Colonial Mobile; an historical study largely from original sources, of the Alabama-Tombigbee basin and the old South West, from the discovery of the Spiritu Santo in 1519 until the demolition of Fort Charlotte in 1821

Front matter

Class Z2

GppyrigIitN"_

AN HISTORICAL STUDY

Preface

In preparing a new edition of this book opportunity has been taken to emphasize its broader features and at the same time add much new material. The history of a colony must hinge upon the history of its capital, and so the story has a local and also a general side. In this case the local features were almost original with "Colonial Mobile." Some matter was inserted which I have in revision been able to place in the Appendix and Notes, and thus gain space for a fuller presentation of the broader features of the narrative, the colonial history of the old South West east of the Mississippi. Plates, like facts, are stubborn things, but I hope I have in the main accomplished my purpose of working up the more general features while retaining in accessible form the strictly local material.

Few errors have been discovered in the first edition, but some chapters are rewritten to give a fuller statement of facts, and several new ones inserted to cover new material. Of these I may mention On the Trail of De Soto, A Century of Obscurity, The Great Change of Base, Faits Accomplis, The Charleston Indian Trade, The Chevalier Montaut de Monberaut, The Indian Boundary Line, The Bigbee District, The State of West Florida, Alabama: A Study in Territorial Government, and The Coming of the Steamboat, besides occasional corrections or additions in the text itself. In Faits Acco7}iplis, I may add, will be found a sketch of the famous law book, the Coutume de Faris, too little known in America, as well as a summary of French colonial institutions, literature, and life. Perhaps each of these new chapters may be an addition to our history. I have tried to picture the life, customs, law, religion, clothing, food, and the dwellings of the Latins in their day and those of the Saxons in

VI PREFACE.

theirs. The story of the Creole Gallery is to my mind an epitome of the book, whose theme is the history of the borderland between two civilizations, — the original Louisiana, which has become Alabama. First came, as sliown more fully in the Introduction, the planting of Latin institutions on the Gulf coast, the conflict with advancing British civilization, and the final combination into the Southwestern type of American, — all studied from the centre of the field of action, and not from one edge or the other as heretofore.

It is gratifying to feel that this book has won a place in American historical literature. Its reception was uniformly warm from reviewers of all sections. John Fiske wrote kindly of it, and lately it has been made almost the basis of the earlier parts of two notable works, — Ogg's "Opening of the Mississippi " and the " Kolonisation des Mississippitales " by the German historian Franz. I trust the new edition will be found of even greater value.

If I have succeeded I have added some facts not generally known, and established a new angle or point of view for an important section of American history. If I have imparted a tithe of my own interest, the reader will not feel his time wasted. The general public will even yet have to do some judicious skipping in the source details, but it is believed that there is nothing which will not be of value to students of the periods involved. As such chapters of less general interest I might mention Life at the Old Fort, Next-Door Neighbors, Some Old Families, From the Cure's Window, In the Archive Office, and Church of the Immaculate Conception ; yet I am sure even these are of historical importance.

It may not be amiss to repeat from my earlier Preface that if the spelling, especially of proper names, seems inconsistent, it is because in each case I wished to reproduce the manuscript or other source used. It is probable that the Frenchman was D'Artaguiette, the Englishman, Farmar, the American, Dinsmoor. May their shades visit only the plates !

The new illustrations of this edition will be found of special

PREFACE. vii

interest. Many of these Lave never before been published, and maps from Spanish, French, and British archives make clear much which has heretofore been dim in the history of the South West. Particular reference may be made to those of Mobile in 1702, Pensacola, 1763, the land grants at Mobile, the Indian cessions in the South West, and to the views of places.

It was necessary to place in notes at the end of the volume a good deal of new matter which the plates did not permit inserting in the body of the book. These notes, therefore, are of equal importance with the text itself. Rare information, documentary and biographical, is incorporated in the Appendix. For instance, the Pardo narratives of exploration from the Atlantic are now rendered easily accessible, several personal histories have been worked out, the Pensacola Treaty given in extenso for possibly the first time, British legislative Acts shown by titles, and American Indian treaties tabulated for convenient reference.

