A Major River Town

A Major River Town. . The Tennessee River served as a major transportation artery linking this community with people from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The chief not only ruled the river valley for 10 miles in both directions but had alliances and traded goods with people in such distant places as Cahokia, near today St. Louis., Using dugout canoes, the people fished the riverway and raised crops on the bottomlands along the river. They exchanged food, clothing, and gifts with friends and relatives in Savannah and other nearby communities. They imported chert, or flint, hoe blades from Alabama, copper ornaments from the Great Lakes region, mica and greenstone from the southern Appalachians, and coquina stone from Florida., A Gift from Cahokia? , This effigy pipe, the most Saeros artifact, found here carved out of the same distinctive red stone and in the same style as others uncovered at Cahokia. The pipe is now on display at the Tennessee River Museum in Savannah, Tennessee., Nearby Communities , A few thousand people lived along this 25-mile stretch of the Tennessee River. Most of these communities were small, but the one six miles downstream - mostly destroyed by the modern municipality of Savannah - was relatively large, like the one here.