  Native American Trail
The Coosa still ran wild and free in the early spring of 1814. But on March 27, the Tallapoosa ran red. Commanding a force of some 2,600 European-American soldiers and 600 "friendly" Indians, Major General Andrew Jackson led his Tennessee Militia in an attack against 1,000 Creek Indians led by Chief Menawa at the village of Tohopeka located in the center of the "horseshoe bend" of the Tallapoosa River. General John Coffee's troops prevented their retreat across the river. Only 100 Creek warriors survived. The Battle of Horseshoe Bend ended the First Creek Indian War. In August of 1814, the Creeks surrendered nearly half of the present state of Alabama to the United States in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. "Alabama Fever" swiftly swept the young nation, as the heartland of what was to become the 22nd state in 1819 opened to European "white" settlement. For many thousands of years prior to the coming of the white man, the place that is today called Alabama had been the home for many different culture groups of Native Americans. Seminomadic hunters of the Paleo-Indian culture utilized rock shelters along the Tennessee River, perhaps as early as 10,000 B.C. The Archaic Indians that followed left shell mounds in many locations, and Gulf Formational culture artifacts have been found in both the Tennessee and Tombigbee River valleys. Russell Cave in northeast Alabama contains one of the longest and most complete archaeological records in the eastern U.S. More than 200 years before Spanish explorers brought the first wave of highly virulent European diseases to the Americas, the Mississippian culture had reached its zenith, around A.D. 1300. The most significant aspect of the Mississippian culture was mound building. Examples of these mounds are still found throughout Alabama today. The great temple complex at Moundville, on the banks of the Black Warrior River, was one of the most magnificent Mississippian ceremonial centers. It sprawled over 320 acres and included 26 mounds, the largest of which rose nearly 60 feet. The city of 3,000 people was surrounded by a mile-long wall nearly 12 feet high which was studded with towers along its length. The society was based on corn and supported an extensive trade network throughout eastern North America. Artwork of exceptional beauty was created in stone, pottery, bone and copper. The first documented White-Indian contact in Alabama occurred in 1540 with Hernando de Soto's entrada. The unbridled brutality which had characterized de Soto's plundering of the Incas in Peru was unleashed on the native peoples in North America. Recent research suggests (de Soto's exact route through the Southeast is unknown) that de Soto crossed the southeastern tip of Alabama, before fording the Chattahoochee River into Georgia. The de Soto forces reached the Indian village of Coosa (perhaps near present-day Fort Payne) on July 16, 1540. Coosa was one of the most important chiefdoms in the Southeast, dominating a territory from present eastern Tennessee to central Alabama. On October 18, de Soto arrived at Chief Tascaluza's town of Mabila (possibly in Wilcox County). After enticing the Spanish advance party into the stockaded town, waiting Indians poured from the houses and attacked de Soto and his troops. Following a furious initial assault, the Spaniards were saved by the arrival of the main body of the expedition, which began to execute European calvary tactics. The battle lasted all day. Mabila was destroyed and more than 2,500 Indians lay dead. Over 150 years later, the French established Alabama's first white settlement at 27-Mile Bluff north of present-day Mobile in 1702. They found a decimated Native American population, though some recovery had taken place since the drastic 16th century decline. The rise of the historic Native American tribes in Alabama had begun some 200 years before statehood and was associated with four major Indian nations — Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw. The Cherokees were the predominant tribe in northeast Alabama, along the Tennessee River; the Choctaw in southwest Alabama; and the Chickasaw in northwest Alabama. The Creeks were the largest of the Native American groups in Alabama, occupying two-thirds of the state. During the 18th century, the native peoples of Alabama were caught in an ever-tightening vise, as European powers — and near the century's end, the United States — struggled for control of North America. Attempting to adapt to white customs, many Indians engaged in what was to become a very lucrative and wide-spread deerskin trade. In addition, there were a great many interracial marriages throughout the frontier settlements. The offspring of these marriages were to exert tremendous influence during white settlement of the frontier and into early statehood. The White-Indian situation became more volatile in the early 19th century when the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh attempted to unite Southern tribes to take a stand against further white encroachment. Failing to gain support of the Choctaw and Chickasaw, he met the Creeks at the annual council meeting at Tookabatcha (just south of Tallassee) in 1811. Civil war followed and split the Creek Nation into two factions — "White Sticks" or peace Indians, and "Red Sticks" who chose war.
