Chattanoogans long have heard the stories of Indian villages at Dallas and Harrison bays that now are covered by Chickamauga Lake.
But next week, local residents can learn what archaeologists and scientists unearthed in the village sites in the 1930s as the Tennessee Valley Authority prepared to dam the Tennessee River.
In the first of three monthly lectures presented by Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park, Lynne P. Sullivan will tell what she found when she resurrected a long-forgotten draft report by the Works Progress Administration made during TVA excavations.
"The report never got published because World War II started," said Sullivan, a Cleveland native who is an anthropology professor at the University of Tennessee and is curator of the school's McClung Museum.
"There were spectacular artifacts, some that date back to the same time period as the Etowah site in Moundville [about 1100 AD]," she said.
Using the WPA report as a basis, Sullivan has written a two-volume set titled "The Prehistory of the Chickamauga Basin in Tennessee."
She will focus her talk, titled "Mounds, Towns and the WPA: The Late Prehistory of Harrison & Dallas Bays," on the work done at two sites now known as Harrison Bay and Chester Frost state parks.
"It is remarkable how much archaeology there is in the Chattanooga area, and more people need to know about it," she said. "I will bring pictures."
Shelley Andrews, executive director of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park, said Native American history is the theme of this year's free three-part Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park lecture series, which begins Sept. 27.
"Every speaker will be giving their talk a very Native American twist this year, which hasn't happened before, but it's appropriate," Andrews said.
The series lectures are all set on a Monday at 7 p.m. at the Tennessee Aquarium.