Historic Indian Towns in Alabama, 1540-1838

Historic Indian Towns in Alabama, 1540-1838. By Amos J. Wright. Jr. Foreword by Vernon J. Knight Jr. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003. xix, 239 pp. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-8173-1251-x. $22.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8173-1252-8.

Students of southern Indian history, particularly the history of the Creeks, realize that towns were often more important than tribes. People identified with the town in which they were born, and it became the focus of their primary loyalty. Political organizations that transcended town were likely to be ephemeral, and many, such as the Creek Confederacy, came into being only late in the eighteenth century. No historian can ignore this central fact that southern Indian history is primarily town history. Amos Wright's quest has been to identify, locate, and summarize the histories of as many Indian towns in Alabama as possible.

Scrutinizing 214 maps with a magnifying glass, Wright has identified 398 Indian towns in Alabama. Alabama was Creek country and most of the towns were Creek, but Wright began his work by trying to locate Mississippian towns that predated the Creeks, some of which became Choctaw towns. In other words, this is more than a Creek book. Wright's research into the basic published and unpublished sources on Alabama Indian history inform his examination of the maps and result in an alphabetical listing of the towns, their locations, and summaries of their histories. Wright's locations are arranged by county, but he pinpoints their placement on creeks, rivers, and other natural features, and for some he supplies range and township coordinates.

Wright's text follows the towns from their earliest reference to their latest. By working chronologically, he charts over time such changes as the movements of towns and, where possible, explains why they moved. He provides population figures when available and, in the cases of towns that were visited and described by outsiders, gives a description of their layouts. When his evidence is contradictory, Wright attempts to reconcile it through explanations that generally make good sense.

The spellings of the names of the towns can be confusing because they were recorded by Europeans who generally knew little of the native languages and thus depended on phonetics. But phonetic spelling by people whose primary language was English, French, or Spanish produced wide variations. Rather than replicating the recent efforts of some scholars to provide more accurate spellings, Wright uses the most common spelling in the English record. As a result, students looking for Kasihta, for example, will need to look for Cusseta.

A more serious problem is that Wright does not include a map of Alabama. Mapping 398 towns, many with varied locations, may have seemed cartographically impossible, but even a modern map with county boundaries and rivers would have been very helpful. As it stands, one will have to use this book with an atlas handy in order to visualize the locations of most of the towns.

Wright offers the most recent of four compilations of Indian towns in Alabama. None of the previous works rested on such a comprehensive study of maps, however, which makes this volume particularly important. Along with his bibliography, which identifies the important sources for Alabama Indian history, Wright's volume will stand as the basic reference on Alabama's Indian towns for many years to come.

Michael D. Green

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Copyright University of Alabama Press Oct 2004
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