White Bluff (Demopolis, Alabama)
White Bluff known as Ecor Blanc, is a historic site located along the Tombigbee River in Demopolis, Alabama. It is a chalk cliff one mile long, composed of a geological layer known as the Demopolis Chalk Formation, part of the Selma Group; the upper portions of the cliff stood 80 feet above the river before the construction of the Demopolis Lock and Dam downriver. It now averages about 30 feet above the river. White Bluff was first named Ecor Blanc by 18th century French map makers, it became known as the Chickasaw Gallery because early Native American inhabitants harnessed their boats at the foot of the cliff. It was the site where French Bonapartist refugees landed in 1817 and established their Vine and Olive Colony. White Bluff is the site for the main event of the annual Christmas on the River festival
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville was a colonist, born in Montreal, New France, an early, repeated governor of French Louisiana, appointed four separate times during 1701–1743. A younger brother of explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, he is known as Sieur de Bienville. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne was the son of Charles le Moyne, born in Longueil, near Dieppe, Catherine Primot, born in Rouen, both cities in the Province of Normandy. Charles le Moyne established his family in the settlement of Ville-Marie at an early age and had fourteen children total. At the age of seventeen, Bienville joined his brother Iberville on an expedition to establish the colony of Louisiana. Bienville explored the Gulf of Mexico coastline, he discovered around 1699 as far up as into Mobile Bay, not deep enough to go any further, founded Belle Fontaine they had discovered an artesian spring bubbling and leaping from the beach; this spring is now 300-400 feet out into Mobile Bay. Bienville played a huge role in founding part of the coast line here in Alabama.
He went on to discovering the Chandeleur Islands off the coast of Louisiana as well as Cat Island and Ship Island off the coast of what is now the state of Mississippi before moving westward to sail up the mouth of the Mississippi River. The expedition ventured all the way to what is now Baton Rouge and False River. Before heading back to France, Iberville established the first settlement of the Louisiana colony, in April 1699 as Fort Maurepas or Old Biloxi, appointed Sauvolle de la Villantry as the governor with Bienville as Lieutenant. Following Iberville's departure, Bienville took another expedition up the Mississippi River and encountered English ships at what is now known as English Turn. Upon hearing of this encounter on his return, Iberville ordered Bienville to establish a settlement along the Mississippi River at the first solid ground he could find. Fifty miles upriver, Bienville established Fort de la Boulaye. On the recommendations of his brother, Bienville moved the majority of the settlers to a new settlement in what is now Alabama on the west side of the Mobile River, called Fort Louis de la Mobile.
He established a deepwater port nearby on Dauphin Island for the colony, as Mobile Bay and the Mobile River were too shallow for seagoing vessels. The population of the colony fluctuated over the next few years. In 1704, in part due to fear that fraternization of French soldiers with native females might lead to conflict, Bienville arranged for the arrival of twenty-four young French women. By tradition the young ladies were selected from convents, though most were from poor families; because they traveled to the New World with their possessions in small trunks known as cassettes, they are known in local histories as The casquette girls in early accounts and by the English translation of casket girls in tradition. The young ladies were lodged in Bienville's home under the care of his housekeeper, a French-Canadian woman known as Madame Langlois. Madame Langlois had learned from local native tribes the arts of cooking local produce and imparted this knowledge to her charges in what is heralded as the origin of Creole cuisine.
The names and fates of most of the Casquette Girls is uncertain, but at least some remained in the colony and married French soldiers as intended, the first recorded birth of a white child occurring in 1705. The population of the colony fluctuated over the next generation, growing to 281 by 1708, but diminishing to 178 two years due to disease. In 1709, a great flood overflowed Fort Louis de la Mobile: because of this and the outbreaks of disease, Bienville ordered the settlement to move downriver to the present site of Mobile, Alabama in 1711 where another wooden Fort Louis was built. By 1712, when Antoine Crozat took over administration of Louisiana by royal appointment, the colony boasted a population of 400 persons. In 1713, a new governor arrived from France, Bienville moved west where, in 1716, he established Fort Rosalie on the present site of Natchez, Mississippi; the new governor, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, did not last long due to mismanagement and a lack of growth in the colony.
