Detail from “A Draught of the Cherokee Country,” by Henry Timberlake, 1765, showing the village and river named Tennessee
1 June 2021
Tennessee, the name of a river and of the state, is taken from the name of a Cherokee (Iroquoian) village, tă´năsī´ or tănsĭ´, that was located along what is now called the Little Tennessee River. The meaning and etymology of the Cherokee word is unknown. Various speculations about the name’s meaning have been put forth, none with solid evidence behind them. But it is likely that the Cherokee village is the namesake of an older Coosa village located near the junction of the French Broad River and the Pigeon River in what is now eastern Tennessee
Spanish explorer Juan Pardo encountered that Coosa village on 6 October 1567. From the journal of Juan de la Bandera, a member of his expedition recorded its name as Tanasqui:
Despues desto En presencia de mi El dho Juan de la vandera escrivano El dho señor capitan Juan pardo prosiguiendo la dha jornada En seis dias del dho mes de otubre del dho año de mill E quinientos y sesenta E siete años llego a un lugar que se disze tanasqui El qual Estaba situado En cierta parte de tierra fuerte a manera de ysla zercada de agua.
(After this in the presence of me, Juan de la Bandera, notary, the captain, Juan Pardo, continuing the journey on the sixth day of the month of October, 1567, arrived at a place which is called Tanasqui, which was situated on a certain piece of solid ground, like an island surrounded by water.)
English use of the name likely dates to the early eighteenth century, but I haven’t found any examples prior to 1765, when it appears in the memoirs of Henry Timberlake, a British officer who fought in the Anglo-Cherokee and French and Indian (Seven Years) Wars. In the “Draught of the Cherokee Country” map that accompanies his memoir, Timberlake records the name of the Cherokee village and river as Tennessee. And in the memoirs themselves, he records this event from December 1761, at the end of the Anglo-Cherokee War:
Next morning we had the pleasure of finding the ice entirely gone, thawed, probably, by a hard rain that fell over-night, so that about two o'clock we found ourselves in Broad River, which being very high, we went the two following days at the rate of ten miles an hour, till we came within a mile of Tennessee river, when, running under the shore, we on a sudden discovered a party of ten or twelve Indians, standing with their pieces presented on the bank. Finding it impossible to resist or escape, we ran the canoe ashore towards them, thinking it more eligible to surrender immediately, which might entitle us to better treatment, than resist or fly, in either of which death seemed inevitable, from their presented guns, or, their pursuit. We now imagined our death, or, what was worse, a miserable captivity, almost certain, when the headman of the party agreeably surprized us, by asking, in the Cherokee language, to what town we belonged? To which our interpreter replied, To the English camp; that the English and Cherokees having made a peace, I was then carrying the articles to their countrymen. On this the old warrior, commonly called the Slave Catcher of Tennessee, invited us to his camp, treated us with dried venison, homminy, and boiled corn.
In the 1790s, the then Southwest Territory of the United States began pushing for statehood, and in 1796 the territory created a constitution under the name Tennessee. As recorded in the American Minerva of 9 March 1796:
The convention of the South Western Territory have formed a constitution for that District which has received the name of TENNESSEE.
Tennessee became the sixteenth state to join the union on 1 June 1796.
Sources:
American Minerva (New York), 9 March 1796, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Hudson, Charles. The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566–68. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990, 36, 220, 267. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Timberlake, Henry. The Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake. London: 1765, 27–28. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Vogel, Virgil J. Indian Place Names in Illinois. Illinois State Historical Society, Pamphlet Series No. 4. Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1963, 146–147. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Image credit: Henry Timberlake, Memoirs (1765). Public domain image.