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The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815â"1828
By Thomas Perkins Abernethy The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1990 The University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-0486-7
CHAPTER 1
The Mississippi Territory
When England received West Florida from Spain at the close of the Seven Years' War, its northern boundary was the thirty-first parallel; but England later, for administrative purposes, changed the line so that it ran from the Chattahoochee due westward along the parallel of thirty-two degrees, twenty-eight minutes, to the point where the Yazoo flows into the Mississippi. When Spain recovered the Floridas at the close of the American Revolution, she insisted on the northern boundary as fixed by England, but the United States protested, and finally won the point when the treaty of 1795 fixed the thirty-first parallel as the international boundary.
The disputed territory, which extended from the Mississippi to the Chattahoochee, was finally evacuated by Spain in 1798, and the next year, the United States, with the acquiescence of Georgia, which also laid claim to the land, established a territorial form of government for the district. This was the original Mississippi Territory. In 1800 an elective assembly was authorized, and in 1802 Georgia relinquished her claim. After two more years, the boundary was extended northward to the Tennessee line, and thus the Territory came to include all that land which is embraced by the present states of Alabama and Mississippi, except that which lies below the thirty-first degree of latitude.
Within this extensive area there were but two white settlements: one upon the lower Mississippi, and the other upon the lower Tombigbee River. Those who lived upon the Tombigbee had filtered through the Indian country from the time of the Revolution onward; some were Tory refugees, some were patriots who had left their old homes to seek new ones, and some were traders with the Indians. The blood of these men was various: English and Scottish traders mingled with Yankee frontiersmen, and many of them had taken native wives. The half-breeds were often men of wealth, and no distinction of race seems to have been made in the rugged life of the frontier.
St. Stephens, a primitive village of log cabins, was the principal settlement in the Tombigbee region, and here the government established a post for trading with the Choctaw Indians and, as soon as Georgia gave up her claim to the soil, a land office. The act arranging for the disposal of the public domain was passed in 1803. It provided for the validation of claims under British and Spanish grants, quieted claims under the act of Georgia establishing Bourbon County in 1785, granted tracts of 640 acres to actual settlers at the time of the Spanish evacuation, and gave preëmption rights to settlers occupying land at the time the act was passed. Settling on public lands was forbidden, but squatters continued to come in, and an act of 1807 extended preëmption rights to those who had already come, but once more prohibited entries upon government lands for the future. Lands not otherwise appropriated were to be surveyed and put on sale at public auction according to the provisions which had already been adopted for the Northwest Territory. Consequently in 1807 the first sales took place at St. Stephens.
In 1806 the government acquired from the Indians a small triangle of land lying between the Tennessee border and the great bend in the Tennessee River. In 1809 this tract, the original Madison County, was offered for sale and readily taken up by cotton planters from Georgia. Here Huntsville was built around a great spring and soon came to be the commercial center of the new region.
Cotton was raised in the Alabama-Tombigbee region as early as 1772; the manufacture of cotton cloth was begun by the Cherokees in 1796–97; and Colonel Benjamin Hawkins, who was for many years agent for the Creeks, states in his A Sketch of the Creek Country, 1798–1799 that a Scottish trader, who had made his home among the Indians and had taken a native woman for his wife, first raised a quantity of green seed cotton for the market, but, finding it more profitable to manufacture his own staple, employed eleven hands, besides his own family, in the industry. In 1802 the first cotton gins were introduced into the Alabama country, two of the three of them being set up among the Indians. By 1808 the staple had come to be the leading agricultural product of the region.
From the very first its culture among the whites seems to have been associated with Negro labor, for in 1810 slaves made up nearly 40 percent of the population upon the lower Tombigbee; and ten years later, after the cotton régime was well begun, the proportion of slaves in this early-settled region remained abnormally high. The men who entered Madison County in 1809 were largely Georgia planters of considerable means. They came especially for the purpose of raising cotton, and their slaves were numerous. Their entrance into the Mississippi Territory at this time indicates that the cotton régime might have begun earlier had not the War of 1812 intervened to delay it.
But the culture of cotton was still in its infancy in 1812. Scrawny hogs, whose ancestors are supposed to have been left by DeSoto and whose descendants are said to be the modern razor-back, roamed the woods; and in the canebrake region near the Gulf, large herds of cattle, sometimes numbering many hundreds, found their own forage, summer and winter alike.
Aside from the fur trade with the natives and the growing cotton industry, there seems to have been little commerce carried on during these years in the Alabama country, and the reason is not difficult to find. Mobile, the only accessible outlet, was in the hands of the Spanish, and the duties they charged were almost prohibitive. In order to avoid the payment of them, Colonel Strother Gaines, the agent at St. Stephens for the Choctaws, brought his supplies down the Tennessee River to Colbert's Ferry, above Muscle Shoals, carried them over a portage, which came to be known as Gaines' Trace, to the head of navigation on the Tombigbee at Cotton Gin Port; and thence floated them down to St. Stephens. This was the route by which a number of the early Tombigbee settlers reached their destination, and it long remained an important route of travel for the pioneer.
