The next morning the weather was such as made the _Dolphin's_ saloon
a more attractive place to her passengers than was her deck; so there
they all gathered and sat chatting cosily together till at length the
children began asking Grandma Elsie for another of her interesting
historical stories.
"I think it is Captain Raymond's turn to be narrator now," she said
with a smiling glance at him, "and I feel inclined to be one of the
audience."
"And I am inclined to be a listener to a story from you, mother," he
returned pleasantly; "or if you are unwilling to entertain us in that
way this morning, perhaps Cousin Ronald may feel inclined to do so."
"Thanks for the invitation, captain, but I would vastly prefer the rôle
of listener," was Mr. Lilburn's response to that, and after a moment's
silent consideration the captain said: "As we are now passing through
the Gulf of Mexico, some distance south of the States of Alabama and
Mississippi, I suppose a few passages from their history may prove
interesting and instructive to at least the younger members of my
audience. Shall I give them?"
The query seemed addressed to the children, and was promptly replied to
by a chorus of expressions of pleasure in the prospect; for all there
knew the captain to be an interesting narrator of historical events.
"I shall begin with Alabama, just now the nearer of the two States,"
he said. "The word Alabama signifies 'Here we rest.' It is an Indian
expression. Fernando de Soto was the first white man who ever entered
the State. That was in 1540. His coming displeased the Indians who
lived there and considered the country their own, therefore they
opposed his progress in several battles. He found them more civilized
than in other sections of America which he visited. Just above the
confluence of the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers they had a place called
Maubila, consisting of eighty handsome houses, each large enough to
contain a thousand men. Round about them was a high wall, made of
immense trunks of trees set deep in the ground and close together,
strengthened with cross-timbers and interwoven with large vines.
"De Soto and his men entered the town, and were presently treacherously
attacked by ten thousand of the Indians. The Spaniards resisted the
attack, and a battle ensued which lasted nine hours, and resulted in
the destruction of the town and the killing of six thousand Indians.
The Spaniards, too, suffered terribly, lost eighty men, forty-five
horses and all their baggage and camp equipage."
"So it was very bad for both armies, wasn't it, papa?" said Ned.
"Yes, it was, indeed," replied his father, "but the Spaniards were the
ones most to blame. This country belonged to the Indians; what right
had the Spaniards to come here and try to take it from them? Surely,
none at all. What presumption it was in the sovereigns of Europe to
give to whomsoever they pleased great tracts of land in America to
which they themselves had no real right.
"But to go back to my story. The Indians were desperate, and fought the
invaders, contesting every rood of the ground from the hour of their
landing. And naturally, whenever a Spaniard fell into their hands,
they returned cruelty for cruelty; and the Spaniards were very, very
cruel to men, women and children; but De Soto grew tired of having the
cruelty of his men returned upon them, therefore he invited a powerful
Creek chief to meet him for a friendly talk. But the chief scorned the
invitation, called the white men by the names they deserved, and gave
them warning that he would never cease making war upon them as long as
one of their hated race remained in the country. And both he and his
followers carried out their threat, resorting to ambush and stealthy
surprises, killing scores, whose heads they chopped off and carried on
the ends of poles.
"But some of this you have been told before in our talks over the
history of Florida.
"De Soto crossed Northern Georgia and Northeastern Alabama to Maubila,
where they had that terrific fight of which I have just told you. The
following winter was a severe one, passed by the Spaniards in the
country of the Chickasaws, around the tributaries of the Yazoo. In the
spring a furious engagement took place with the Chickasaws, in which
the Spaniards came near being annihilated. In April the forlorn remnant
began again tramping through the wilderness, blindly groping for the
land where De Soto had been told he would find great quantities of gold.
"In the month of May, 1541, De Soto and his men reached the bank of the
Mississippi River, above the mouth of the St. Francis. The men stood a
long time, gazing upon it with awe and admiration, for it is one of the
mightiest rivers of the world, and they were the first Europeans to see
it at any distance above its mouth."
"And did they stop there, papa?" asked Ned.
