|
The history of Louisville, Kentucky spans hundreds of years, with thousands of years of human habitation. The area's geography and location on the Ohio River attracted people from the earliest times. The city is located at the Falls of the Ohio River. The rapids created a barrier to river travel, and settlements grew up at this pausing point. Louisville has been the site of many important innovations through history. Notable residents have included inventor Thomas Edison, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, boxing legend Muhammad Ali, newscaster Diane Sawyer, actors Victor Mature and Tom Cruise, actresses Sean Young and Jennifer Lawrence, the Speed family (including U.S. Attorney General James Speed and Abraham Lincoln's close friend Joshua Fry Speed), the , industrialist/politician James Guthrie, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and writers Hunter S. Thompson and Sue Grafton. Notable events occurring in the city include the largest installation to date (in 1883) and first large space lighted by Edison's light bulb and the first library in the South open to African Americans.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Louisville Free Public Library – African-American Archives )〕 Medical advances included the first human hand transplant in the United States and the first self-contained artificial heart transplant. ==Pre-Anglo-American settlement history (pre-1778)== There was a continuous human presence in the area that became Louisville from at least 1,000 BCE until roughly 1650 CE, and the Beaver Wars which depopulated much of the region. Archeologists have identified several late and one early Archaic sites in Jefferson County's wetlands. One of the most extensive finds was at McNeeley Lake Cave; many others were found around the Louisville International Airport area. People of the Adena culture and the Hopewell tradition that followed it lived in the area, with hunting villages along Mill Creek and a large village near what became Zorn Avenue, on bluffs overlooking the Ohio River. Archeologists have found 30 Jefferson County sites associated with the Fort Ancient and Mississippian cultures, which were active from 1,000 AD until about 1650. The Louisville area was on the eastern border of the Mississippian culture, in which regional chiefdoms built villages and cities with extensive earthwork mounds. When European and English explorers and settlers began entering Kentucky in the mid-18th century, there were no permanent Native American settlements in the region. The country was used as hunting grounds by Shawnees from the north and Cherokees from the south.〔Lewis, p. 243.〕 The account of the first European to visit the area, the French explorer, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle in 1669, is disputed and not supported by facts. La Salle travelled along the St. Lawrence River to Lake Ontario, then to Lake Erie. The two priests travelling with his party departed the group at that point and the written documention of the expedition apparently ceased. Reports of what occurred differ, including abandonment of the journey due to illness, or travelling onward but not to the Ohio River. La Salle did not claim to discover the Ohio River on that voyage nor travel to the falls (of the Ohio).〔Barnhart & Carmony 1954: Indiana from frontier to industrial commonwealth〕 The discovery of the Louisville area in 1669 is perhaps better assigned to myth or legend than an actuality. Subsequently he explored areas of the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys from the Gulf of Mexico up to modern-day Canada, claiming much of this land for France. In 1751, the English colonist Christopher Gist explored areas along the Ohio River. Following its defeat in the French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years' War in Europe), France relinquished control of the area of Kentucky to Britain. In 1769, colonist Daniel Boone created a trail from North Carolina to Tennessee. He spent the next two years exploring Kentucky. In 1773, Captain Thomas Bullitt led the first exploring party into Jefferson County, surveying land on behalf of Virginians who had been awarded land grants for service in the French and Indian War. In 1774, James Harrod began constructing Fort Harrod in Kentucky. However, battles with the native American tribes established in the area forced these new settlers to retreat. They returned the following year, as Daniel Boone built the Wilderness Road and established Fort Boonesborough at the site near Boonesborough, Kentucky. The Native Americans allocated a tract of land between the Ohio River and the Cumberland River for the Transylvania Land Company. In 1776, the colony of Virginia declared the Transylvania Land Company illegal and created the county of Kentucky in Virginia from the land involved. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Louisville, Kentucky」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|