In 1739, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville led an army of 1,200 Frenchmen into the area of what is modern day Shelby County, Tennessee to eradicate the native Chickasaw Indians in order to secure and prepare the land for settlement by the French.

Although the French presence on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff only lasted for a few months, the area was claimed by France for eighty years.

Cavelier de La Salle's canoe expedition of the Mississippi River Delta constructed Fort Prudhomme in 1682.

[4] Bienville's activity there was the first recorded European presence on the land that Memphis occupies today.

[7] Bienville's failure was also a contributing factor that led to French king Louis XV to sign the Treaty of Fontainebleau,[1] in which France forfeited their territory in Louisiana to Spain, as Louis XV was frustrated with the country's inability to rid the area of its native inhabitance.