The Cumberland Valley was once a shared Native American hunting ground, open to all and occupied by none, where several Native American nations hunted after abandoning their once-thriving villages more than 300 years earlier. Native Americans generally tolerated individual hunters and small groups who came only to hunt, though conflicts did occur, but attempts at settlement were met with violence. In the 1690s, bands of Shawnee tried several times to colonize the area, and each time other Native American military expeditions expelled them. The first non-native settlers entered the Cumberland Valley in 1779 knowing that conflict with Native Americans was inevitable. As soon as they arrived, Native American military expeditions began raiding their settlements, first through independent groups of Creek and Cherokee and later under a loose coalition known as the Chickamauga. As settlers such as Isaac and Anthony Bledsoe refused to leave, the attacks increased in number, size, and ferocity. In September 1794, a force of 550 regular soldiers and volunteers destroyed two Native American towns, and attacks on settlers decreased and finally ended about 1796. The names of pioneer settlers, free and enslaved, who died in these conflicts between 1780 and 1796 are recorded, but there is no record of the Native Americans who died trying to preserve a way of life that had flourished for centuries.