It would be impracticable to acknowledge all sources of indebtedness. Many are mentioned in the notes. Of printed material, I have freely used the publications of the American, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi Historical Societies, the " Gulf States Historical Magazine," and also the Charleston " Year Books." In manuscript sources I had the assistance in Spain of Pedro Torres Lanzas, Chief of Archives at Seville, in Paris of the indefatigable archivist Leon Bogaert, and of Stevens and Brown and others at London, and as a result I have accumulated a considerable body of material. Alcee Fortier, the historian, kindly placed at my disposal the Magne and Tantet collections of the Louisiana Historical Society, of which he is president, and William Beer has given much aid through the Howard Memorial Library of New Orleans. To him I am indebted for copies of the plans from the rare Collot Atlas and for a copy of the Gabriel MS. of 1806. The transcripts of British records, made (under my supervision) for the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the Blue Manuscripts, as well as the other papers collected by Superintendent Thomas M.

viii PREFACE.

Owen, have proved helpful. The notes show my indebtedness to my friend Henry S. Halbert in all matters relating to the Choctaw Indians.

It cannot be amiss to thank my stenographers for their interest, for it has passed beyond that of copyists. It is gratifying that one of these, Mary Hamilton Smith, is the daughter of my sister Charlotte, to whom, next to our father, I owe my love for historical studies. These have high value in themselves as well as being a relief from professional cares. It is much to be able to live with men of the past, to be able to understand them even better than their contemporaries did, now that Providence has fulfilled their work. The restoration of the past is a prerequisite to understanding the present. It is inspiring to reflect that we, too, even if our part be small, like that of the coral, are helping to build up a future.

It would not be wrong to say that for years my chief inspiration in these researches has been the sympathy and help of the Iberville Historical Society, of which I have the honor to be president. Our meetings have always been pleasant and informing. Much of the new material herein has been read to the members at different times, and I have had the advantage of their criticism. One of them, Erwin Craighead, as editor of the " Mobile Register," has been able to give publicity to the work of the Society, and has proved himself an authority of no mean rank.

Saddening it is to turn from these friends and look over the roll of those whom I thanked in the first edition. Many have passed to their reward, and newer helpers cannot quite take their places. I can, however, as truly now as before close my preface by saying that most of all I thank that patient listener and judicious critic, Rachel Burgett Hamilton, my wife.

PETER J. HAMILTON.

Mobile, Februarj/, 1910.

Preface To First Edition

I HAVE endeavored in this book to paint the exploration, settlement, and early development of the section of our country which is tributary to the Alabama-Tombigbee river basin. The vast region draining to Mobile Bay shows much diversity of soil, elevation, and climate, and is not less rich historically than in natural features. For here Indians, Spaniards, French, and English have lived and ruled before the American republic was born.

And yet it is an unexhausted, in part an almost untrodden, literary field. Spain, France, and England lost the territory so long ago as to have lost likewise interest in its history. It has, too, so long been severed from the Mississippi valley, which was colonized from its shores, that the historians of modern Louisiana have known personally but little of this the original seat of that great empire, and have devoted their attention mainly to the later growth which centred on the lower Mississippi. And, on the other hand, the Americans, who made the basin and port of Mobile their own, approached from the north, where traces of earlier influence were slightest, and have now all but completely obliterated, even about Mobile, the Latin elements. An old-time local chronicler excused the meagreness of his earlier work with the remark that the French and Spanish times were hardly worthy of record, and that their land titles had only served to complicate and retard American enterprise.

Some day the archaeologist will go yet farther back, and throw light on the southern mounds and canals and shell banks

X PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

which, near Mobile as elsewhere, far antedate the white man, and make European epochs inappropriate, if not indeed too recent, to mark the divisions of American history. But the Mobile basin, from the Tennessee watershed to the Gulf, was the seat of an important history from the early part of the sixteenth century of even our era. Within these three centuries taken for our present theme came the discovery by the Spanish, exploration by the French, and the growth which we shall find under the French, English, Spanish, and Americans alike.

And during much of that time, too, this was not done in a corner. The Mobile basin and port were explored by Pineda, Bazares, De Soto, and other Spaniards, both before and after the greater Mississippi was discovered, and the whole was repeatedly mapped and claimed for Charles V. and his successors.

When the curtain lifts, over a century later, Iberville of France is taking up the plans of murdered La Salle, and from the capitals on Mobile River the Le Moyne brothers direct the settlement of the Mississippi as well as of the Alabama-Tombigbee basin, and oversee the intercourse with the natives and commerce with Europe. Iberville, Bienville, Chateaugue, Penicaut, Davion, St. Denis, John Law, De Lusser, Grondel, and other famous men become familiar to us about Fort Louis, afterwards Fort Conde, and the outposts up the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers are not less centres of Indian trade than of French influence against the growing English colonies on the Atlantic coast.

