Do you recognize any names on this list of “intruders?”

Before the Chickasaw Nation ceded the land that would become Lawrence County to the United States government in 1816, the area was infested with squatters; whites who had moved to the area and built homes, farms, and businesses on the land without the tribe’s permission.

This list of ‘Intruders on Shoal Creek’ from May 23-24, 1809, contains a list of 31 families who were squatting on the land near Shoal Creek while it was still under native control.

Included in the list is Daniel Beeler, a man who would later become a prominent citizen in Lawrence County, and for whom the Beeler Fork of Shoal Creek is named.

Many of these families were forced to leave their illegally-claimed land by United States soldiers, but the tide of migration into Indian country became so impossible to control that, by 1816, the Chickasaw decided that it was best to cut their losses and take the meager sum offered for the land by the U.S. government.