Bledsoe Station: Archaeology, History, and the Interpretation of the Middle Tennessee Frontier, 1770-1820

By Kevin E. Smith

[Boonesborough, perhaps the most famous frontier station, had a plan very similar to Bledsoe Station, as shown in this old print. The fort and garden were planned on eight acres, with four corner blockhouses, eight cabins, and a central gate on each long side, five cabins on the short sides, and stockading in the gaps. Excavations at Bledsoe Station reveal the same rectangular plan, with cabins as part of the fortifications. (From the Dixie Frontier)]

One of the most promising recent trends in early American history is the re-interpretation of the “frontier era.” Where popular images of larger-than-life “pioneers” pitted against bloodthirsty “savages” once dominated, historical narratives have begun to emphasize a much different story of how both settlers and Native Americans adapted to each other, and how together they transformed the landscape of the Old Southwest into one open for settlement, development, and removal. This new scholarship relies only in part on traditional written records because the documentary record is relatively sparse and what does remains often records only the reactions and thoughts of a relatively small minority. In the past, writers on the Old South who ventured to describe daily life on the frontier were forced to paint with broad strokes, drawing together tidbits from letters, memoirs, and other documents from a diverse Upland South backcountry and trans-Appalachian frontier. As Harriette Simpson Arnow commented, “The Draper manuscripts, taken as a whole, are the largest and most representative body of writings of the pioneer. . . Draper was trying to recreate a world, vanished even then, a hundred and twenty years ago, almost as completely as the elk.”^[1] 

The best of the new scholarship utilizes a new source of information that was always there; it was just buried down in the ground. Archaeologists in Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia have begun to identify and excavate sites dating to the transmontane frontier of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.^[2]  These projects have already generated the first wealth of detailed information about the daily lives and everyday concerns of pioneer households and communities. Together history and archaeology allow scholars to include more specific considerations of ethnic diversity, the nature of the frontier economy, the foundations of race and class relationships, and the impacts of global conflict among European and Native American nations on this frontier society.^[3]

Current work at Bledsoe Station (ca. 1783-1806), in present-day Castalian Springs, Sumner County, is an excellent example of how archaeology informs and extends historical analysis of the early settlement era in Tennessee. Beginning in 1995, the Bledsoe’s Lick Historical Association and Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University initiated a long-term joint historical and archaeological project focusing on Bledsoe’s Station.^[4] Research at Bledsoe’s Station identifies the location of the station’s structures and buildings, defines the activities of residents, and collects and interprets the material culture of its occupants through the systematic recovery of artifacts. The project also communicates the process and potentials of archaeology to the local community, interested public, and tourists through “hands-on” excavation programs, interpretive exhibits, public lectures, and an Internet web site.^[5] Bledsoe Station deserves such careful scrutiny because of its significance as an early outpost on the western frontier and due to continual development pressures as the metropolitan area around Nashville expands at breathtaking speed. There is little left of the early settlement era in Middle Tennessee, and a time of complexity, creativity, and adaptability is in danger of disappearing from the state’s historical landscape. 

The historical background of Bledsoe Station has deep roots, extending into the Mississippian period of Tennessee prehistory. Native Americans had abandoned the Cumberland Valley as a location for major Native American towns between A.D. 1400 and 1450, but at least by the early seventeenth century, many indigenous nations east of the Mississippi River claimed the region as hunting territory.^[6] While Euro-American settlers easily and quickly dismissed the concept of hunting territory, for Native Americans, the concept of shared ownership as hunting territory seems to have been established soon after A.D. 1450. Many native groups recognized and even enforced the concept, which we today might equate to the concept of “international waters,” where by agreement between sovereign nations the vastness of the oceans were open to all and not subject to the dictates of one. When indigenous groups looked at the Cumberland Valley, they too saw vastness and bountiful resources, enough for all if shared together. Little wonder they generally accepted the sojourns of the traders (both Native American and Euro-American) and hunters, but reacted with anger and violence to colonization of the Cumberland Valley.

