Alabama Indian Tribes

Search Fold3 For Your Native American Ancestors:

Given: Surname:

Abihka

See Creek Confederacy and Muskogee.

Alabama

Perhaps connected with the native word "albina," meaning "to camp," or alba amo, "weed gatherer," referring to the black drink. See Alabama Location

Apalachee

A part of this tribe lived for a time among the Lower Creeks and perhaps in this State. Another section settled near Mobile and remained there until West Florida was ceded to Great Britain when they crossed the Mississippi. A few seem to have joined the Creeks and migrated with them to Oklahoma. (See Florida.)

Apalachicola

Very early this tribe lived on the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee Rivers, partly in Alabama. Sometime after 1715 they settled in Russell County, on the Chattahoochee River where they occupied at least two different sites before removing with the rest of the Creeks to the other side of the Mississippi. (See Georgia.)

Atasi

A division or sub-tribe of the Muskogee.

Chatot

This tribe settled near Mobile after having been driven from Florida and moved to Louisiana about the same time as the Apalachee. (See Florida.)

Cherokee

In the latter part of the eighteenth century some Cherokee worked their way down the Tennessee River as far as Muscle Shoals, constituting the Chickamauga band. They had settlements at Turkeytown on the Coosa, Willstown on Wills Creek, and Coldwater near Tuscumbia, occupied jointly with the Creeks and destroyed by the Whites in 1787. All of their Alabama territory was surrendered in treaties made between 1807 and 1835. (See Tennessee.)

Chickasaw

The Chickasaw had a few settlements in northwestern Alabama, part of which State was within their hunting territories. At one time they also had a town called Ooe-asa (Wi-aca) among the Upper Creeks. (See Mississippi.)

Choctaw

This tribe hunted over and occupied, at least temporarily, parts of southwestern Alabama beyond the Tombigbee. (See Mississippi.)

Creek Confederacy

This name is given to a loose organization which constituted the principal political element in the territory of the present States of Georgia and Alabama from very early times, probably as far back as the period of De Soto. It was built around a dominant tribe, or rather a group of dominant tribes, called Muskogee. The name Creek early became attached to these people because when they were first known to the Carolina colonists and for a considerable period afterward the body of them which the latter knew best was living upon a river, the present Ocmulgee, called by Europeans "Ocheese Creek." The Creeks were early divided geographically into two parts, one called Upper Creeks, on the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers; the other, the Lower Creeks, on the lower Chattahoochee and Ocmulgee. The former were also divided at times into the Coosa branch or Abihka and the Tallapoosa branch and the two were called Upper and Middle Creeks respectively. Bartram ( 1792) tends to confuse the student by denominating all of the true Creeks "Upper Creeks" and the Seminole "Lower Creeks." The dominant Muskogee gradually gathered about them--and to a certain extent under them--the Apalachicola, Hitchiti, Okmulgee, Sawokli, Chiaha, Osochi, Yuchi, Alabama, Tawasa, Pawokti, Muklasa, Koasati, Tuskegee, a part of the Shawnee, and for a time some Yamasee, not counting broken bands and families from various quarters. The first seven of the above were for the most part among the Lower Creeks, the remainder with the Upper Creeks. (For further information, see the separate tribal names under Alabama, Georgia and Florida.)

Eufaula

A division or sub-tribe of the Muskogee.

Fus-hatchee

A division of the Muskogee.

Hilibi

A division or sub-tribe of the Muskogee.

Hitchiti

This tribe lived for considerable period close to, and at times within, the present territory of Alabama along its southeastern margin. (See Georgia.)

Kan-hatki

A division of the Muskogee.

Kealedji

A division of the Muskogee.

Koasati

Meaning unknown; often given as Coosawda and Coushatta, and sometimes abbreviated to Shati.

Kolomi

A division of the Muskogee.

Mobile

Meaning unknown, but Halbert ( 1901) suggests that it may be from Choctaw moeli, "to paddle," since Mobile is pronounced moila by the Indians. It is the Mabila, Mauilla, Mavila, or Mauvila of the De Soto chroniclers. See Mobile Location

Muklasa

Meaning in Alabama and Choctaw, "friends," or "people of one nation."

Connections. Since the Muklasa did not speak Muskogee and their name is from the Koasati, Alabama, or Choctaw language, and since they were near neighbors of the two former, it is evident that they were connected with one or the other of them.

Location. On the south bank of Tallapoosa River in Montgomery County. (See Florida and Oklahoma.)

History. When we first hear of the Muklasa in 1675 they were in the position above given and remained there until the end of the Creek-American War, when they are said to have emigrated to Florida in a body. Nothing is heard of them afterward, however, and although Gatschet (1884) states that there was a town of the name in the Creek Nation in the west in his time, I could learn nothing about it when I visited the Creeks in 1911-12.

Population. In 1760 the Muklasa are said to have had 50 men, in 1761, 30, and in 1792, 30. These are the only figures available regarding their numbers.