This remained true even after Mobile sank from her proud preeminence as capital to be but the head of the eastern department, but at last those English became masters of half of Louisiana. And yet Mobile then, severed from her old country and associations, under Haldimand, Farmer, Durnford, and other Englishmen, largely recovered her touch with that eastern half of the Mississippi valley by communication through Bayou Manchac (or Iberville), until excesses of the soldiers

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. xi

brought the place Into unnecessary discredit on the score of health.

Galvez drove out the English, and for some years Spain seemed about to reestablish her vast American empire. But the rapid development of the United States was to make this period one of transition; and Panton, Espejo, Eslava, Price, Favre, and others are as memorable for the great land grants which were to become valuable under another government as for themselves and their own history.

Still, in one way Wilkinson's capture of Mobile, the Creek War, the defense of Fort Bowyer, the development of the city which led to destruction of its old Latin fort, are even more attractive. For Sam Dale, Jerry Austill, Sam Mims, and George S. Gaines are every way closer to us than Bienville, Farmer, or even Forbes. They open the American period, and are akin to us as well as interesting historically. But, because they do introduce a modern period, they close the colonial epoch of Mobile and its river system. They bring us to a time, within the memory of men now living, when this district lost its individuality by merger into the greater sisterhood of American States.

Others have partly studied the Latin past. The works of Monette and Pickett and Meek of Mississippi and Alabama before the Civil War were as valuable as those of Martin and Gayarre of Louisiana, and it is a public loss that the rich learning of W. T. Walthall, W. S. Wyman, and others has not thus far been put in a form accessible to historical students. To them I yield their full meed of praise, and this book on many pages refers to their work and adoj)ts it.

But geographical research shows the full Spanish exploration of Mobile Bay under other names, and the Mobile church records from 1704, perhaps by myself first thoroughly studied, not less than the invaluable publications of Margry in France, make the French period almost a new thing. The papers of General Haldimand, only lately become accessible through Canadian enterprise, and the search made on my behalf by xii PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

experts in the British colonial offices, throw undreamed-of light on the English times, and reveal that obscure epoch to us in a surprising manner. The land and court records, too, which survive at Mobile, enable us to restore Spanish Mobile as of yesterday : strange it is that they have so long escaped attention. The American State Papers, too, are valuable. Perhaps only men of my own, the legal profession, can appreciate the value of some of this material ; and they will find valuable the summary of city land titles in the Appendix, even if much of it is not new to them. The American occupation is now first told from department reports, and the recently recovered corporation minutes of the town give us a picture of the change of Latin to Teutonic Mobile never yet in print. I have, at the apparent sacrifice of consistency and style, thought it best, in order to secure greater lifelikeness, to preserve the spelling of proper names as found in the authorities for the time under contribution. Family traditions have been used where probable, the old files of the "Register" examined, particularly the Reminiscences therein of George S. Gaines, and in fact aid has been levied from every source.

Among the illustrations are Biloxi Bay, Dauphine Island, and Mobile in 1711, which have been kindly furnished by the French Minister of the Marine, the map of 1760 unearthed at Washington, and Ellicott's stone photographed by myself. Neither these nor the pictures of old autographs and documents have been in print before. The other illustrations are rare, two being from Dr. Winsor's "Mississippi Basin," and of the map of 1824 now reproduced but three copies are known to exist.

It will not be the least reward of my years of labor if I show,

what has been all forgotten, the important part played by my

loved native place in the early histoiy of the Gulf coast, if

I can restore her statue to its rightful pedestal, and perhaps

even write my own name in some hiunble spot upon its base.

PETER J. HAMILTON.

MoBUB, Ala., November 2, 1897.

Contents

CHAPTBB FAGB

Introduction xix

Part I. Exploration. (1519-1670.)

I. The Country and the Natives 3

II. The Spiritu Santo 9

III. On the Trail of De Soto 14

IV. A Century of Obscurity ....... 30

Part II. The French Capital. (1670, 1699-1722.)

V. From La Salle to Iberville ....... 39

VI. Founding Fort Louis 50

VII. Bienville 62

VIII. After Iberville's Death 70

IX. Life at the Old Fort 76

X. The Great Change of Base 83

XI. Crozat and Cadillac 93

XII. In the Time of Law's Company 99

^III, Next-Door Neighbors 106

Part III. The Department Of Mobile. (1722-1763.)