                For example, beginning as early as the 1690s, several bands of Shawnee (often accompanied by one or more French fur traders) attempted to settle the Cumberland Valley.  In each of four or five attempts, the communities survived for at most two or three years before Native American military expeditions (often Chickasaw and Cherokee) drove them from the valley.^[7] By the 1760s, similar reactions greeted large-scale commercial European hunting expeditions. In 1768 a Native American force from the Wabash River destroyed an expedition of two boatloads of British hunters from the Illinois Country.^[8] More tolerance was shown “long-hunting” expeditions from Virginia and North Carolina between at least 1768 and 1779 because these smaller-scale parties did not radically violate established perceptions of appropriate land use.  When the first major Euro-American colonization effort began in the winter of 1779-1780, those months became a crucial turning point in the history of the land and peoples of the Cumberland Valley. The parties led by John Donelson, James Robertson, Daniel Smith, and others knew that the European community and the thirteen states were at war, but they had no idea that by violating an unwritten but long-recognized Native American agreement on the use of the valley as hunting territory, they were instigating a new generation of warfare on the western outskirts of the American frontier.

                Upon their arrival, the settlers created a temporary government, the Cumberland Compact, with an organizing document signed by two hundred fifty-six of the Middle Tennessee settlers in May 1780. Although primarily concerned with land claims, the compact did provide for a tribunal of twelve judges apportioned among eight designated “stations” that were to serve as focal points for settlement. One of the twelve judges was assigned to “Bledsoe’s” station and this mention is the first suggestion that the site of Isaac Bledsoe’s settlement at Castalian Springs had been selected as the colony’s easternmost settlement.

                Although widely known today as “Bledsoe’s Fort,” the settlement was actually a fortified station or civilian fort in contrast to those military posts built and garrisoned by soldiers on active duty. While eighteenth-century writers are somewhat inconsistent making this distinction, the contrast between fortified civilian residences and special purpose military posts is important.^[9] A station may have served a temporary military function, in other words, but it was built primarily as a residential structure, which could be stockaded or unfortified.^[10]

                Members of the Bledsoe household probably in large part carried out the planning for Bledsoe’s Station, but the six or seven other families settling initially in the vicinity of Bledsoe’s Lick, a mineral spring and salt lick, also were undoubtedly involved. While conceived as early as the Cumberland Compact, the station may not have been occupied as a permanent residence until 1783 or 1784. Why the delay? Native American military expeditions immediately began raiding the fledgling Middle Tennessee settlements in 1780 and became severe and unrelenting through late 1782 or early 1783. Initially, politically independent factions of the Creek and Cherokee sponsored these raids, but responsibility (or at least blame) rapidly shifted to a loose coalition of towns generally referred to as the Chickamauga. The core population of the Chickamauga towns was Cherokee under the leadership of Dragging Canoe. These separatist Cherokees severed relationships with the larger body of Cherokee over the transfer of Middle Cumberland lands.^[11]  However, the Chickamauga rapidly became multi-ethnic communities incorporating factions of the Shawnee, separatists from other Native American tribes, and Europeans. Ironically, as Euro-American colonists battled against England for independence and self determination, their leaders failed to recognize that the Chickamauga communities were serving as remarkably similar focal points for indigenous political and military resistance to treaties signed and enforced by “other parties.”

                The first documentary evidence of permanent residence at Bledsoe’s Station coincides with a brief decline in hostilities in late 1783. By the following year, the fortified agricultural community was in place; more than seven households at least periodically occupied the station from 1784 through 1795 or 1796, when sustained Native American raids on the region largely ceased. Traveler’s accounts after 1795 do not refer to fortifications at Bledsoe’s Station, suggesting that most families dispersed to their individual homesteads leaving only the Bledsoe family in residence.

                To date, only a single document providing descriptive information about the station has surfaced. In 1852, William Hall wrote and published memoirs of his childhood experience at Bledsoe’s Station, an experience that began in 1786. According to Hall’s account of a skirmish with Native American raiders on July 20, 1788:

The fort was an oblong square, and built all around in a regular stockade except at one place, where stood a large double cabin. . . .This cabin stood in the front line of the fort, the whole being built, it will be understood, around an open square.  Excepting the open passage between the two cabins, the whole was compactly enclosed. . . .A lane came down at right angles to the fort thus described, the mouth of it being about thirty yards distant; whilst the Nashville road ran along in front.^[12]

In his account of the skirmish, Hall talked about how the settlers and the Native Americans used different parts of the station to either defend or attack. From his description of the station and the fighting, we learn that some form of stockade surrounded the station; that at least three cabins were included in the line of the stockade with a chimney and shutters outside; and that a passage between two closely situated cabins comprised the entrance into the enclosure. 

                Only Hall’s basic outline of the station was known when the Bledsoe’s Lick Archaeological Project was initiated. Through archaeology, the project initially hoped to identify structure and stockade locations to assist in producing a reconstruction drawing of the site -- as it might have appeared around 1790 and to systematically recover an assemblage (or collection) of artifacts that would confirm that site was indeed Bledsoe’s Station. Once the information was gathered, project leaders would use it to develop Bledsoe’s Fort Historical Park, a county-owned park and proposed historic site, as Sumner County’s official Tennessee Bicentennial project.^[13]

                Historians and archaeologists involved in the project, however, also wanted to use the site research to ask more fundamental questions about the backcountry era of Tennessee. These questions would address the size of the settlement, both in its physical sense and in the number of people in residence. They also wanted to know more about the actual physical appearance of the station and what life was like at this frontier outpost for both the white settlers and their African-American settlers. What did these families eat? What objects did they own and use -- what did they bring with them and what did they make at the station? How were their daily lives changed and influenced by the frontier experience? From one-third to over one-half of the residents of Bledsoe’s Station were enslaved African Americans. The nature of slavery on the southwestern frontier is very poorly understood. What accommodations were made between owners and slaves under these frontier conditions? Were frontier slaves housed separately from their owners? How did a frontier slave’s existence compare to that of the better understood antebellum era? Such detailed, direct understanding of  “frontier culture” at the early stations is crucial information for interpreting the foundations of Middle Tennessee society.

                With these questions in hand, the archaeological project began in 1996. Four years later, and with over 7,000 square feet (representing approximately 20 percent) of the site hand-excavated using shovels and trowels, some questions are near an answer, others remain unanswered, and additional questions have been raised.

How big was the fort?

                Preconceptions about the size of the station generated one of the most vexing and time-consuming interpretive problems encountered during the project. With few exceptions, most scholars presumed that the station was probably a relatively small enclosure with three or four permanent or semi-permanent structures. Archaeological testing in 1996 yielded a puzzlingly broad distribution of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century artifacts across a large portion of the northern end of the field – a distribution much larger than anticipated for a small fortified station.

                In order to more rapidly gain a picture of the subsurface deposits at the site, in 1997 field workers used an approximately one-foot diameter gasoline-powered auger to place nearly two hundred cores across the north end of the field. Soil from these cores was carefully screened and broad categories of artifacts were quickly recorded in the field -- nails, ceramics, bone, glass, daub/chinking, and others. Project leaders hoped that these findings would more rapidly determine the probable boundaries of the site (i.e. the location of the fort wall) by artifact density and distributions; and determine possible structure locations by plotting architectural elements, primarily nails, limestone fragments, and chinking.

                The auger testing worked well. A much clearer notion of the distribution of artifacts became apparent and this distribution suggested an enclosure of more than an acre. The site boundaries became clearer and by plotting the distribution of nails, a startlingly vivid suggestion of the corners of the enclosure was clarified. Assuming that the station’s corners were the most strongly built positions, and thus would have the most nails used in their construction, the distribution of nails showed four substantial concentrations, archaeological evidence matching Hall’s assertion that the enclosure comprised an “oblong square.” The auger testing further allowed field workers to focus excavation work at areas that seemingly had a better chance of answering the project’s primary research questions about the location of the stockade and the station’s various structures.

How many structures were present and what were they like?

                The documentary record suggested that Bledsoe’s Station contained at least three permanent structures, the two closely situated Bledsoe cabins and the Donahoe cabin, and perhaps one or two others that would have served to house families during times of intense hostilities. The archaeological work, however, shows that the station had many different buildings and structures. While prior plowing of the site destroyed much of the original ground-level architecture of the cabins such as floors, corner piers, and chimney bases, deeper features such as sub-floor pits or root cellars, postholes, and the palisade trench remained partially intact across much of the site. While the plowing also unfortunately dispersed the distribution of many artifacts, a careful study of the artifacts found in the plow zone still yielded a tremendous amount of information about the location, size, materials, and use of the station’s various structures. For example, there are relatively low quantities of hand-wrought nails, an absence of brick, and a near total absence of window glass. On the other hand, there is the ubiquitous presence of burned clay and cabin chinking. Bledsoe’s Station was comprised of unadorned log buildings with clay-plastered wooden chimneys that typically measured sixteen by twenty feet.                    

                Excavations also have revealed twelve cellars. The spacing of these cellars strongly suggests that they were located beneath separate cabins, or at least beneath separate pens of multiple room structures. In addition, at least two other as yet unexcavated cellars have been identified and others are anticipated in future research. The cellars fall into one of three basic pit forms: small rectangular or ovoid pits (ca. two and a half by three feet); square pits (ca. five feet); and one large rectangular pit (four by six and a half feet). Based on initial comparisons with similar features at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage and elsewhere, small rectangular pits tend to be situated directly in front of and aligned with the hearth and chimney base. While this pattern is difficult to establish at Bledsoe’s Station, two pieces of evidence suggest that the same was true.  First, the presence of the firebox and hearth remnants tumbled into the small rectangular cellar known as Feature 117 suggests that this pit was located adjacent to the chimney. The shallow remnants of what might have been a chimney base also were located adjacent to a similar small rectangular cellar on the northwestern corner of the enclosure. In contrast, the larger square pits tend to be situated away from the hearth. The large rectangular cellar is the most carefully and formally constructed of those excavated to date, and is currently interpreted as associated with the Bledsoe household.

                If Bledsoe’s Station is an indication, the frontier station, since it was not a military fort that followed a relatively formalized plan, was a more eclectic and haphazard development of structures and fortifications. The station logically began with one or more cabins constructed for the Bledsoe family, and these probably were raised prior to building a substantive defensive wall.  In autumn 1784, Isaac and Catherine Bledsoe, their children, and two or three slave families lived there with his brother and sister-in-law, their ten children, one or two white servants, and at least two more African-American slave families. As the number of settlers grew in 1784 to 1786, the Bledsoe buildings became a central refuge from Native American attacks. More substantive efforts to fortify and expand the station logically date to the winter of 1786-1787, as raids by Creek and Chickamauga were increasing in frequency. While what exactly was built is still hypothetical, it appears likely that the settlers incorporated some existing cabins into a larger fortified refuge by constructing a series of non-continuous wall segments. Additional semi-permanent structures inside and aligned with these segments appear to have been constructed at or after the time of wall construction. By late 1787, a large number of individuals are recorded as housed at Bledsoe’s, including the two Bledsoe families, the Donahoe and Hall families, George Hamilton, Hugh Rogan, more than twenty African-American slaves, and probably several others.

