| Memphis' first inhabitants were Native American
Indians who lived along the Mississippi River for 10,000 years along the
wooded river bluffs. A thousand years before foreign explorers entered
the region, Chickasaw Indians controlled the bluffs. These Indians came
to be known as Mound builders, for the massive mounds they built that now
overlook the Mississippi River by DeSoto Park.
The first European to view the river from Memphis was the Spaniard explorer
Hernando DeSoto, who crossed the Mississippi near Memphis in 1541. A hundred
years later French explorers Fathers Marquette and Joliet sailed down the
river through Memphis. Sieur de LaSalle would later follow and build Fort
Prudhomme around 1682. In 1739 the French built a garrison, Fort Assumption.
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