Extinction by Reclassification: The MOWA Choctaws of South Alabama and Their Struggle for Federal Recognition
Page 163

In the 1930s, Carl Carmer, a professor at the University of Alabama and author of Stars Fell on Alabama, traveled around Alabama collecting unusual stories. He said that he chose "to write of Alabama not as a state which is part of a nation, but as a strange country in which I once lived."¹ One of his stories describes his efforts to determine the ancestry of the so-called Cajuns who lived around Citronelle in southwest Alabama. After encountering the "Cajuns" on a visit to the area, Carmer asked his host about their heritage:

"What's your theory of the origin of these people?"
"I can tell you as good a one as the next man. Which one do you want to hear?"
"Doesn't anybody know?"
"Try asking around, just for fun."
So, for two days, I asked around.
"Long time ago wasn't no folks on them sand flats. . . .
Them Cajans sprung up right out'n the ground. Some
say they come from animals-coons and foxes and
suchlike-but that ain't right. Just sprung up out'n the ground."²
 

Jacqueline Anderson Matte is a retired teacher and holds master's degrees in history and education from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a B.S. from Samford University. She lives in Birmingham. This presidential address was read at the annual meeting of the Alabama Historical Association in Fairhope, April 22, 2006.

1 Carl Carmer, Stars Fell on Alabama (New York, 1934), xiv.
2 Ibid., 258. Most Choctaw creation stories say the Choctaw people emerged from a hole in Nanih Waiya, a large mound in Winston County, Mississippi; see Jesse O. McKee and Jon A. Schlenker, The Choctaws: Cultural Evolution of a Native American Tribe (Jackson, 1980), 5-12.

The Alabama Review 59 (July 2006): 163-204.