                Fieldwork in the summer of 1998 identified two relatively complete walls of the enclosure.  Rather than being placed in individual holes, palisade posts were closely spaced in a narrow trench. Then the posts were apparently tamped down sufficiently to leave shallow impressions ranging from 0.5-1.5 inches deep in the base of the trench. Unlike the standard reconstructions of fortified stations with carefully selected large posts of relatively equal size, the evidence from Bledsoe’s Station indicates a haphazard and probably remarkably untidy looking wall. In some sections, laborers were clearly using split logs with smaller unmodified posts covering the breaks between split logs. In other sections, single unmodified posts of various sizes are indicated. The suggestion is a clear haste in the construction process, and probably the use of whatever trees were available nearby. While accounts from the Virginia backcountry record the construction of larger blockhouses, there is no evidence of blockhouses at Bledsoe’s although future excavations may yet indicate the possible presence of such structures.^[14] At Bledsoe’s Station, adjacent structures located just inside the wall may have been half-faced, with the roof sloping one way with the high side out, similar to Bryan’s Station in central Kentucky. 

                To summarize, research to date suggests that Bledsoe’s Station consisted of about 1.5 acres, including more than fifteen structures connected or enclosed by segments of hastily constructed fortifications. The population of Bledsoe’s Station, at least periodically, reached one hundred or more persons crammed into a tight and confining place, which seems to be a norm among the stations. Harriett Arnow described similar close quarters at Buchanan’s Station in Davidson County.^[15] Camp Union in the Virginia backcountry was “large enough to Contain the greatest part of the inhabitants of these leavels.”^[16] Also in the Virginia backcountry, Fort Cook on Indian Creek enclosed 1.5 acres and held three hundred settlers in the summer of 1778.^[17]

How did people live at the station?

                Like the size, materials, design, and architecture of the stations, living conditions at these southern backcountry outposts undoubtedly varied from place to place. But just as certain, there were commonalities in the way of life experienced at the southern backcountry station.

                Thus far, evidence from Bledsoe’s Station shows a strong potential for a more full interpretation of the frontier diet. In her earlier study of the Cumberland settlements, Arnow admitted that she did not know the types of food,^[18] even the types of corn, that the settlers raised and ate.^[19] However, the hundreds of seeds, pounds of wood charcoal, and tens of thousands of animal bones, fish scales, and eggshell fragments excavated at Bledsoe’s will permit paleoethnobotanists (specialists in the examination of plant remains from archaeological sites) and zooarchaeologists (specialists in the examination of animal remains from archaeological sites) to identify significant patterns and trends of both lifestyle and the landscape at the time of settlement.  For instance, we have few ideas about the composition of the forests in Middle Tennessee at the time of initial settlement. Since most of the wood charcoal at Bledsoe’s Fort probably results secondarily from large-scale field clearing, the composition of the collection may reflect fairly accurately the composition of local forests at the time of initial colonization. This evidence, in turn, indicates how residents of Middle Tennessee have changed and modified their environment over the succeeding two centuries.

                The same is true for wildlife. Accounts of hunting record the great diversity of fur- and hide-bearing animals in the Tennessee landscape of 1780. For the broader picture of wild animals, written records are more limited. Scholars have studied less than 5 percent of the bone fragments from the Bledsoe site, but even this limited sample has been extremely revealing.^[20] The station residents relied on both domesticated and wild animals. Over one-third of the animals represented are pigs (16.3%), cattle (4.6%), and chickens (14%). Another third are from wild birds (duck, 4.7%; dove, 2.3%, and quail, 4.7%) and fish (drum, 2.3%; catfish 9.3%; redhorse, 2.3%; and gar 2.3%). Most of the rest are from small and medium sized wild mammals (raccoon, 2.3%; squirrel, 11.6%; rabbit, 2.3%; and opossum, 9.3%), with large wild mammals (deer, bear, and possibly bison) represented as less than five percent of the total. Instead of bear fat and wooden bowls, the emergent picture is more clearly “possum on fine china.”Another intriguing pattern emerging from early frontier settlements is the indication that horses were also used as a food source by pioneers under “siege” conditions. An axe cut on a horse bone from Bledsoe’s Station suggests the butchering and use of the meat. Similar butchering evidence appears at British Fort Loudoun and two, unmodified horse bones were recovered from midden deposits at Fort Arbuckle in West Virginia.^[21] The emerging pattern for these early forts and fortified stations is one in which little meat went to waste – despite culturally proscribed views of horses as “not to eat.” If this pattern holds true in future research at frontier settlements, we might also add “filly on fine china” to the menu.

