Paducah, Kentucky - People-Named Places on Waymarking.com

Paducah, originally called Pekin, began around 1815 as a mixed community of Native Americans and white settlers who were attracted by its location at the confluence of many waterways.

According to legend, Chief Paduke, most likely a Chickasaw, welcomed the people traveling down the Ohio and Tennessee on flatboats. His wigwam, located on a low bluff at the mouth of Island Creek, served as the counsel lodge for his village. The settlers, appreciative of his hospitality, and respectful of his ways, settled across the creek.

The two communities lived in harmony trading goods and services enjoying the novelty of each other's culture. The settlers had brought horses and mules which they used to pull the flatboats upstream to farms, logging camps, trading posts and other settlements along the waterways, establishing a primitive, but thriving economy.

This cultural interaction continued until William Clark, famed leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, arrived in 1827 with a title deed to the land upon which Pekin sat. Clark was the superintendent of Native American affairs for the Mississippi-Missouri River region. He asked the Chief and the settlers to move along, which they did, offering little resistance probably because the deed was issued by the United States Supreme Court. Though the deed cost only $5.00 to process, it carried with it the full authority of the U. S. Government backed by the United States Army.

Clark surveyed his new property and laid out the grid for a new town which remains evident to this day. The Chief and his villagers moved to Mississippi allowing Clark to continue with the building of the new city which he named Paducah in honor of the Chief. Upon completion of the platt, Clark sent envoys to Mississippi to invite Chief Paduke back to a ribbon-cutting ceremony, but he died of malaria in the boat while making the return trip. The settlers had been allowed to purchase tracts within the new grid but most of them moved on to less developed areas." - Wikipedia

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