Tallapoosa

  Beneath the oak is a modest stone, marking a subtle mound with a new stand of spring clover and good grass. The mound unmistakably is a grave.

  Beyond the tree rest the charred foundations of two burned cabins. A bridge that once crossed a small stream running between the destroyed cabins has also been burned. Too, a livestock shelter and a smokehouse behind the cabins. An annoyed mockingbird screeches from a low limb of the big oak. A pair of bluebirds flit about on the stone chimney of one of the cabin hulks.

  New brush in every opening threatens to return the clearing to the wilderness. Shoots of pine, hickory, oak, poplar, and other tree varieties peek from hideaways among the weeds where the seeds fell at random the previous autumn. Prickly vines twist among wild flowers. Greenery and freshness abound. Nature has again painted the Tallapoosa banks and bluffs with beauty and splendor.

  A horseman emerges from the woods on the weed covered road to the ruined compound. Two more riders follow, leading a mule pulling a heavily laden cart. Behind the cart walk a tethered milk cow and a goat.

  The riders are two men and a redhaired woman with a small child riding on the saddle before her. They stop in the front yard of the first cabin site, dismount, look briefly and sadly at the destroyed buildings, then turn and walk to the grave.

  After allowing Menawa and Hromarii another day of recovery, Saul and Cal gave them one of the Murph canoes, helped them into it, and sent them on their way to Ipisoga. All agreed that the two Creek warriors should be safer there than with the Murphs.

  Anticipating further turmoil and danger in the wake of the Horseshoe battle, the Murphs had decided to flee to the Holman farm. Once there they were reluctant to return until they felt assured of their safety.

  In early summer Saul and Cal left Adelin and Anna with the Holmans and journeyed to Huntsville. There they registered charges against Sergeant Barnes and his squad, though they knew the incident would never be investigated. They sought news from the region and learned that General Jackson had accepted the surrender of Chief Red Eagle, one of the principal Red Stick leaders, on behalf of most of the Upper Muskogi Nation. Red Eagle, known by his English name as William Weatherford, had marched voluntarily into Jackson’s camp at the confluence of the Tallapoosa and Coosa rivers and offered himself and his warriors in exchange for mercy and aid for his starving followers. Red Eagle conceded the futility of the Red Stick cause and the unbearable stress to his Muskogi people. He petitioned Jackson for an end to the fighting.

  Saul and Cal received the news with conflicting emotions. They were glad that the fighting was over; too many lives had already been lost. But they knew Jackson’s victory meant an upheaval for the Muskogi community that they had grown to respect. Wonderful friends had been killed at the Horseshoe. They feared that the attitudes of those Indian friends left might forever be poisoned by bitterness.

  After a week in Huntsville, the brothers returned to the Holman farm. Since it was too late to plant crops on the Tallapoosa, and also because some uncertainty remained, they decided to stay with the Holmans until the next spring.

  Baby Anna did not lack for care and attention. Mrs. Holman and Bess Marie could not do enough for her. Daniel Holman regarded her as a granddaughter. Anna passed a very happy first year, oblivious to the fate of her mother.

  With the coming of the spring of 1815, the Murphs loaded the cart to its limit and eagerly headed back to the Tallapoosa. They did not know what awaited them, but they knew that was where they belonged.

  The Murphs linger a long time over the grave, talking softly. Finally, they drift to the edge of the bluff and survey the river below.

  The child reaches down and picks up a pebble. With the awkwardness of her fourteen months she flings it toward the river. The pebble hits halfway down the slope of the bluff, bounces onto the gravel of the bank, and trickles into the water. The little girl squeals with delight at her achievement.

  Water flows from the north and expends energy as it spills onto and around the treacherous rocks. A broken tree limb floats to the head of the shoals and drops through churning ripples and eddies. It escapes from each crag lurking to trap it and slides into flat water at the foot of the shoals to continue its journey down the busy but tranquil stream.

  “This is still a wonderful place,” observes Adelin quietly.

  “Yes,” agrees Cal, “as beautiful as ever. And it is home.”

  “Always will be,” says Saul. He reaches down, picks up his daughter, and hugs her. “Let’s get to work.”

  Epilogue

  The Tallapoosa River, 1815 and beyond

  The Murphs rebuilt their cabins and other structures, bigger and stronger than ever. Within a year, another family had settled a mile downriver. Shortly after, another upriver. In a few years a significant enough number of farms and hunters’ cabins had grown around the Murphs for the residents to regard themselves a village, albeit a widely scattered one.

  Eventually, Saul married another Muskogi woman. They had several brothers and sisters for Anna, but the family never forgot Soosquana. Those that had known her revered her memory, and those that came later honored her heritage and that of her people. Cal and Adelin soon had their first child, then several others. In a few busy years the Murph compound was transformed into a thriving community.

  The Tallapoosa River basin and all other land between the Coosa and Chattahoochee still belonged to the Creeks. That vast acreage was not included in the cessions won by General Jackson in the surrender of the Red Sticks in 1814. Nevertheless, settlers came, begrudged by the Creeks but not often physically opposed. Incidents were few.

  Menawa survived his wounds and lived a long and controversial life, becoming an emissary for the Muskogi Nation in continuous and losing negotiations with the United States government over Muskogi lands. He died in 1835 after forced emigration to the Oklahoma Territory.

