the Yuchi & Iroquoian Cherokee, divided along the Tennessee River. In the north-central region of the state were the Algonquian Cisca. They later moved northeast and merged with the Shawnee, but were briefly replaced with a second native nation known as the Maumee, or Mascouten which were driven south during the Beaver Wars (1640-1680) from southern Michigan. They later merged with the Miami of Indiana & were, once again, replaced by the Shawnee. The Shawnee controlled most of the Ohio River Region until the Shawnee Wars (1811-1813). In 1673, British fur trader Abraham Wood sent an expedition led by James Needham and Gabriel Arthur from Fort Henry in the Colony of Virginia into Overhill Cherokee territory in modern-day northeastern Tennessee. Needham was killed during the expedition and Arthur was taken prisoner for more than a year. That same year, a French expedition led by missionary Jacques Marquette and trader Louis Jolliet explored the Mississippi River and became the first Europeans to map the Mississippi Valley. French explorers and traders, led by Robert de La Salle, entered the region in 1682 at Fort Prudhomme. France briefly (1739–1740) established a presence at Fort Assumption during the Chickasaw Wars. In 1714, a group of French traders under Charles Charleville's command established a settlement at the present location of downtown Nashville near the Cumberland River, which became known as French Lick. These settlers quickly established an extensive fur trading network with the local Native Americans, but by the 1740s the settlement had largely been abandoned. In 1739, the French constructed Fort Assumption under Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville on the Mississippi River at the present-day location of Memphis, which they used as a base against the Chickasaw during the 1739 Campaign of the Chickasaw Wars. It was abandoned the next year after the Chickasaw took hostage French troops stationed at the fort. The Cherokee eventually moved south from the area now called Virginia. As European colonists spread into the area, the native populations were forcibly displaced to the south and west, including the Muscogee, Yuchi, Chickasaw and Choctaw peoples. Then, from 1838 to 1839, the US government forced the Cherokee to leave the eastern United States. Nearly 17,000 Cherokee were forced to march from eastern Tennessee to the Indian Territory west of the Arkansas Territory. This came to be known as the Trail of Tears, as an estimated 4,000 Cherokee died along the way.