specific kindnesses. Mr. Owens's "Bibliography" is, of course, invaluable. Professor J. II. Phillips, of Birmingham, and President James K. Powers, of the State University, have exerted themselves in my behalf. My good friends, Thomas II. Clark, of the Congressional Library, and Francis G. Caffey, of Montgomery, have placed at my disposal the results of their own studies. Other personal friends-among them two young Harvard inen, Mr. Clarence R. Wilson, of Washington, and Mr. Edward Ilarding, of New York-have helped in various ways. Mr. C. L. Patton, of the University Publishing Company, editor of the series, and himself at one time à resident of Alabama, has given me the full benefit of his experience in the making of school histories. He is responsible for the maps and illustrations. Much as these gentlemen have contributed to give the book whatever merit it may have, none of them can be held responsible for any demerits and mistakes which may be charged against it. Writing of my own people, I escaped the temptation to set down aught in malice. I have striven against the temptation to extenuate, for I have written also as an American, ardently attached to my whole country, and determined from the first that no word of mine should ever weaken in any child's mind that devotion to the great Republic which in me is grown into a passion. Yet I have not thought it right or necessary to abate one jot of that reverence for the great captains of a long-lost cause, that love and respect for its devoted private soldiers, which I learned in my own childhood, when, with boys and girls like those who will perhaps read these pages, I marcheil on Memorial Day to lay flowers on Confederate graves. Yet I also wish that children who study the book may be encouraged to have their own opinions about the course our fathers took at different times. Writing the text, I have felt it necessary to withhold the criticism or praise their acts suggested. Looking over the story once more, and writing now from the outside of it, I feel like saying at least this: These fathers of ours came of a strong race, and they lived under conditions peculiarly trying to strong men. They made mistakes, no doubt, for they were only human. Yet I rise from the study of them and the State they builded with increased pride in the heritage of political ideas and social usages, of honesty, of manhood, of strength of body and cleanness of mind, which they got from their fathers and left in turn to us. November 28, 1900. W. G. B. V. THE APPROACH OF THE ENGLISH VI. THE LAST OF BIENVILLE-VAUDREUIL AND KERLEREC VIII. THE REVOLUTION-MCGILLIVRAY . XX. ADMINISTtration of GoVERNOR GAYLE. XXI. ADMINISTRATIONS OF GOVERNORS CLAY AND MCVAY 213 256 XXXVI. ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNOR COBB XXXVII. ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNOR O'NEAL XXXVIII. ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNOR SEAY XXXIX. ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNOR JONES INTRODUCTION. THE INDIANS OF ALABAMA. THE Indians found in Alabama by the earliest European explorers were not unlike those of later times. They were of a reddish or cinnamonbrown complexion. The men were for the most part athletic and well proportioned, and many of the women were handsome. Both sexes wore mantles made of the inner bark of trees and of a species of flax, and they adorned themselves with ornaments of shells and pearls, sometimes arranged in the form of bracelets. Many wore moccasins which were made of dressed deerskin. They usually painted their faces and bodies; some punctured themselves with needles of bone, and then rubbed in a sort of indelible ink. They dressed their heads with feathers of eagles and other birds. The bow was the most formidable of their weapons. The string was of deer's sinews, and the arrows were made of hardened cane with heads of hard wood, fish-bone, or flint. There are probably few boys in Alabama, outside the cities, who have not seen an Indian arrow-head. Shields were made of wood, split canes, or hides. There were wooden spears, with points of flint or fish-bone, and war clubs, both oval and edged. How well the natives could use such weapons, even the armored Spaniards were made to feel. In their social customs the early Indians did not differ much from their successors and descendants two centuries later. They drank a sort of tea known to the colonists as the "black drink." Feasts, bow shooting, ballplaying, and dancing were among their amusements. Their houses and towns, though rude, were apparently somewhat better than those of the Indians of more recent years. It seems to have been a common practice to build the houses of the chiefs on mounds of considerable height. In Mauvila the houses fronted on a large public square, and the town was encompassed by a high wall, built of tree trunks, plastered with mud. Generally each family possessed a winter house, daubed inside and outside with clay, and another, more open, for the summer. BOW, ARROWS, CLUB, AND SPEARS. Besides the building of houses and the making of weapons, canoes, and clothing, the principal industries were hunting, fishing, and a simple form of agriculture. The fertile soil made quick returns. Peas, beans, squashes, pumpkins, and corn were grown. Persimmons were made into cakes. Corn was pounded in mortars. In digging they used rude hoes made of fish-bones or wood. The planting was done chiefly by women. The sun was an object of worship, and the moon and certain stars were regarded with great reverence. In several places temples were found, filled with the bones of the dead. The religious ceremonies were curious and fantastic. But for our purposes it will be best to study the Indians of Alabama, not at this early time, but some two hundred years later, when white men had begun to make settlements among them. For this later period we have sources of information more various and far more trustworthy than the narratives of the Spanish expedition. At the outset, however, we are confronted with the question whether the same races which De Soto found were still inhabiting the lands along the Alabama River in the eighteenth century. The two answers to this question can be considered more intelligently when we have taken a view of the various tribes as they existed at the later period. The Indians who from the time of the first European settlements played a part in the history of the lands embraced in the present limits of Alabama may be treated as belonging to four geographical groups. These were the Cherokees, the Chickasaws, the Choctaws, and the Creeks. Roughly speaking, these four divisions correspond to the four corners of the State. The Cherokees, whose principal seats were in northern Georgia, castern Tennessee, and the western parts of the two Carolinas, occupied only the northeastern corner of Alabama. The extreme northwestern corner was occupied by the Chickasaws, who also possessed |