Until 1806, rivers and Indian trails were the only means of communication in the Alabama region, but in that year Congress provided for the construction of the first two roads. One was to connect Nashville, Tennessee, with Natchez upon the Mississippi, crossing the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals. It was known as the Natchez Trace and came to be a highway of no little importance in the western country. The other was to follow the route from Athens, Georgia, to New Orleans, passing through the settlement on the Tombigbee. It came to be known as the Federal Road, and along it thousands of settlers later found their way to Alabama.
Such were the slender bands of communication which tied the frontier settlements of the eastern Mississippi Territory to the world from which they were separated by hundreds of miles of Indian wilderness. Between the Tombigbee clearings and the settled part of Georgia lay the confederacy of the Creeks, extending its boundaries northward well toward the Tennessee line. Adjoining the Creeks on the north lay the territory of the Cherokees, stretching eastward into Georgia and northward into Tennessee. Between the Tombigbee and the settlements upon the lower Mississippi lay the lands of the Choctaws, and northward of them the country of the Chickasaws took in the northwestern corner of the future Alabama and extended across western Tennessee.
These Indian tribes of the South were further advanced toward civilization than were most of their North American kinsmen, and, though the westward migration of the whites was still in its infancy, they saw clearly the problem which confronted them. They had two alternatives compatible with peace: to perfect themselves in the arts of civilization, so as to compete with the newcomers, or to be driven off the land which had been theirs for untold generations. There was but one other possibility — to fight.
Already game had become too scarce to be relied upon as the only source of food supply, and all the southern Indians engaged in a crude method of agriculture. They dwelt in villages with fields adjacent, cultivating maize, beans, and melons as their principal crops. Their methods of culture were primitive, and they rarely produced more than sufficed for their own needs.
The more the natives resorted to agriculture, the less ground they needed for the purpose of hunting. This consideration may partly account for the interest which the Government of the United States took in the civilization of the red man, but such interest was good policy on general principles, for a civilized Indian afforded a less pressing problem than did one in his native simplicity.
During Washington's administration the system of appointing an agent to each of the different tribes was adopted. The agent acted as intermediary between the government and the Indians, attempted to protect them from corruption by supervising their relations with the whites, and tried to promote their civilization by instructing them in agriculture and craftsmanship. The Indians were not allowed to buy whisky from the whites, and the whites were not allowed to live among the Indians except by permission from the agents. Such permits were granted to blacksmiths, carpenters, wheelwrights, and other craftsmen who were needed, but natives were taught the crafts and sometimes were able to supply a large part of the demand for skilled workmen.
The Indians were encouraged by the agents to keep domestic animals and a few of them came to own large herds. They were also instructed in the use of the plow and furnished with seed for planting. The culture of cotton was introduced among them, and they were taught how to use the spinning wheel and the loom. Indeed, some of the native craftsmen learned to make wheels and looms and turned them out in large numbers.
Of all the Indians, the Cherokees most readily took to the ways of civilization. Realizing the futility of resistance, they wished to adjust themselves to the inevitable and through education and industry to fit themselves for citizenship. They took up agriculture so seriously that some of them quit their villages for the purpose of living upon their farms. They kept large numbers of domestic animals and learned to spin and weave. They built roads and erected saw mills and cotton gins. Sequoya, a native Cherokee, invented an alphabet for the use of his people, and they set about diligently to learn to read and write. They even drew up a constitution and instituted a representative government. A census of 1825 shows them, with a population of 15,000, to have possessed 1,300 slaves, 22,000 cattle, over 700 looms, more than 2,000 spinning wheels, nearly 3,000 plows, 10 saw mills, 31 grist mills, 8 cotton gins, 18 ferries, and 18 schools.
The Chickasaws and Choctaws, though somewhat less advanced than the Cherokees, followed their policy of absorbing what civilization they could, and of remaining friendly with the settlers. The Creeks, on the contrary, were warlike and not inclined to adapt themselves to the new situation. The strength of this bellicose confederacy and the fact that its lands bordered upon Spanish Florida may help to explain its relatively independent attitude.
Just before the War of 1812 broke out and Tecumseh undertook to unite all the western Indians against the United States, he visited the Creeks at one of their great councils, and the younger warriors were incited to hostility against the white settlers. Though the older chiefs remained peaceful, the war or "red stick" party was powerful and presently took matters into its own hands.
