Alabama state

Louis Barrow, Lafayette); baseball players Henry "Hank" Aaron (Mobile),

Frank Lary (North-port), and Willie Mays (Fairfield); and sports announcer

Mel Alien (born Melvin Alien Israel, Birmingham).

HISTORY

At the time of Columbus, Alabama was inhabited by four main groups of

Indians. They were the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws.

Sometimes there were skirmishes resulting from border disputes. But usually the Indians lived in peace, hunting, fishing, and raising corn and vegetables on small plots of land.

Exploration and Settlement

During the early 1500's Spanish explorers sailed along the coast of the

Gulf of Mexico. But Europeans were not seen in the interior of Alabama until 1540, when Hernando de Soto passed through with a band of well-armed soldiers. De Soto forced the peaceful Indians to provide him with food and servants, and his harsh methods stirred up resentment. When he reached the land governed by the gigantic Choctaw chieftain, Tuskaloosa, he ran into trouble. De Soto captured the chief and took him to the tribe's strongly fortified village. Here the Indians rose up to free their chief. For many hours the bloody battle raged. The Spanish soldiers slaughtered Indian men, women, and children alike. When the battle was over, the village was in ruins and its population was destroyed. De Soto's troops also suffered heavy losses. Later, in 1559, Spanish colonists started a settlement on

Mobile Bay, but storms and other troubles caused the settlers to leave.

English traders from the Carolinas and Georgia traded with the Indians during the late 1600's, but the English made no permanent settlements in

Alabama at that time. In 1702 the French established Fort Louis on Mobile

Bay. This settlement was moved, in 1711, to the present site of Mobile. It became the first permanent white settlement in what is now Alabama.

During the 1700's the French and the British fought over the territory of which Alabama was a part. After the French and Indian War, the Treaty of Paris, in 1763, gave the territory to England. Spain, Georgia, and the

Carolinas still argued over who owned the land. It was not until 1813 that all of what is now Alabama passed into undisputed possession of the United

States and became part of the Mississippi Territory.

After 1800 more and more settlers came into Alabama from the states on the Atlantic Coast. The invention of the cotton gin and the growth of the cotton textile industry in England made cotton a valuable crop. The settlers grew cotton on most of the land that they cleared. But settling the territory was not without its perils. Much of the good farmland was already being used by the Indians, whose ways of living easily adapted to the settlers' ways. The Indians resisted the theft of their lands. The

Creeks, who held more than half the land in the

|IMPORTANT DATES |

|1540 Hernando de Soto marched across Alabama, |

|exploring and searching for gold. |

|1559 Tristan de Luna, Spanish colonizer, started a |