XIV. Through the Chickasaw War 121

XV. The Provincl^l Town 131

XVI. Some Old Families 136

XVII. From the Cure's Window 142

XVIII. The City Map of 1760 150

XIX. In the Archive Office . 155

XX. Dauphine Island and the Coast 165

XIV CONTENTS.

XXI. Faits Accomplis 174

XXII. Fort Toulouse and Fort Tombecbb 188

XXIII. The Charleston Indlan Trade 201

XXIV. The Seven Years' War 211

Part IV. British West Florida. (1765-1780.)

XXV. A New Province 221

XXVI. The Chevalier Montaut de Monberaut .... 227

XXVII. The Indlan Boundary Line 239

XXVIII. Major Robert Farmer 251

XXIX. In the Time of Haldimand 258

XXX. Sickness 264

XXXI. The Tombigbee River in 1771 275

XXXII. The Seventies 288

XXXIII. What Bartram saw 297

XXXIV. Politics 304

XXXV. Galvbz at Mobile 310

Part V. Spanish West Florida. (1780-1813.)

XXXVI. Settling down again 321

XXXVII. Under Folch and Lanzos (1787, 1791) 333

XXXVIII. Judicial Proceedings 340

XXXIX. The Demarcation Line and the Louisiana Cession . . 351 XL. Church of the Immaculate Conception .... 364

XLI, The Indian Trade 372

XLII. Mississippi Territory 379

XLIII. The Bigbee District 386

XLIV. The State of West Florida 395

XLV. In the Balance 403

XL VI. The Capture of Mobile 409

Part VI. Americanization. (1813-1821.)

XLVII. The Creek War 419

XLVIII. Andreav Jackson on the Alabama River .... 426 XLIX. The Defense of Fort Bowyer 430

CONTENTS. XV

L. A Tale of Thkee Ports 438

LI. Alabajia : a Study in Territorial Government . . . 451

LII. The Coming of the Steamboat 468

LIU. The End of Fort Charlotte 476

(A) The Induction of De La Vente. (1704.) .... 487

(B) Description de la Ville, et du Fort Louis. (1711.) • . 487

(C) The Ordinance of 1667 489

(D) The Spanish City Grants 490

(E) Spanish Streets and People 501

(F) In the Creole Country 509

(G) Pardo Narratives of Florida Explorations. (1766-67.) . 520 (H) The Pelican Girls, 1704, etc 527

(I) Pierre Le Sueur 527

(J) The Mandevilles 528

(K) Census of 1708 528

(L) Bienville's Memoir of 1711 529

(M) Crozat 530

(N) Grondel 530

(O) Rochemorb 631

(P) Chabert's Orders on the Tombecbe Magazin . . . 532

(Q) Elias Durnford 534

(R) Greek Treaty at Pensacola. (1765.) 536

(S) Haldimand and Bouquet 539

(T) Acts of the Assembly of British West Florida. (1767-1778.) 542

(U) Leclerc Milfort 547

(V) William A. Bowles 548

(W) United States Treaties •with the Indians . . . 548

(X) Historic Land Offices 551

(Y) Silas Dinsmoor . . . . 552

(Z) Description in the Margin of De la Puente's Map of 1765 553 (Zl) Marriages since the American Capture .... 556

INDEX 577

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Bienville, afteb Maegry (Winsor's " The Mississippi Basin ") Frontispiece The Moundville Vase (C. B. Moore's Report, 1905, to the Philadelphia

Academy of Arts and Sciences) x

The Gulf Countky afteb De Soto (the Kohl Collection at Washington) 30

Pensacola Bay, 1698 (Spanish Archives at Seville) 44

BiLOXY Bay (D^pot des Colonies Frangaises at Paris) 46

Pensacola Fort, 1699 (Spanish Archives at Seville) . 48

Fort Louis de la Mobille, 1702 (D^pot des Colonies) 52

The Country of the Southern Indians (based upon the Maps of the

18th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology) 60

Monument at Old Fort Louis (erected at the Bicentennial Celebration in

1902) 62

Induction of La Vente (Mobile Church Records) 68

Iberville (after Margry) .70

Fort Louis de la Mobille, 1706 ? (D^pot des Colonies) 84

New Fort Louis, 1711 (D^pot des Colonies) 86

Fort at New Biloxi 100

French Cannon found in the Bay of Biloxi 102

Fort ToMBECBi; 122

Site of Fort Tombecb^ (from a recent photograph) 126

Battle of Aekea (D^pot des Colonies) 128

A. — Village A^k^a ou fort quon a attaqu^. B. — Fort Tchouka Falaya.

C — Fort Apeony ou les Anglois ont un Magazin. D. — Cabannes Rondez

fortiffi^s. E. — Cabannes quarr^s fortiffi^s. F. — Antichon (?) ou

Cabannes plant^es par quatre Potteaux.

