Category: Alabama Indian Villages, Towns and Settlements

We consider research into American Indian history in Alabama an exciting and worthwhile endeavor. However it is painfully slow and more often than not, frustrating and inconclusive. Much history has been lost to time and many historical documents are incomplete or written for a specific audience with an intended outcome.

Nonetheless, our research continues almost daily and we share that research here with you. You are encouraged to view these pages as amateur research performed only out of a love of the subject. Your comments and suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Tallassee on Henry Timberlake's 1762 "Draught of the Cherokee Country"

Tallassee Alabama

Tallassee (also “Talassee,” “Talisi,” “Tellassee,” and various similar spellings) is a prehistoric and historic Native American site in Blount County and Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Tallassee was the southernmost of a string of Overhill Cherokee villages that spanned the lower Little Tennessee River in the 18th century. Although it receives scant attention in primary historical accounts, Tallassee is one of the few Overhill towns to appear on every major 18th-century map of the Little Tennessee Valley.

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Dog River Plantation, Mobile County, Alabama

In 1988 the Alabama Department of Transportation proposed replacement of the bridge over Dog River at its confluence with Mobile Bay. It was soon discovered that the south bank at the mouth of Dog River was a historically and archaeologically important site.

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Alabama-Native-American-Tribes

ALABAMA INDIAN VILLAGES, TOWNS AND SETTLEMENTS

When Alabama was first established as part of the Mississippi Territory in the early nineteenth century, the vast majority of the land belonged to the American Indian Creek Indian Confederacy, and most of the Native American towns and villages in Alabama were inhabited by the Creeks.
Indian towns and settlement patterns were recorded in the accounts of travelers who visited them. Much of this information has been gleaned from:

(1)Aboriginal Towns In Alabama, Handbook of the Alabama Anthropological Society, 1920, and

(2)Swanton, John R., Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors. Pub. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 73. Washington, 1922.

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Hilabee: An Important Creek Town

The Hillabee complex, focused along the Hillabee and Enitachopco Creeks, dates back at least to the late 17th century. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries the complex lay in the approximate center of the Creek Confederacy’s territory. Its population probably peaked after the Creek War (1813–14), then declined. Creek settlement in the area ended with the forced removal of the Muscogee people during the 1830s.

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Tukabatchee: Town of the Muscogee Creek Confederacy

In October 1811 at the Creek town of Tukabatchee, on the banks of the Tallapoosa River, the so-called National Council gathered to consider if and how to take advantage of the Federal Road. The famed Shawnee Chief Tecumseh rose to address the leaders present from a number of the various Creek tribes living in the Mississippi Territory, and the assembly grew quiet.

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