Editing Kentucky (section)

===Native American settlement===
The first archaeological evidence of human occupation of Kentucky is approximately 9500 BCE, and it was Clovis culture, primitive hunter-gatherers with stone tools. Around 1800 BCE, a gradual transition began from a hunter-gatherer economy to agriculturalism. Around 900 CE, a [[Mississippian culture]] took root in western and central Kentucky and a [[Fort Ancient]] culture appeared in eastern Kentucky. While the two had many similarities, the distinctive ceremonial earthwork mounds constructed in the former's centers were not part of the culture of the latter. Fort Ancient settlements depended largely on corn, beans, and squash, and practiced a system of agriculture that prevented ecological degradation by rotating crops, [[controlled burn|burning]] sections of forest to create ideal habitat for wild game, relocating villages every 10–30 years, and continually shifting the location of fields to maintain plots of land in various stages of [[ecological succession]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Patrick |first1=Andrew P. |title=Birth of the Bluegrass: Ecological Transformations in Central Kentucky to 1810 |journal=The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society |date=2017 |volume=115 |issue=2 |pages=155–182|doi=10.1353/khs.2017.0049 |s2cid=133557743 }}</ref>

In about the 10th century, the Kentucky native people's variety of corn became highly productive, supplanting the [[Eastern Agricultural Complex]] and replacing it with maize-based agriculture in the [[Mississippian culture|Mississippian era]]. As of the 16th century, what became Kentucky was home to tribes from diverse linguistic groups. The [[Kispoko]], an [[Algonquian languages|Algonquian-speaking]] tribe, controlled much of the interior of the state.<ref>Louis, Franquelin, Jean Baptiste. "Franquelin's map of Louisiana.". LOC.gov. Retrieved August 17, 2017.</ref>

French explorers in the 17th century documented numerous tribes living in Kentucky until the [[Beaver Wars]] in the 1670s; however, by the time that European colonial explorers and settlers began entering Kentucky in greater numbers in the mid-18th century, there were no major Native American settlements in the region.

The [[Chickasaw]] had territory up to the confluence of Mississippi and Ohio rivers. During a period known as the [[Beaver Wars]] (1640–1680), another Algonquian tribe called the [[Maumee people|Maumee]], or [[Mascouten]] was chased out of southern Michigan.<ref>"Early Indian Migration in Ohio." GenealogyTrails.com. Retrieved August 17, 2017.</ref> The vast majority of them moved to Kentucky, pushing the Kispoko east and war broke out with the [[Tutelo]] of North Carolina and Virginia that pushed them further north and east. The Maumee were closely related to the [[Miami people|Miami]] from Indiana. Later, the Kispoko merged with the [[Shawnee]], who migrated from the east and the Ohio River valley.

A persistent myth, perpetuated in many popular and scholarly works, alleges that Native Americans never lived permanently in Kentucky, but rather used it only as a "hunting ground".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Henderson |first1=A. Gwynn |title=Dispelling the Myth: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Indian Life in Kentucky |journal=The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society |date=2018 |volume=90 |issue=1 |pages=1–25}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Native Americans of Clay County & Kentucky |url=https://www.claycountykentucky.org/history/indians/ |website=claycountykentucky.org}}</ref> According to early Kentucky historians, early European settlers encountered extensive evidence of permanent, advanced settlements, including numerous burial mounds, [[copper]] and stone [[Artifact (archaeology)|artifacts]], and what early historians describe as "fortifications:" large sites consisting of extensive walls enclosing the flat tops of bluffs, cliffs or mountains, constructed from stone that was [[quarry|quarried]] in the surrounding valleys and brought up to the summit.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cotterill |first1=Robert S. |title=History of Pioneer Kentucky |date=1917 |publisher=Johnson & Hardin |location=Cincinnati |pages=36–37}}</ref> These sites and artifacts were sometimes explained as being the remnants of a "lost" white race,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cotterill |first1=Robert S. |title=History of Pioneer Kentucky |date=1917 |publisher=Johnson & Hardin |location=Cincinnati |page=30}}</ref> or some variously identified ethnic group predating and distinct from the Native Americans.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ranck |first1=George W. |title=History of Lexington Kentucky |date=1872 |publisher=Robert Clarke & Co |location=Cincinnati |page=12}}</ref> More recent scholarship identifies the mound builders as the Mississippian and Fort Ancient peoples, which were distinct from the indigenous cultures encountered by settlers, although sharing the same origin in Paleoindian groups that inhabited the area for at least 12,000 years.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Henderson |first1=A. Gwynn |title=Dispelling the Myth: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Indian Life in Kentucky |journal=The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society |date=2018 |volume=90 |issue=1 |pages=6–7}}</ref>

Beginning in the seventeenth century, before indigenous groups in Kentucky made direct contact with Europeans, articles of European origin such as glass [[bead]]s entered the region via [[trade route]]s, and the appearance of [[mass grave]]s suggests that European diseases were also introduced.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Henderson |first1=A. Gwynn |title=Dispelling the Myth: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Indian Life in Kentucky |journal=The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society |date=2018 |volume=90 |issue=1 |page=17}}</ref> By the eighteenth century, epidemics of disease had destabilized and changed the indigenous groups that inhabited Kentucky, causing some to reassemble into multi-tribal towns, and others to [[Human migration|disperse]] further from the sphere of European influence.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Henderson |first1=A. Gwynn |title=Dispelling the Myth: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Indian Life in Kentucky |journal=The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society |date=2018 |volume=90 |issue=1 |pages=18–22}}</ref> Around the end of the French and Indian War, as European settlers began to claim parts of the Bluegrass State, Native Americans abandoned their larger, more permanent villages south of the Ohio River and continued to maintain only small or transient settlements. This upheaval likely led the settlers to believe that Kentucky was a hunting ground contested by multiple tribes but not permanently inhabited, when in reality it had only recently been abandoned due to social and political turmoil.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Henderson |first1=A. Gwynn |title=Dispelling the Myth: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Indian Life in Kentucky |journal=The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society |date=2018 |volume=90 |issue=1 |pages=24–25}}</ref>