Chickasaw Villages, February 28, 1740 (D^pot des Colonies) .... 130

A. — Villages attaqu^s le 22 F^vrier. B. — Cabannes que Ion brula.

(Below in a ravine is where peace was discussed. This plan was made by

Chaussegros de Lery, fils, in the Canadian camp on the spot, 32 leagues

from Fort L'Assomption.)

Mobile in 1760 (Despot des Colonies) 150

Cadillac's Fish River Grant (Mobile Archives) 156

Mobile Bay and Coast, about 1732 (Danville) 166

Veue de l'Isle Dauphine (D^pot des Colonies) 168

The River Basin, about 1732 (Danville) 188

The Alibamons and their Neighbors, 1733 (map of De Crenay, D^pot

des Colonies) 190

Breechblock from Fort Toulouse (from the original in the Alabama

Department of Archives and History) 192

Cannon from Fort Toulouse (from original in Alabama Department of

Archives and History) 192 xviii ILL USTRA TIONS.

CouNTRT OF THE Choctaws, 1733 (map of De Crenay, D(?pot des Colonies) 196 Okdeks on the Tombecb^ Maoazin, 1759 {from original in possession of

P. J. Hamilton) 204

Spanish Official Map of the Gulf Coast (the Spanish Hydrographic

Office ; given in Ruidiaz' Florida) 210

Entrance to Mobile Bay (British Colonial Record Office) 22S

Mobile about 17i»5 (Roberts' Florida) 230

gENSACOLA . Bat, 17(56 (The British Colonial Record Office) 234

The Indian Nations in British Times (Bowen) 240

Seal of British West Florida, with French Sou at the sides (Wailes'

Geology of Mississippi) 246

Mobile Bay and River, British 250

Pensacola, 1765 (Durnford's Map, British Colonial Record Office) . . . 258

British Admiralty Chart, 1771 (U. S. War Department) 260

Fort Charlotte (British Colonial Record Office) 266

Ellas Durnford and Wife (from Miniatures in possession of P. J.

Hamilton) 270

British Land Patent in West Florida (from original in possession of

P. J. Hamilton) 290

Proposed British Town at Manchac (The Gentleman's Magazine of

Letter of Ellas Durnford (from original in possession of P. J. Hamilton) 314

Spanish Autographs (Mobile Archives) 322

Three Cannon from Fort Charlotte (originals at Mobile) 328

Mobile Bay under the Spanish (U. S. War Department) 332

The Ellicott Stone (from recent photograph) 355

Mobile in 1802 (original in possession of family of Lewis Troost of Mobile) 368

Natchez under the Spanish (Collot's Atlas) 380

Where Aaron Burr was captured (from a photograph) 384

Lorenzo and Peggy Dow (Dow's Work) 392

Baton Rouge under the Spanish (Collot's Atlas) 398

Grave of Pushmataha, Congressional Cemetery at Washington . 424 Mobile in 1815 (map in possession of Thos. Gaillard, deceased) .... 4.34 Cahawba in 1819 (from original in Alabama Department of Archives and

History) 466

First Steamboat Advertisements (Mobile Register, 1821) 472

The Sword of Perez (from original in possession of G. P- Thruston of

Nashville) 474

Mobile in 1823 (from Goodwin & Haire Map) 474

Fort Charlotte about 1820 (Dinsmore's Map, made for sale of the

property) 478

Creole Type of House at Mobile 480

American Type of House at Mobile 482

Goodwin & Haire Map of Mobile 484

Spanish Grants at Mobile (Drawn by J. R. Peavy, Jr.) 490

Introduction

One's earliest historical reading is connected with the struggle of the East and the West, of mass represented by Persia, with energy represented by Greece, and then with organization represented by Rome ; later we are absorbed in the long battle of South and North, of Roman and Teuton, from the Caesars and Arminius down to Napoleon and Wellington. It has been fought over again in our day at Santiago and Manila, and much of American growth has been but stages of the contest ; for a Kingsley could write of the Latin and Saxon in America almost as well as of the Roman and Teuton in Europe.

