A state located in the upper part of the U.S. South. Tennessee stretches from the Appalachian Mountains in the east to the Mississippi River in the west, and its diverse geography includes mountain ranges as well as vast flat areas of fertile agricultural land surrounding the Tennessee River, which flows through the state from east to west. The area that is now Tennessee has been populated for many centuries by Native American peoples, namely the Cherokee and the Chickasaw. With the arrival of European settlers in the 1770s, the state’s demographics gradually changed, and today the population constitutes an overwhelming majority of white people. Because of limited natural resources, the economy of Tennessee, which developed around agriculture and forestry, later to be replaced with industry, has been lagging behind most other states in the union.