In response to the fear and hysteria that swept the frontier following the attack on Ft. Mims, four American armies launched campaigns against the Creeks in late 1813. John Cocke came from east Tennessee, John Floyd from Georgia, Ferdinand Claiborne from the Mississippi Territory and Andrew Jackson from west Tennessee. Jackson's troops fought battles at Tallushatchee and Talladega in early November. On Nov. 18, volunteer forces under Major General Cocke massacred Creeks at Hillabee. General Floyd and 950 Georgia militia with 400 "friendly" Indians attacked Autosee on the south bank of the Tallapoosa on Nov. 29. Red Eagle established a Creek base of military operations at Ikana chaka, the Holy Ground, on the Alabama River in present Lowndes County. On Dec. 23, General Claiborne, reinforced by the Third Regiment of the U.S. Infantry and the Choctaw Battalion commanded by the great chief Pushmataha, defeated the Creeks at Holy Ground. At Calabee Creek near Tuskegee, Creeks attacked General Floyd's forces. Following indecisive battles at Enitachopco and Emuckfau in January of 1814, Jackson's army was reinforced by the Thirty-ninth Regiment. The Battle of Horseshoe Bend in March destroyed Creek power in Alabama. The Treaty of Fort Jackson was signed in August, ceding some 20 million acres of former Creek land to the United States. Chief Red Eagle, William Weatherford, surrendered at Fort Jackson. An 1825 treaty signed at Indian Springs, Georgia, led to additional White-Indian disturbances and a detachment of the Fourth U.S. Infantry Regiment was sent to Fort Mitchell to quell the violence. In March of 1837, a company from Franklin, Georgia, and the Barbour Rangers silenced the last of Creek resistance in the Second Creek Indian War (1836-1837) at the Battle of Hobdy's Bridge. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 called for the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole) to be relocated west of the Mississippi River. In 1837 and 1838, more than 4,000 Cherokee were moved west from Ross Landing in Chattanooga and down the Tennessee River along the "Water Route" on the infamous Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. The first railroad west of the Allegheny Mountains was completed between Tuscumbia and Decatur in 1834 and was used to transport the Native Americans in order to avoid shallow stretches of the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals. Drought in the summer of 1838 forced the U.S. Government to move 1,070 Indians by foot and wagon from Ross Landing to what is now Waterloo, Alabama. Upon reaching Waterloo, the survivors were in deplorable condition. Many died. On October 3, 1838, Cherokee leader John Benge left the stockade and internment camp at Fort Payne with a contingent of 1,103 Native Americans. There were many deaths from cold and starvation at the Three Forks of the Flint River. In July of 1836, 2,498 Creeks, captured in the Second Creek Indian War, were chained together, put into two steamboats and taken down the Alabama River to Mobile and then on to Oklahoma. By the end of 1838, nearly 50,000 Native Americans from across the Southeast had been deported west of the Mississippi. Some Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee Indians managed to remain in Alabama. One of the greatest ironies of the 300-year "American Holocaust" occurred between 1887 and 1894. Having usurped virtually all Native American land "from sea to shining sea" by the late 1880s, the U.S. Government was at a loss where to send Apache POWs. On April 28, 1887, 354 Chiricahua Apaches arrived at the Mt. Vernon Barracks. Another group of 46 came in May of 1888, including the famous warrior Geronimo. Several Apaches, including Geronimo's son, Chappo Geronimo, are buried in the National Cemetery portion of Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile. The Apaches were imprisoned at Mt. Vernon until May of 1894, when they were moved by train to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. Prior to his being exiled to the west, Creek Chief Eufaula, Yoholo-Micco, addressed the Alabama Legislature in 1836 at the State Capitol in Tuscaloosa — "In these lands of Alabama which have belonged to my forefathers and where their bones lie buried, I see that the Indian fires are going out. Soon they will be cold . . . I leave the graves of my fathers, for the Indian fires are almost gone." |
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"Remember Fort Mims!" became the battle cry that rocked the Old Southwest frontier in the late summer of 1813, following the massacre of perhaps as many as 400 men, women and children by Creek "Red Stick" warriors at the stockade of Samuel Mims in Baldwin County. William Weatherford (Red Eagle) was coerced into leading the attack while his family was held hostage by Red Sticks. Though White-Indian hostilities had occurred for some time, the First Creek Indian War is said to have begun in July of 1813 at Burnt Corn Creek when 180 Mississippi militiamen ambushed Red Sticks returning from Pensacola. After gaining initial success, the militia was routed by an Indian counterattack. On September 1, two days after the attack on Ft. Mims, Creeks led by Prophet Francis massacred 12 women and children at the Kimbell-James cabin in Clarke County and attacked nearby Fort Sinquefield the following day. The rampant violence raging across the frontier in 1813 was the result of rapid expansion of white settlement westward into the 'Bigbee and Tensaw Country down the Federal Road and continued highly inflammatory British and Spanish influence, particularly the British, as they attempted to gain the allegiance of the various Native American tribes in their struggle against the United States during the War of 1812.
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