Phases of the Latin story at the North have been pictured by Parkman so skillfully as to unite the accuracy of the historian with the fascination of the novelist, but except in histories of parts of the old Louisianian or Carolinian colonies little has been written as to the long racial struggle at the South. This interaction of the Teutonic and Latin civilizations at the formative period of American history is, therefore, almost a new study.

It must have some territorial basis, but need not be local. In a mountainous country one may obtain a broad view through his own window. And it so happens that the country between east Georgia and the Mississippi River was the scene of the earliest Spanish exploration, the first permanent French colonization, and an alternation of Latin and Saxon institutions which has built up in the South West American commonwealths different from their sister States.

Sir Gilbert Parker in his " Old Quebec " has illustrated how the story of a Latin colony is wrapped up in that of its capital, and Gayarre and Fortier are right in finding the story of later Louisiana culminating in New Orleans. But the Alabama- Tombigbee basin had an earlier Latin history than the lower Mississippi, and its later story as a march or borderland between the Latin and Saxon is unique.

There is but this one portion of America which can boast of

XX INTRODUCTION.

having flourished under five successive flags. Not taking into account the Indians, the district which we call the Alabama- Tombigbee basin has lived under the pillared arms of Spain, the lilies of France, the crosses of Great Britain, the American stars and stripes, and, for four years, the Confederate stars and bars. Indeed, it has seen the Spanish and American flags for two periods each, and, if the American claim under the Louisiana Purchase is justified, it belonged twice to France also. No wonder, then, that Edward A. Freeman declared the territory about the Bay of Mobile the greatest historical puzzle of which he knew. Modern Louisiana was never under the English flag, and Florida was not under the French, except in part as the temporary fruit of war, while the Mobile country saw and honored all five standards,^

The Alabama-Tombigbee basin has physical peculiarities all its own. Historically it has often been associated with the Mississippi Valley, but this was one of the accidents, not one of the necessities of history. The Mississippi, widespread as is its basin, presents the remarkable featui-e of having no large eastern affluent below the Ohio River. The Apalachian mountain system comes to an end in what is now Alabama, and this has the effect of diverting to the south streams which would naturally have flowed westwardly. Thus it is that the Alabama-Tombigbee waters, which would otherwise, like the Ohio, have given a branch to the Mississippi, are thrown southward and form an independent basin. By nature it is separate from the Mississippi Valley, and man tried in vain to join together what God had put asunder. The development of its separate interests makes a progressive evolution.

It is a diversified country, of many resources and varying climate. About the coast is a sandy soil, the home of the ])ine. Further north is a fertile limestone zone, called the Black Belt, where the change from granite to softer rock gives the rivers their falls and rapids before they seek the sea. Then over the mountain country, its mineral wealth long unknown, is the smiling Tennessee Valley, communicating by its river with the wild West in one direction and with the back country of Carolina

^ It is true that Texas may make a similar claim if one counts her lone star flag ; but this was hardly more than a dream until that star took its place in the American blue field.

INTRODUCTION. xxi

and Virginia in the other. Cutting through these first three zones from north to south are the Alabama and Tombisrbee rivers, navigable up to the fall line, and ready to bear the products of the field, forest, and mountain to the broad pear-shaped port where the streams meet the Gulf and unite in commercial bonds the several zones. Even the Tennessee Valley is different from the Tennessee River bed elsewhere, and by passes is so connected with the south-bound streams as to have much in common with them.

Such is the country which we shall study. It is not altogether clear which of its races came first. All of the aborigines lived on mounds or river bluffs, for safety from overflow and from attack, and the idea of a separate race of Mound Builders has long since been abandoned. The natives whom we know historically may not have been the original builders in all districts occupied, but at least other tribes of the same culture threw up these mounds.^ There seems to be a difference between the remains on the middle Mississippi and those on the Gulf coast. Pottery and stone work show a higher degree of civilization in the interior;^ but the one shades off imperceptibly into the other. Methods of interment also differ, but little liarht has been thrown on the cause. ^

The Indian was to do more than act as a foil for the white man. He was a formative influence ; for some branch of the red man was always hostile. He was to be more than a stone on which to whet the European's talent. He outlasted several white colonizations, and his forcible refusal to give way eleveloped in the colonists a type of manhood different from the original European.

The first Europeans to break into the American Stone Age were the Spaniards, but they were discoverers rather than colo-

^ Thomas, Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times, p. 38. So, also, J. W. Powell.