Substantial Native American settlements existed at the Nolichucky's Big Limestone Creek confluence as early as the Woodland period (1000 B.C. - 1000 A.D.) and continued sporadically for several centuries.
Crockett related an event from his very early childhood in which his brothers almost drowned in the Nolichucky trying to paddle over "a fall in the river, which went slap-right straight down."[REF]