  Hromarii was never heard from again. The Murphs speculated that his leg was so badly infected that it probably had to be amputated, or that perhaps it eventually killed him.

  The fate of Soosquana’s brothers, Tolokika and Ettepti-lopa, and Meeskapa, Pokkataw’s friend, remains uncertain. It is probable that they died among the approximately nine hundred Creek fatalities in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, as history has named the incident. In no other fight in American lore did more native Americans fall than at Cholocco Litabixi, the Horseshoe, on March 27, 1814.

  As a result of his victory over the Creeks, Andrew Jackson became an immediate hero and received the commission he coveted as a general officer of the regular United States Army. He was then awarded command of American forces in the successful defense of New Orleans against the British. Jackson’s military exploits became the principal stepping stone to his eventual election to the presidency of the United States.

  Through the years, enough settlers clustered around the Murph settlement to form a town. The Murphs suggested it be named Soosquana. The citizens readily adopted the name and the happy little community thrived and grew.

  Throughout east central Alabama today there are dozens of place names of Muskogean origin — cities, towns, rivers, streams, landmarks. There are others with the flavor of Andrew Jackson. The city of Talladega took its name from Talatigi, where the second battle of Jackson’s campaign was fought. Other towns of Indian heritage include Wetumpka, Notasulga, Tuskegee, Loachapoka, Sylacauga, Opelika, and others.

  The three rivers of the region — Tallapoosa, Coosa, and Chattahoochee — have retained their Muskogi designations. So have most creeks, such as the Yufabi (Euphaupee or Uphapee), Saugahatchi, Hillabi, Emuckfau, Enitachopco, and Kailaidshi (Kowaliga), though various spellings still abound. The community of Jackson’s Gap lies near the Tallapoosa River not far from Horseshoe Bend.

  Montgomery County, the locale of Alabama’s capital city, carries the name of the intrepid Major Lemuel P. Montgomery of the Thirty-Ninth Infantry Regiment and Gen
eral Jackson’s “ . . . flower of my army.” (Oddly, the city itself is named after another unrelated military hero, Revolutionary War Brigadier General Richard Montgomery.)

  The State of Mississippi was admitted to the United States in 1817 and the Alabama country severed from it as the Alabama Territory.

  On December 14, 1819, the State of Alabama was created. All Tallapoosa River lands remained in the official hands of the Muskogi Nation. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson, in office only a year, signed the Indian Removal Act, an order that relegated all native Americans east of the Mississippi River to the Oklahoma Territory. In 1832, the United States Congress forced the Creeks to sign over all remaining claims to their ancestral homeland.

  From that time through 1838 the American government forcibly escorted tens of thousands of Creeks to their new homes in what are now Arkansas and Oklahoma. The Tallapoosa River basin was finally clear for the flood of white settlers that would follow.

  A Cherokee chief, Tsunulahunski, known to whites as Junaluska, was among those compelled to move to Oklahoma Territory. He had recruited and led a large contingent of Cherokee warriors “to exterminate the Creeks,” and had fought bravely at the Horseshoe. He and his Cherokee compatriots had been vital to General Coffee’s charges crossing the river and attacking the Red Sticks from the rear. However, he was often heard to vow after enforcement of the Indian Removal Act, “If I had known that Jackson would drive us from our homes, I would have killed him that day at the Horseshoe.”

  In 1959 Congress officially established Horseshoe Bend National Military Park at the site of the battle. It is located on Alabama Highway 49 in northern Tallapoosa County. Monuments and markers explain key locations and events of that terrible day.

  Major Lemuel P. Montgomery’s grave lies at the placement site of the Americans’ two cannon. It overlooks the field on which the Red Sticks’ barricade successfully resisted the artillery barrage but could not withstand the assault of Jackson’s infantry and militia.

  On December 31, 1926, Alabama Power Company dedicated giant Martin Dam across the Tallapoosa River, flooding over forty thousand acres under what is now Lake Martin. Only two towns had been established on or near the banks of the river stretching from well above the Horseshoe to its union with the Coosa to form the Alabama River. One of those towns was Tallassee, located at the future site of another dam at the great falls, and named after the Upper Creek warrior village of Talisi four miles downriver.

  The other town was a small farming community with a post office, bank, sawmill, gristmill, its own gold mine, and several other businesses.

  It was called Susanna, and it would be flooded by the waters of Lake Martin. Not much is known about the founding and early history of that fated community, now lost forever. But its location was in the vicinity of the beautiful bluff above the Tallapoosa River that the Murphs once made their home. Susanna was actually centered just to the south of the original Murph compound a few hundred yards up Blue Creek flowing from the east.

  Perhaps it is not too much to imagine, or too romantic, that the name Susanna might have been altered from its original Soosquana, and that Saul and Callister Murph’s little settlement was the first non-Indian town on the majestic Tallapoosa, ancient and revered homeland of the once-mighty Muskogi Nation.

  About the Author

  Larry Williamson spent his youth playing, exploring, and working on the banks of the Tallapoosa River, which splits his hometown of Tallassee, Alabama. He developed a lifelong fascination and love of the river and its rich heritage. An engineering graduate of Auburn University, he has taught high school math and coached football and track for more than thirty years.

  To learn more about Larry Williamson and Tallapoosa, visit www.newsouthbooks.com/tallapoosa.