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Alabama Indians built a stockade to challenge De Soto
Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121
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After De Soto and his companions had left the Chickasaw, by whom they had been severely handled, they reached a small village called Limamu2 by Ranjel and Alimamu3 by Elvas. This was on April 26, 1541. Biedma says nothing of the village, but states that they set out toward the northwest for a province called Alibamo.4 On Thursday they came to a plain where was a stockaded fort defended by many Indians. According to Biedma the Indians had built this stockade across the trail the Spaniards were to take merely to try their strength, though having nothing whatever to defend. l It is evident that no women or children were there, but it is most likely that the place was a stockaded town from which the noncombatants had been removed in anticipation of the arrival of the Spaniards. Elvas gives quite a lively picture of this fort and the Indians within. He says: "Many were armed, walking upon it, with their bodies, legs, and arms painted and ochred, red, black, white, yellow, and vermilion in stripes, so that they appeared to have on stockings and doublet. Some wore feathers and others horns on the head; the face blackened, and the eyes encircled with vermilion, to heighten their fierce aspect. So soon as they saw the Christians draw nigh they beat drums, and, with loud yells, in great fury came forth to meet them." After a sharp engagement the Spaniards drove these Indians from their position with considerable loss, but were prevented from following up their success by an unfordable river behind the stockade, across which the greater part of the Indians escaped. Garcilasso, who, as usual, passes this entire affair under a magnifying glass, calls the fort "Fort Alibamo,"2 but it so happens that not one of the three standard authorities applies this term to it. Two of them, as we have seen, give the name to a small village in which they had camped two days earlier. Nevertheless Biedma's reference to a "Province of Alibamo" seems to indicate that the Spaniards were actually in a region occupied by Alabama Indians, although we do not know whether the entire tribe was present or only one section of it. It has been supposed by some that the Ulibahali mentioned before the great Mobile encounter were the later Alabama or constituted an Alabama town, but while it is true that the name bears some resemblance to that of a possible Alabama town, the Alabama word for village being ola, it is quite certain that we must seek in it the name of a true Muskogee town.4 After 1541 the Alabama disappear entirely from sight until the French settlement of Louisiana, when [in March 1702] we find them located in their well-known later historic seats on the upper course of the river which bears their name. (Swanton)
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