He was recalled to France in 1716, Bienville again took the helm as governor, serving the office for less than a year until the new governor, Jean-Michel de Lepinay, arrived from France. Lepinay's tenure was short lived, however, as Crozat had relinquished control of the colony and its administration to John Law and his Company of the Indies. In 1718, Bienville found himself once again governor of Louisiana, it was during this term that Bienville established the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. Bienville wrote to the Directors of the Company in 1717 that he had discovered a crescent bend in the Mississippi River which he felt was safe from tidal surges and hurricanes and proposed that the new capital of the colony be built there. Permission was granted, Bienville founded New Orleans Spring of 1718. By 1719, a sufficient number of huts and storage houses had been built that Bienville began moving supplies and troops from Mobile. Following disagreements with the chief engineer of the colony, Pierre Le Blond de La Tour, Bienville ordered an assistant engineer, Adrien de Pauger, to draw up plans for the new city in 1720.
In 1721, Pauger drew up the eleven-by-seven block rectangle now known as the French Quarter or the Vieux Carré. After moving into his new home on
Noxubee River
The Noxubee River is a tributary of the Tombigbee River, about 90.6 miles long, in east-central Mississippi and west-central Alabama in the United States. Via the Tombigbee, it is part of the watershed of the Mobile River, which flows to the Gulf of Mexico; the Noxubee rises in Choctaw Lake in the Tombigbee National Forest in Choctaw County and flows southeastwardly through Winston and Noxubee Counties in Mississippi, Sumter County in Alabama, through the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge and past the town of Macon, Mississippi. It joins the Tombigbee River from the west, about 2 mi west of Alabama. According to the Geographic Names Information System, the Noxubee River has been known as: List of Alabama rivers List of Mississippi rivers DeLorme. Alabama Atlas & Gazetteer. Yarmouth, Maine: DeLorme. ISBN 0-89933-274-9. DeLorme. Mississippi Atlas & Gazetteer. Yarmouth, Maine: DeLorme. ISBN 0-89933-346-X. Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge website
Town Creek (Mississippi)
Town Creek known as Old Town Creek or West Fork Tombigbee River, is a tributary stream of the Tombigbee River in northeast Mississippi. Old Town was a Chickasaw village. List of rivers of Mississippi U. S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Town Creek. Retrieved 13 June 2005. U. S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Old Town. Retrieved 21 May 2008
Alabama
Alabama is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Mississippi to the west. Alabama is the 30th largest by area and the 24th-most populous of the U. S. states. With a total of 1,500 miles of inland waterways, Alabama has among the most of any state. Alabama is nicknamed the Yellowhammer State, after the state bird. Alabama is known as the "Heart of Dixie" and the "Cotton State"; the state tree is the longleaf pine, the state flower is the camellia. Alabama's capital is Montgomery; the largest city by population is Birmingham. The oldest city is Mobile, founded by French colonists in 1702 as the capital of French Louisiana. From the American Civil War until World War II, like many states in the southern U. S. suffered economic hardship, in part because of its continued dependence on agriculture. Similar to other former slave states, Alabamian legislators employed Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise and otherwise discriminate against African Americans from the end of the Reconstruction Era up until at least the 1970s.
Despite the growth of major industries and urban centers, white rural interests dominated the state legislature from 1901 to the 1960s. During this time, urban interests and African Americans were markedly under-represented. Following World War II, Alabama grew as the state's economy changed from one based on agriculture to one with diversified interests; the state's economy in the 21st century is based on management, finance, aerospace, mineral extraction, education and technology. The European-American naming of the Alabama River and state was derived from the Alabama people, a Muskogean-speaking tribe whose members lived just below the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers on the upper reaches of the river. In the Alabama language, the word for a person of Alabama lineage is Albaamo; the suggestion that "Alabama" was borrowed from the Choctaw language is unlikely. The word's spelling varies among historical sources; the first usage appears in three accounts of the Hernando de Soto expedition of 1540: Garcilaso de la Vega used Alibamo, while the Knight of Elvas and Rodrigo Ranjel wrote Alibamu and Limamu in transliterations of the term.