Muskogee

Meaning unknown, but perhaps originally from Shawnee and having reference to swampy ground. To this tribe the name Creeks was ordinarily applied. See Muskogee Location

Napochi

If connected with Choctaw Napissa, as seems not unlikely, the name means those who see, or those who look out, probably equivalent to frontiersmen.

Connection. They belonged to the southern division of the Muskhogean proper, and were seemingly nearest to the Choctaw.

Location. Along Black Warrior River.

History. The tribe appears first in the account of an attempt to colonize the Gulf States in 1559 under Don Tristan de Luna. A part of his forces being sent inland from Pensacola Bay came to Coosa in 1560 and assisted its people against the Napochi, whom they claimed to have reduced to allegiance to the former. After this the Napochi seem to have left the Black Warrior, and we know nothing certain of their fate, but the name was preserved down to very recent times among the Creeks as a war name, and it is probable that they are the Napissa spoken of by Iberville in 1699, as having recently united with the Chickasaw. Possibly the Acolapissa of Pearl River and the Quinipissa of Louisiana were parts of the same tribe.

Population. Unknown.

Connection in which they have become noted. The only claim the Napochi have to distinction is their possible connection with the remarkable group of mounds at Moundville, Hale County, Ala.

Natchez

One section of the Natchez Indians settled among the the Abihka Creeks near Coosa River after 1731 and went to Oklahoma a century later with the rest of the Creeks. (See Mississippi.)

Okchai

A division of the Muskogee.

Okmulgee

A Creek tribe and town of the Hitchiti connection. (See Georgia.)

Osochi

Meaning unknown. See Osochi Location

Pakana

A division of the Muskogee.

Pawokti

This tribe moved from Florida to the neighborhood of Mobile along with the Alabama Indians and afterward established a town on the upper course of Alabama River. Still later they were absorbed into the Alabama division of the Creek Confederacy. (See Florida.)

Pilthlako

A division of the Creeks, probably related to the Muskogee, and possibly a division of the Okchai.

Sawokli

Possibly meaning "raccoon people," in the Hitchiti language, and, while this is not absolutely certain, the okli undoubtedly means "people."

Shawnee

In 1716 a band of Shawnee from Savannah River moved to the Chattahoochee and later to the Tallapoosa, where they remained until early in the nineteenth century. A second band settled near Sylacauga in 1747 and remained there until sometime before 1761 when they returned north. (See Tennessee.)

Taensa

This tribe was moved from Louisiana in 1715 and given a location about 2 leagues from the French fort at Mobile, one which had been recently abandoned by the Tawasa, along a watercourse which was named from them Tensaw River. Soon after the cession of Mobile to Great Britain, the Taensa returned to Louisiana. (See Louisiana.)

Tohome

Said by Iberville to mean "little chief," but this is evidently an error. See Tohome Location

Tukabahchee

One of the four head tribes of the Muskogee.

Tuskegee

Meaning unknown, but apparently containing the Alabama term taska, "warrior." See Tuskegee Location

Wakokai

A division or sub-tribe of the Muskogee.

Wiwohka

A division of the Muskogee made up from several different sources. (See Muskogee.)

Yamasee

There was a band of Yamasee on Mobile Bay shortly after 1715, at the mouth of Deer River, and such a band is entered on maps as late as 1744. It was possibly this same band which appears among the Upper Creeks during the same century and in particular is entered upon the Mitchell map of 1755. Later they seem to have moved across to Chattahoochee River and later to west Florida, where in 1823 they constituted a Seminole town. (See Florida.)

Yuchi

A band of Yuchi seems to have lived at a very early date near Muscle Shoals on Tennessee River, whence they probably moved into east Tennessee. A second body of the same tribe moved from Choctawhatchee River, Fla., to the Tallapoosa before 1760 and established themselves near the Tukabahchee, but they soon disappeared from the historical record. In 1715 the Westo Indians, who I believe to have been Yuchi, settled on the Alabama side of Chattahoochee River, probably on Little Uchee Creek. The year afterward another band, accompanied by Shawnee and Apalachicola Indians, established themselves farther down, perhaps at the mouth of Cowikee Creek in Barbour County, and not long afterward accompanied the Shawnee to Tallapoosa River. They settled beside the latter and some finally united with them. They seem to have occupied several towns in the neighborhood in succession and there is evidence that a part of them reached the lower Tombigbee. The main body of Yuchi shifted from the Savannah to Uchee Creek in Russell County between 1729 and 1740 and continued there until the westward migration of the Creek Nation. (See Georgia.)

Resources:

• The Great Indian War

• Alabama Indians in Texas

• Alabama Indian Villages, Towns and Settlements

• Indians Who Served in the War, World War II

Notes About the Book:

Source: The Indian Tribes of North America, by John R. Swanton, 1953, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 145, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC.

Online Publication: The manuscript was scanned and then ocr'd. Minimal editing has been done, and readers can and should expect some errors in the textual output.

  Back to:   Free Genealogy > Indian Genealogy > Indian Tribe by Location