1781, Robertson and a party of men went out in search of Chickamaugans spotted near the fort at night. What ensued became known as the “Battle of the Bluffs.” Eleven settlers and a large number of Native Americans were killed before dawn. By May, only one-fourth of the population of the original settlers remained. At least fifty had been killed, and others left for the safety of settlements in Kentucky or Illinois. Legends about this battle abound. The fighting between the settlers and the Chickamaugans continued in this area well into the 1790s. Fort Nashborough was abandoned and a small frontier town of Nashville was born. 

For more on Fort Nashborough, check out our other Nashville Sites tours. Now, from the Fort’s exit on First Avenue, head RIGHT on First Avenue, heading towards Gay and Church Streets. After walking only a few yards, you will see the Founding of Nashville Statue on your right.