                While settlers supplemented their diet of domesticated animals with wild game, birds, and fish, when one considers the amount of meat each animal produces it becomes clearer that the preferred diet was not one dependent on hunting. Almost 90 percent of potentially usable meat in the sample analyzed to date came from pigs, cattle, and chickens. While deer, small wild mammals, wild birds, and fish were consumed, clearly these pioneer settlers brought with them and preferred a diet based on domesticated plants and animals.

                They also enjoyed a higher standard of living than the stereotypical image of frontier poverty and austerity. Imported British ceramics, including plain and handpainted creamwares, shell-edged and handpainted pearlwares, and porcelain, dominate the pieces of serving dishes excavated at Bledsoe’s Station. There also is a relatively common occurrence of coarse red-bodied earthenwares or redwares. The famous stoneware industry of Tennessee had yet to emerge, and various types of utilitarian wares were manufactured as coarse earthenwares often with only interior glazes. These vessels were commonly used as storage containers and settling pans, and their occurrence is at least suggestive that one or more potters were already producing these types of wares in Middle Tennessee. The ceramic evidence contrasts sharply with excavations from Arbuckle’s Fort (built in 1774 and dismantled in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries) on the Virginia frontier, where relatively few fragments of ceramics were recovered.^[22] Studying the ceramic evidence from five cellars at Bledsoe’s also indicates a terminal use and fill date of approximately 1800 -- matching nicely with the postulated abandonment of most structures at the site between 1795 and 1810. 

                The find of a single creamware plate or saucer sherd exhibiting a maker’s mark at Bledsoe’s further hints at the source of domestic ceramics for early Tennessee settlers. While fragmentary and faintly impressed, the mark is clearly one used by David Dunderdale and Company, Castleford Pottery, Yorkshire, a manufacturer of creamwares between 1790 and 1820.^[23] A similarly marked plate was found during excavations at Fort Southwest Point in Kingston, Tennessee.^[24] The estate inventory of Isaac Bledsoe includes several fine Queensware plates and bowls, as well as an “iron spice mortar.”^[25] While perhaps coincidental, excavators recovered fragments of just such an object from the large cellar beneath the “Bledsoe cabin.”The ceramic evidence also has helped to date the different structures of the station. For example, the cluster of cabins on the northwest corner of the enclosure yielded somewhat later ceramics than the majority of other cellars on the site. The Belote family may have continued to use these cabins for several years after purchase of the property from the Bledsoes in 1807 – perhaps also explaining the somewhat confusing cluster of pit cellars in this area.

                In addition, the recovered artifacts at Bledsoe’s Station inform our understanding of the daily activities of the community of women who most certainly were at the station but were rarely mentioned in written documents of the time. Fragments of gaudy brightly hand-painted multicolor creamware and pearlware teacups were found in most of the pit cellars and midden deposits. The ritual of afternoon tea shared by women may well have provided a significant and important means of creating a sense of community often fragmented by cramped quarters, violent attacks, and lengthy absences of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons. More mundane artifacts speak to the activities of both free and enslaved women. Straight pins, thimbles, scissor fragments and buttons are associated with each of the excavated cabin sites at Bledsoe’s. Many of the clothing items suggest that “plain buckskins” were not the common clothing of the day. Glass jewels, beads, silver-plated buckles, cuff links, and fancy buttons all point to the efforts of men and women to maintain “civilized” attire. One cuff link set is of particular interest for its connections to other Tennessee frontier sites. The set bears a running fox design with the word “TALLIO” above and is identical to links found at both Fort Southwest Point and Tellico Blockhouse. While the manufacturer and distributor of these artifacts have not been identified, their presence at these three sites suggests both a common source and potentially a good time marker for Tennessee sites of the 1790s.

