Lower Shawneetown facts for kids
Bronze historical marker near site
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 Location in Kentucky
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| Location | South Portsmouth, Kentucky, Greenup County, Kentucky,  USA |
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| Region | Greenup County, Kentucky |
| Coordinates | 38°43′17.76″N 83°1′22.98″W / 38.7216000°N 83.0230500°W |
| History | |
| Founded | Ca. 1733 |
| Abandoned | 1758 |
| Periods | Madisonville horizon, protohistoric |
| Cultures | Fort Ancient culture, Shawnee people |
| Architecture | |
| Architectural details | Number of monuments: |
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Lower Shawneetown
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| NRHP reference No. | 83002784 |
| Added to NRHP | April 28, 1983 |
Lower Shawneetown (15Gp15), also known as the Bentley Site, Shannoah and Sonnontio, is a Late Fort Ancient culture Madisonville horizon (post 1400 CE) archaeological site overlain by an 18th-century Shawnee village; it is located within the Lower Shawneetown Archeological District, near South Portsmouth in Greenup County, Kentucky and Lewis County, Kentucky. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 28, 1983. It is located near four groups of Hopewell tradition mounds, built between 100 BCE and 500 CE, known as the Portsmouth Earthworks.
The 18th-century community was "less a village and more of a district extending along the wide Scioto River and narrower Ohio River floodplains and terraces. It was a sprawling series of wickiups and longhouses... French and British-allied traders regarded Lower Shawneetown as one of two capitals of the Shawnee tribe." Between about 1734 and 1758 Lower Shawneetown became a center for commerce and diplomacy, "a sort of republic populated by a diverse array of migratory peoples, from the Iroquois to the Delawares, and supplied by British traders, Lower Shawneetown had become a formidable threat to French ambitions...[and] posed a significant challenge to France and Great Britain alike." Lower Shawneetown was downstream from the much smaller Upper Shawneetown, established about 1751 at the confluence of the Ohio River and the Kanawha River, near present-day Point Pleasant, WV and known to the Shawnees as "Chinoudaista" or "Chinodahichetha."
Lower Shawneetown was destroyed by floods in November, 1758, and the population relocated to another site further up the Scioto River.
Images for kids
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1754 map of British plantations in North America, showing "Shannoah or Lower Shanaws" on the Ohio.
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1755 map by John Mitchell showing "Shawnoah, or Lowr Shawnoes, an English Facty (factory or trading post) lower left of map's center.
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1764 map showing the site of the relocated "Lower Shawneese Town" on the upper Scioto (spelled Sioto here), seen just below the center of the page, where Chillicothe, Ohio was later built.
