26-02-2025
- Politics
- National Geographic
What Black history has to do with the Cretaceous period
A map that shows fortifications and troop positions during war with Native Americans in 1814.
Map via Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division
It was here in 1814, during the War of 1812, that General Andrew Jackson came to national prominence by defeating the Muscogee Indians. The Native People who had settled on the land surrounding the Tallapoosa River watershed, offered the last resistance against the expansion of the newly founded United States of America into this southeastern corner of the continent.
(These national park trails were created by America's first Black soldiers)
After the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, the Treaty of Fort Jackson ceded more than 23 million acres of Native land to the U.S. Government and opened the Mississippi Territory for pioneer settlement. This area ultimately created the states we now call Alabama and Georgia. It has been suggested by historians that this is where the South as we know it today begins.
This was a geographic flash point of American history. After the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, the Muscogee Indians were summarily displaced and sent to reservations in Oklahoma and other points on the map west of the Mississippi River. From 1816 to 1840 native people were forced to travel west along a path known commonly as the Trail of Tears.
Once removed, Native People were replaced with white settlers who quickly discovered the rich soil in this location was perfect for the cultivation of cash crops such as indigo, corn, rice and cotton. In letters to his wife, Rachel, Andrew Jackson writes about the soil of Alabama: "The lands through which we passed are some of the richest this country can boast—well watered and abundantly fertile, they will no doubt soon be settled by a happy and prosperous people."