Artifacts related to firearms and horses also document male-dominated activities. Numerous lead rifle and pistol balls, gunflints, and gun parts have been recovered, including the hammer from a large smoothbore musket and a ramrod ferrule. Most of the gunflints are the honey-colored French variety, but a few are dark gray English flints, and at least one appears to have been made from local flints. While most of these flints are completely worn out and serve as a reminder of the probable ammunition shortages experienced by frontier settlers, they also underline the broad and critical connections of these “frontier communities” to larger east coast and international markets.

Highly valued as critically important sources for transportation, horses were numerous at Bledsoe’s and the excavations have yielded many horse-related items. Horseshoes, shoe nails, currycombs, stirrup fragments, silver-plated decorative harness bosses, and other items reflect the central importance of horses. In addition, ox shoes and fragments of an apparently unmodified ox horn present ample evidence of the significance of another animal valued more for its labor than its meat.

While ceramics, buttons, and gunflints point to clear economic ties with the greater marketplace, many items recovered point to the presence of local artisans as well. In addition to the coarse-paste redwares mentioned previously, numerous iron objects were also probably manufactured locally. To date, no clear evidence of a black smithing operation has been found at Bledsoe’s Station. However, Anthony Bledsoe is recorded as having an anvil at the nearby Greenfield Station, and many of these objects may have been manufactured there, perhaps by skilled slaves.

Some of these artifacts reveal the resourcefulness and creativity of these skilled crafts persons. The recovery of an entire deer antler rack during the final week of excavation in 1998 generated a great deal of excitement and speculation. Closer examination revealed a more pragmatic reason for the presence of this interesting artifact. The ends of several antler tines had been cut off in handle-sized portions. In a nearby cellar, two homemade punches or awls and a large table knife with antler tine handles revealed the true nature of this “trophy.” Perhaps more so than any others found to date, these particular artifacts remind us that our perceptions of the past are viewed through our own modern cultural lenses – and that archaeological research sometimes presents tangible physical evidence that demands new interpretations.

                The station inhabitants left only a few reminders of recreational activities. Tobacco pipes are common throughout the site, including examples of long-stemmed white clay pipes, stub-stemmed fluted pipes, and a striking example of an anthropomorphic face pipe. Also represented are Jew’s harps (small musical instruments with a brass or iron frame that has a small vibrating tongue) and two clay marbles. While it is tempting to associate these items with children, adults also used both of these items. The paucity of toys and recreational items might seem surprising, but reflects similar patterns seen at frontier military sites in Tennessee.

Linking the Past, Present and Future of Bledsoe’s Station

                For the scholar and the interested public alike, discovering and touching objects from the past can generate a very powerful sense of “presence” and connection with the past. At the same time, the nature of the archaeological record (the artifacts, features, and other material remains) forces us to look beyond the individual to the level of the family and community. Only rarely does the earth yield an artifact that can confidently be associated with an identified individual. For example, in many years of intensive excavation at the Hermitage, less than a dozen artifacts have been identified that could provide a direct link with Andrew Jackson. The same can be said for most archaeological excavations – the artifacts discovered are the shared record of the activities of a family or community.

                From a documentary perspective, individuals such as Isaac and Anthony Bledsoe and Hugh Rogan are the most visible members of this community. From an archaeological perspective, however, they are visible only as one component of a community incorporating many other individuals. From this perspective -- and one unique perhaps to archaeology -- men, women, and children, white and black, become “equal contributors” to our understanding of the past.