As early as 1702, the French called the tribe the Alibamon, with French maps identifying the river as Rivière des Alibamons. Other spellings of the name have included Alibamu, Albama, Alibama, Alabamu, Allibamou. Sources disagree on the word's meaning; some scholars suggest the word comes from amo. The meaning may have been "clearers of the thicket" or "herb gatherers", referring to clearing land for cultivation or collecting medicinal plants; the state has numerous place names of Native American origin. However, there are no correspondingly similar words in the Alabama language. An 1842 article in the Jacksonville Republican proposed it meant "Here We Rest." This notion was popularized in the 1850s through the writings of Alexander Beaufort Meek. Experts in the Muskogean languages have not found any evidence to support such a translation. Indigenous peoples of varying cultures lived in the area for thousands of years before the advent of European colonization. Trade with the northeastern tribes by the Ohio River began during the Burial Mound Period and continued until European contact.
The agrarian Mississippian culture covered most of the state from 1000 to 1600 AD, with one of its major centers built at what is now the Moundville Archaeological Site in Moundville, Alabama. This is the second-largest complex of the classic Middle Mississippian era, after Cahokia in present-day Illinois, the center of the culture. Analysis of artifacts from archaeological excavations at Moundville were the basis of scholars' formulating the characteristics of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Contrary to popular belief, the SECC appears to have no direct links to Mesoamerican culture, but developed independently; the Ceremonial Complex represents a major component of the religion of the Mississippian peoples. Among the historical tribes of Native American people living in present-day Alabama at the time of European contact were the Cherokee, an Iroquoian language people. While part of the same large language family, the Muskogee tribes developed distinct cultures and languages. With exploration in the 16th century, the Spanish were the first Europeans to reach Alabama.
The expedition of Hernando de Soto passed through Mabila and other parts of the state in 1540. More than 160 years the French founded the region's first European settlement at Old Mobile in 1702; the city was moved to the current site of Mobile in 1711. This area was claimed by the French from 1702 to 1763 as part of La Louisiane. After the French lost to the British in the Seven Years' War, it became part of British West Florida from 1763 to 1783. After the United States victory in the American Revolutionary War, the territory was divided between the United States and Spain; the latter retained control of this western territory from 1783 until the surrender of the Spanish garrison at Mobile to U. S. forces on April 13, 1813. Thomas Bassett, a loyalist to the British monarchy during the Revolutionary era, was one of the earliest white settlers in the state
Mississippi Highway 25
Mississippi Highway 25 runs from I-55 in Jackson, Mississippi to the Tennessee state line north of Iuka. The controlled-access part from Jackson to Starkville connects the state capital with the main campus of Mississippi State University; as of June 28, 2006, 150 miles of continuous four-lane divided highway is open between Starkville and Jackson, Mississippi. The last leg to open was the 11.9-mile, $27-million section from the intersection of Highway 19 north of Louisville, Mississippi, to Noxapater Creek in Winston County. This is one of the culminations of the 1987 Four-Lane Highway Program for improving Mississippi roadways. On May 10, 2006 the next-to-last leg, a 10.1-mile, $23-million section, opened from the Oktibbeha County line west into Winston County. All of Highway 25, except for the portion between West Point and Fulton, will be an at least four-lane divided highway by the mid-2010s, per Mississippi House Bill 725 of the 1998 session. From south to north Jackson, Mississippi Flowood, Mississippi Carthage, Mississippi Louisville, Mississippi Starkville, Mississippi West Point, Mississippi Aberdeen, Mississippi Amory, Mississippi Smithville, Mississippi Fulton, Mississippi Belmont, Mississippi Tishomingo, Mississippi Iuka, Mississippi List of Mississippi state highways Magnolia Meanderings Mississippi Department of Transportation
Choctaw
The Choctaw are a Native American people occupying what is now the Southeastern United States. Their Choctaw language belongs to the Muskogean language family group. Hopewell and Mississippian cultures, who lived throughout the east of the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries. About 1,700 years ago, the Hopewell people built Nanih Waiya, a great earthwork mound located in what is central present-day Mississippi, it is still considered sacred by the Choctaw. The early Spanish explorers of the mid-16th century in the Southeast encountered Mississippian-culture villages and chiefs; the anthropologist John R. Swanton suggested that the Choctaw derived their name from an early leader. Henry Halbert, a historian, suggests; the Choctaw coalesced as a people in the 17th century, developed three distinct political and geographical divisions: eastern and southern. These different groups sometimes created distinct, independent alliances with nearby European powers; these included the French, based in Louisiana.