Florida was still legally in the possession of Spain, but the Napoleonic wars had so shaken the position of that ancient kingdom that her government had fallen prey to French and British armies. The future possession and control of the province became doubtful. President James Madison, fearful for the southern frontier, issued a proclamation in 1810 calling for the occupation of West Florida. At that time, however, it was taken over only as far as the Pearl River. Three years later Mobile was occupied, but Pensacola remained in Spanish hands. To Pensacola a band of the hostile Creeks repaired in 1813 for the purpose of securing munitions of war. The settlers upon the Tombigbee, learning of the expedition, mustered their military strength and marched to meet the Indians as they returned. In the battle of Burnt Corn which followed, the whites drove the Indians from the field, but while the victors were collecting the booty, the Indians rallied, set upon them, and routed their little band.
The isolated Tombigbee settlers recognized this skirmish as the prelude to a bloody Indian war. Seeing no immediate prospect of military assistance, they hurriedly gathered at convenient houses, surrounded them with stockades, and anxiously awaited the movements of the savage warriors. Several hundred men and women were gathered at the home of a wealthy "Indian countryman" named Mims. A stockade was constructed and the place came to be known as Fort Mims, but of military discipline there was little or none. Warned of the presence of Indians, they took no heed and when the savages attacked were utterly unprepared. The defense was desperate but hopeless, and when the day was over there remained only the smoldering ruins and the bodies of the dead. Of all that had been gathered in the fort, only a few escaped.
Appeals for aid were quickly sent to Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee, and Andrew Jackson, major-general of the Tennessee militia, collected a force for an expedition. Marching through Huntsville and crossing the Tennessee River where he established Fort Deposit, he entered the country of the Creeks and built Fort Strother upon the upper waters of the Coosa. Often forced to the last extremity by the difficulty of getting supplies and by the restiveness of militia enlisted for short terms of service, Jackson nevertheless cut a road through the wilderness, fought several minor engagements with the savages, and finally reached their principal stronghold at Horseshoe Bend in the Tallapoosa River. Here the Indians had erected a breastwork across the neck of the peninsula formed by the bend of the river. Jackson attacked this work in front while his lieutenant, General John Coffee, approached the bend from the other side of the stream. On this side the Indians had collected a large number of canoes in which to make their escape if it should become necessary; but taking these, Coffee recrossed the river and attacked the defenders from the rear. Thus trapped, the stubborn resistance of the natives was ineffectual. Some escaped across the river, others were drowned while attempting to get away, and several hundred were left dead upon the field.
The battle of Horseshoe Bend broke the power of the hostile Creeks. Many were dead, and others fled across the Spanish line into Florida. In 1814 the chiefs who remained met Jackson at the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa, where Fort Jackson was erected, and were forced to surrender a broad strip of their land running along the Florida border and all that which lay west of the Coosa River. Thus almost all of the Alabama-Tombigbee basin was cleared of the Indian title and secured for settlement. The Mississippi Territory was indebted to Jackson not only for safety but also for room in which to grow.
That the Southwest was to become a cotton kingdom was foreshadowed by the early history of Madison County. When the old tobacco-growing districts of the southern seaboard began to overflow into the piedmont region, a number of Virginia immigrants established the town of Petersburg where the Broad River flows into the Savannah in Elbert County, Georgia. Here tobacco warehouses were erected and a brisk business ensued. But it did not last long. When the invention of the cotton gin made short staple cotton available for commercial purposes, this crop supplanted tobacco as the principal product of the piedmont region in Georgia and South Carolina. Tobacco warehouses were no longer necessary and Petersburg was abandoned. Its inhabitants were the chief founders of the town of Huntsville. In the small triangle which was the Madison County of that day, nearly 150,000 acres of land were sold between 1809 and 1812.
During this period the sales of land in the Tombigbee settlement were relatively small except that, in 1812 alone, 64,000 acres were disposed of at St. Stephens.
The war naturally halted the progress of the westward movement, but with the coming of peace, the migration was resumed with greatly renewed vigor. The Indians were no longer to be feared, a vast expanse of new territory had been cleared of the native title, cotton was in great demand, and a spirit of adventure and speculation took hold upon the country. In 1816 more than 170,000 acres were sold at St. Stephens.
The territory secured from the Creeks had to be surveyed before it could be placed upon the market, and surveys took time. But the westward rush of land-hungry men did not wait upon the government. Settlers pushed into the country in great numbers. They were usually poor men who had sold all they possessed to secure the necessary means of transportation, and at the end of the journey they sometimes found themselves stranded without food to last until the first crop could be made. There were also land speculators who were engaged in seeking out choice tracts for purchase when the government sales should begin; there were merchants who had brought wagon-loads of goods, which they displayed to the settlers in hastily-erected huts; and there were fugitives from justice seeking refuge in a country where the hand of the law was weak.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815â"1828 by Thomas Perkins Abernethy. Copyright © 1990 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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