"No, my son; they were not yet ready to give up their search for gold
and for the Pacific Ocean, which they believed was now not far away."
"Didn't know much about geography, did they?" laughed Ned.
"No; scarcely anything of that of this continent," replied his father;
"but perhaps my little son is not much wiser now in regard to what was
then the condition of what is now this great country of ours. Can you
tell him, Grace, what it was at that time?"
"In 1540, papa? A wilderness peopled only by savages and wild beasts.
It was not until 1620 that the pilgrims came to Massachusetts. The
first settlement in Maryland was not made until 1631. Virginia's first
settlers came in 1607. But the French Huguenots planted a colony in
South Carolina as early as May, 1562, twenty years later than De Soto's
visit to Alabama. Georgia was the last settled of the thirteen original
colonies."
"And those thirteen colonies were all there was of our country at the
time of the Revolutionary War, weren't they?" asked Elsie Dinsmore.
"Yes," replied the captain; "thirteen colonies at the beginning of that
war, thirteen States before it ended.
"But to go back to the story of Alabama. It seems to have been left to
the Indians until the spring of 1682, when Robert Cavalier de la Salle
descended the Mississippi to its mouth, named the country Louisiana,
and took possession of it in the name of the King of France. All the
Mississippi valley was then claimed by France, but in 1763 she ceded
it to England. West Florida, from 1764 to 1781, included quite a good
deal of the present territory of Alabama and Mississippi. In May of
1779 Spain declared war against Great Britain, and the next March the
Spanish governor of Louisiana captured Mobile. In 1783 Great Britain
ceded to the United States all territory east of the Mississippi,
except Florida, which she ceded back to Spain.
"Alabama was at that time almost entirely in the occupation of the
Indians. There was a garrison of Spanish troops at Mobile, one at St.
Stephen's, on the Tombigbee, and there were trading posts at different
points in the South and West. And now the United States bought the
whole country west of what is now Georgia to the Mississippi, and in
1817 made it the Mississippi Territory. Fort Stoddard was built near
the confluence of the Alabama and Tombigbee. During the War of 1812
with Great Britain there was a great deal of fighting with the Indians
of Alabama. The Creeks were the principal tribe, and in 1812 they
were stirred up to war by Tecumseh, the celebrated Shawnee warrior.
In August they attacked Fort Mimms; the garrison made a desperate
resistance, but were overcome, and out of three hundred men, women and
children, only seventeen survived the massacre.
"This aroused the adjoining States to action. Generals Jackson,
Claiborn, Floyd and Coffee entered the Indian country and defeated the
Indians at Talladega, where two hundred and ninety of their warriors
were slain. In the same month (November) General Floyd attacked the
Creeks on their sacred ground, at Autossee. Four hundred of their
houses were burned and two hundred of their warriors killed, among
whom were the kings of Autossee and Tallahassee. The last stand of the
Creeks was at Horseshoe Bend, where the Indians fought desperately, but
were defeated with the loss of nearly six hundred men. The remaining
warriors submitted, and in 1814 a treaty of peace was made, and the
remainder of the Creeks have removed beyond the Mississippi.
"After that people poured in from Georgia, the two Carolinas,
Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The State grew rapidly in wealth
and population, so that in 1860 it was the fourth of the South in
importance and the second in the amount of cotton produced."
"It was a slave State, wasn't it, papa, and one that seceded in the
time of the Civil War?" asked Elsie Raymond.
"Yes; on the 11th of January, 1861, the State seceded from the Union
and joined the Southern Confederacy. A sad thing for her, for a
great deal of the desperate fighting took place within her borders.
The losses in the upper counties were immense, and raiding parties
frequently desolated the central ones. Forts Gaines and Morgan,
defending the entrance to Mobile Bay, were besieged and taken by the
United States forces in 1865, and in the same year the victory of
Mobile Bay, the severest naval battle of the war, was won by the
national forces under Admiral Farragut."
"But the folks there are not rebs any more, I suppose," remarked Ned in
a tone of inquiry.
"No, my son," replied the captain. "I believe the most, if not all, of
them are good Union people, now proud and fond of this great country,
the United States of America."