                In 1787, the Isaac Bledsoe “community” consisted of Isaac, his pregnant wife Katy, five children (Peggy, Sally, Polly, Anthony, Isaac), along with at least six slaves (Bob, Jane, Caesar, Will, Moses, and Tomm) with three others “owed” by William Hall and John Montgomery. Of these, only Bob appears to have been an adult. By 1793, the slave community of Isaac Bledsoe had increased to eleven (Bob, Will, Jack and Tomas listed as men; Dann, Caezar and Moses listed as boys; Chloe, Sally and Polly listed as women; and Jane listed as a girl). During 1788, the Anthony Bledsoe “community” (then in residence at Isaac’s station) consisted of Anthony, pregnant wife Mary, nine children, two white indentured servants, and 22 slaves (four adult males; six adult females; nine boys; and three girls). Clearly, the enslaved families comprised a majority presence at the station throughout much of the period of interest.^[26]

                The artifacts thus far recovered from Bledsoe’s Station do not allow an identification of separate housing or activity areas for free and enslaved individuals. Of particular interest is the apparent absence of objects related to African-American spirituality and folk beliefs. While the next cellar excavated may reveal these objects in abundance, it may also be the material culture has been equilibrated to some extent for all residents at a frontier station. Free and enslaved people were forced into a physical proximity under circumstances that did not permit owners to highlight their superior position in the social hierarchy through stark contrasts in housing or activities. The documentary record clearly demonstrates enslaved and free conducting similar activities -- working in the fields, hunting, combating Native Americans, and carrying messages between stations. How social hierarchy between free and enslaved was expressed and maintained remains one of the more intriguing questions for further research at Bledsoe’s Station. Most of Isaac Bledsoe’s slaves were young children at the time of initial settlement. Was this a conscious means of managing enslaved populations on the frontier? Did this create a circumstance of greater acculturation on the part of frontier slaves?

                Recent research by Brian Thomas has suggested a cooperative model of community among slaves at the Hermitage plantation.^[27] In addition, the documents indicate marriage between slaves at different plantations. At Bledsoe’s Station and other large forted stations, enslaved African Americans belonging to many different slave-owning families were frequently brought together in the close and confined quarters. Estate inventories, court records, and other documents show a fluid nature for frontier slave ownership. The frequent deaths of owners led to the movement of individual slaves from one farm to another over the course of their lives. Did these factors influence, encourage, or permit the development of a strong sense of community among slaves because of frequent interaction between farms and plantations? Or did the frequency of these moves fragment and destabilize any sense of community?

                While the Bledsoe’s Lick Archaeological Project remains a work in progress and has perhaps raised more questions than it has answered, the potential for new and exciting insights into the Middle Tennessee frontier seems clear. The disciplines of archaeology and history provide distinct and different ways of examining and interpreting the past. Some questions we would like to answer about the past will probably remain beyond our reach -- ambiguities and silence are part and parcel of both the documentary and archaeological records. In the final reckoning, however, perhaps the answers are not as important as the fact that different avenues of investigation push us to ask new and different questions. Middle Tennessee emerged in the households and communities of its people. Men, women, and children from Africa, Europe, and North America and their descendants all played substantial and important roles in laying the foundations for what would become the state of Tennessee. The broad appeal of frontier archaeology provides an opportunity to engage the modern public of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. If we can engage current and future generations in a consideration of the relationship of the past, present, and future, we accomplish our most important goals in historical research of any kind. Whether the information comes from an official document, a family story passed down for generations, or an excavated artifact, the meaningful end result of that research is not when it reaches the printed page, but when someone reads it and asks a new question about the state’s heritage.

Acknowledgments. The Bledsoe’s Lick Archaeological Project is funded in part by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University, the Bledsoe’s Lick Historical Association, and the Middle Cumberland Archaeological Society. I take this opportunity to thank the many hundreds of individuals who have donated their time and energy to this project over the past several years. I also recognize the contributions of three very special people, without whom this project would not have happened:  the vision and persistence of the late Tom Mabrey who tirelessly pursued and supported a partnership with MTSU; the able and dedicated assistance of Dan Allen; and the support of my wife Carol.