During the American Revolution, most Choctaw supported the Thirteen Colonies' bid for independence from the British Crown. They never went to war against the United States but they were forcibly relocated in 1831-1833, as part of the Indian Removal, in order for the US to take over their land for development by European Americans. In the 19th century, the Choctaw were classified by European Americans as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes" because they adopted numerous practices of their United States neighbors; the Choctaw and the United States agreed to nine treaties. By the last three, the US gained vast land cessions; the Choctaw were the first Native American tribe forced to relocate under the Indian Removal Act. The Choctaw were exiled from their land because the U. S. desired its resources, to sell it for settlement and agricultural development by European Americans. Some US leaders believed that by reducing conflict between the peoples, they were saving the Choctaw from extinction; the Choctaw negotiated most desirable lands in Indian Territory.
Their early government had three districts, each with its own chief, who together with the town chiefs sat on their National Council. They appointed a Choctaw Delegate to represent them to the US government in Washington, DC. By the 1831 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, those Choctaw who chose to stay in the newly formed state of Mississippi were to be considered state and U. S. citizens. Article 14 in the 1830 treaty with the Choctaw stated Choctaws may wish to become citizens of the United States under the 14th Article of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek on all of the combined lands which were consolidated under Article I from all previous treaties between the United States and the Choctaw. During the American Civil War, the Choctaw in both Oklahoma and Mississippi sided with the Confederate States of America; the Confederacy had suggested to their leaders that it would support a state under Indian control if it won the war. After the Civil War, the Mississippi and Louisiana Choctaw fell into obscurity for some time.
The Choctaw in Oklahoma no longer considered the Mississippi Choctaw part of the Choctaw Nation. However, Jack Amos challenged the Choctaw Nation's stance at the turn of the 20th century. In 1978, the United Supreme Court of the United States held that all remnants of the Choctaw Nation are entitled to all rights of the federally recognized Nation; the American Indian Policy Review Commission Final Report Volume I, Chapter 11, Page 468 on May 19, 1977 federally acknowledged/recognized the existence of the Choctaw Communities of Mobile and Washington Counties which are along the Tombigbee and Mobile Rivers where Choctaw Treaties were negotiated in various Choctaw Treaties. The Choctaw in Oklahoma struggled to build a nation, they opened an academy for girls in the 1840s. In the aftermath of the Dawes Act in the late 19th century, the US dissolved tribal governments in order to extinguish Indian land claims and admit the Indian and Oklahoma territories as a state in 1907. From that period, the US appointed chiefs of the Choctaw and other tribes in the former Indian Territory.
During World War I, Choctaw soldiers served in the U. S. military as the first Native American codetalkers, using the Choctaw language. After the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Choctaw reconstituted their government; the Choctaw Nation had kept their culture alive despite years of pressure for assimilation. The Choctaw are the third-largest federally recognized tribe. Since the mid-twentieth century, the Choctaw have created new institutions, such as a tribal college, housing authority, justice system. Today the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians are the federally recognized Choctaw tribes. Mississippi recognizes another band, smaller Choctaw groups are located in Louisiana and Texas; the Alabama Choctaw who are federally recognized under 24 C. F. R 1000 and 25 U. S. C. 4101 called the Native American Housing Self-Determination Act of 1986 under which the United States Federal Government jointly owns the MOWA Choctaw Indian Reservation as land held in trust as a reservation and for the MOWA Ba
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