 Prior to Scottsboro's founding, the area surrounding the present-day city was inhabited by the Cherokee Indians.While the Tennessee Valley did not have large Native American settlements at the time of the first white settlers, there was a Cherokee town named "Crow Town" near where Scottsboro developed along the Tennessee River.As settlers began pouring into the eastern Tennessee region, chiefly from the Upper South, they found the Tennessee River to be an excellent source of food, water, and a way of shipping goods to the big cities.