Data: 08/24/2015 12:14:57, add by DudleyGruntApproved.
British Lieutenant Henry Timberlake was sent to make an official visit to the Cherokee tribe as a token of friendship and, in the process, laid out the first working map of the region. Using native guides as interpreters, Timberlake first wrote the word "Tennessee" as a name for one of the regions on the map. Tanasi was the name of two Cherokee villages on the the Little Tennessee River.
First visited by the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1540, the Tennessee area would later be claimed by both France and England as a result of the 1670s and 1680s explorations of Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, Sieur de la Salle, and James Needham and Gabriel Arthur. Great Britain obtained the area after the French and Indian Wars in 1763. During 1784–1787, the settlers formed the “state” of Franklin, which was disbanded when the region was allowed to send representatives to the North Carolina legislature. In 1790 Congress organized the territory south of the Ohio River, and Tennessee joined the Union in 1796. Although Tennessee joined the Confederacy during the Civil War, there was much pro-Union sentiment in the state, which was the scene of extensive military action.