Ceramics and Glass Beads as Symbolic Mixed Media in Colonial Native North America

During the 17th and 18th centuries, Native Americans rarely adorned ceramic objects with glass beads, despite the millions of beads introduced by Europeans through trade. Bead-decorated ceramics have been reported from only nine sites in North America, perhaps due to a tendency for archaeologists to overlook or misclassify bead-inlaid pottery. The 40 artifacts represent widely divergent ethnic groups separated from each other culturally, as well as by great distances in space and time. Yet they display a remarkable consistency in the pattern of bead arrangement and use of color. Colored glass beads stand in for human eyes in effigy smoking pipes and white beads encircle the mouths of pottery vessels. Rather than examples of idiosyncratic coincidence, crafters of these objects communicated broadly shared ideological metaphors. These rare artifacts speak to the interconnectedness of ancient Native Americans and to related worldviews developed over centuries of intercommunication involving mutually intelligible symbolic metaphors

Cruise to the Site of Old Mobile

A one-of-a-kind excursion through the storied waters of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta as we journey to the original site of the town of Mobile, founded in 1702! Located along the banks of the Mobile River twenty-seven miles north of modern downtown, “Old Mobile” served as the capital of French Louisiana until it was relocated to the current site of Mobile in 1711. Dr. Gregory Waselkov, professor emeritus at the University of South Alabama and former director of USA’s Center for Archaeological Studies, was the guide through the streets of Alabama’s first European settlement. Dr. Waselkov has spent decades investigating and writing about this incredible site.https://jagworks.southalabama.edu/blakeley/1000/thumbnail.jp

Heterogeneity of early French and native forts, settlements, and villages: a comparison to Fort St. Pierre (1719-1729) in French colonial Louisiane.

Fort St. Pierre was a French fort built in 1719 along the Yazoo River near modern-day Vicksburg, Mississippi. The area was home to Yazoo, Koroa, and Ofogoula peoples who were being courted by British merchants supplying trade goods. Unlike many other French frontier forts, this fort was not centered on a religious mission site but instead was intended as a commercial settlement. Despite an auspicious start to the Fort St. Pierre community, the plantation concessions quickly moved operations south. Only a few French individuals and a much reduced military force remained in the Yazoo Bluffs. Fort St. Pierre became an isolated outpost that endured privation, sickness, and a lack of supplies until its final destruction after a massacre in late 1729. Retribution and subsequent French attacks on the Native groups emptied the Yazoo Bluffs region of both colonists and Native inhabitants for close to 100 years. The site of Fort St. Pierre was excavated between 1974 and 1977. For this dissertation project I used new research questions to re-examine the whole artifact collection and field notes. First, I applied a generalizing site assemblage comparison approach using correspondence analysis to determine artifact patterning at contemporaneous French and Native forts, villages, and settlements throughout the Mississippi River corridor. Second, I applied a more individualizing approach to the inhabitants of Fort St. Pierre and their Native neighbors using architecture and associated artifacts, historical maps and documents, and firsthand accounts. This culminated in a chapter discussing daily life, French and Native interactions, and Fort St. Pierre as a failed colonial and sociopolitical endeavor. My project contributes to the field of anthropology by placing the history and events of this fort within the larger narrative of French and Native interactions along the Mississippi River Corridor, as well as providing a mixed-methods approach to whole sites and assemblages which results in a more complete picture of the past, specifically at the case study site of Fort St. Pierre. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Andrew jackson and the Indians, 1767-1815

Andrew Jackson's experience with the Indians was an ambivalent relationship. From his childhood along the South Carolina-North Carolina border through his two terms as president, he had extensive interaction with both friendly and enemy Indians. As a child in South Carolina, Jackson grew up around the peaceful Catawba Indians. During the American War for Independence he served as a scout alongside the Catawbas as members of his community fought the British and their Indian allies from the west, most notably the Cherokees. Serving in this capacity he learned the value of Indian alliances that he carried with him throughout his professional, military, and political career. Jackson came into direct contact with the Indians as he moved to Tennessee, as a young lawyer and businessman. In the western territory, various Indian tribes claimed the land the Whites were settling. Jackson learned to distinguish between the tribes that were recognized by the United States government as having legitimate claims to land and those that were not. Several tribes, particularly the Creeks and the Chickamaugas, a dissident faction of the Cherokees, frequently raided the White settlements in Tennessee, forcing Jackson to fight the Indians in defense of his community. He became an Indian fighter out of necessity and fought the enemy Indians while aligning with the friendly Chickasaws. During the Creek War and the War of 1812, Jackson applied his experience of using friendly Indian tribes to defeat the British and their Indian allies. He rewarded those who were loyal and punished those who joined Britain. He carried this experience to his post-war career as Indian agent, and later, as president, negotiating dozens of treaties with the Indians as he insisted upon removal as the best policy. In these treaties he exchanged federal territory west of the Mississippi River for Indian land in the east. Although he is most well-known for signing the Indian Removal Act, he promoted the rights of Indians at times as he allowed Indian citizenship, encouraged intermarriage between Whites and Indians, frequently had Indian leaders as guests in his home, and adopted an Indian child. He advocated for removal through the exchange of land in treaties to preserve tribal autonomy. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries