Native American

Native American. Chokma! (Hello in Chickasaw). People have lived in northwest Alabama since the end of the Pleistocene, around 11,500 years ago. The earliest inhabitants were mobile hunter-gatherers who tracked game and foraged among local plants in the Tennessee Valley's developing forests. Native Americans often used cave entrances and overhanging stone bluff edges as short-term hunting camps., The indigenous people of Alabama prospered during the following Archaic Period, ranging from 10,500 to 3,000 years ago. Many things changed during this time. A complex network of trade relationships connected people living down or even hundreds of miles apart. Nani` (fish) and other river foods supplemented a diet of meat and cultivated plants. At the same time, different communities produced uniquely designed pottery for cooking, storage, and ceremony., Between 800 and 1600 AD, trade and crop cultivation produced a food surplus, especially in tunchi (corn). With more free time, men and women devoted their energies to artisan trades, such as pottery making, stone tool production, and even copper working. Powerful minko (leaders) led independent political entities called chiefdoms in what we now call the Mississippian Period. Chiefdoms often displayed their influence by constructing monumental shintok (mounds) such as the Florence Indian Mound, for burials, minko` houses, or religious structures., As Euro-American settlement began, white settlers increasingly pressured Native Americans to give up their land. A series of land treaties with the federal government starting in the mid-1810s further eroded indigenous control over their North Alabama homes. Those treaties culminated in the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which saw Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole peoples forcefully removed from their Southeastern homelands and marched west to Oklahoma. Today, though, the Chickasaw Nation continues to preserve the history and heritage of its northwestern Alabama homeland, an homage to the itikba (ancestors) who lived among the same hills and valleys for hundreds of years., Captions , (Photo #1) The Florence Indian Mound is an example of a platform mound. Indigenous peoples of the Copena culture constructed mounds for all sorts of purposes, including for ceremonies or burials. (Courtesy of University of North Alabama, Collier Library Archives and Special Collections) , (Photo #2) Native Americans produced stone tools of all shapes and sizes. Some tools worked well as spear points, while others functioned as portable skinning knives for wild game. (Courtesy of the University of Alabama Museums) , (Photo #3) Fish and mussels fed the thousands of Native Americans living along the waterways of northwest Alabama. Bone fishhooks helped hunter-gatherers harvest food from the river. (Courtesy of the University of Alabama Museums) , (Photo #4) Nomadic hunter-gatherers used caves such as this one in Colbert County as temporary camps or cold-weather shelters. (Courtesy of the University of Alabama Museums) , (Photo #5) The Indigenous people of northwest Alabama crafted various tools from animal bones. This collection of implements discovered in Morgan County features awls, hide scrapers, needles, and pins. (Courtesy of the University of Alabama Museums)