"SWEET HOME ALABAMA"(the classic Lynyrd Skynyrd rock ballad) very much in my mind describes the wildlife riches found in the State we call Alabama during the 16th through mid 19th Centuries..............A fascinating history of De Soto's intial conquest of the regions Tribes..............the robust commerce and ultimately crushing blows that the fur trade wrought on the Indian Nations..................and descriptions of the wolves, cougars, bears, elk, buffalo, etc that inhabited the region in prodigious numbers

Early Historic Indians, Native Animals and European Explorers of The Warrior Mountains inAlabama
De Soto's 1540 Invasion of North America
De Soto departed Mabila on November 14, 1540, and moved northward to the Black Warrior River. The country he traveled is today US Hwy 43 from Grove Hill to Thomasville, Dixons Mill, Linden, and Old Spring Hill. From Old Spring Hill, De Soto passed a few miles east of Demopolis toward Greeneburg and crossed the Black Warrior River where he found four Indian villages. From these villages, De Soto moved north and then west through present day Eutaw in Green County, and from there across the Sipsey River. They passed near Carrolton in Pickens County and moved across the present day Alabama state line into Mississippi.
     De Soto was the first European to discover the Tennessee River, the Coosa, the Tallapoosa, the Alabama, the Black Warrior, the Sipsey River, the Tombigbee, and many lesser creeks and streams of Alabama (Summersell, 1981).
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Trade between Southeastern Indians and Europeans
     Trade between Europeans and Alabama Indians was based largely on the barter on animal skins (furs and hides).  An Indian could swap 30 deerskins for a new rifle.  With rifles obtained through fur trade, the Indians in Lawrence County and North Alabama became more proficient in killing game.
     Native animals such as whitetail deer, black bear, eastern elk became depleted throughout the Southeastern United States.  The commercialized fur trade with the Indians and afterward with early settlers lead to the extirpation of these magnificent animals from Lawrence County and North Alabama by the early 1900's.
          The main items of trade were deerskins and Indian slaves.   In the short term, the trade in deerskins and Indian slaves was a way in which the British could market some of their manufactured goods- guns, tomahawks, hoes, brass kettles, knives, rum, beads, hawk bells, and cloth.  In the long term, it was their way of reducing them to dependent status and of disrupting and destroying them.  The Indians found that they could not exist without cloths, tools, and ammunition.  As the traders became economically necessary to the Indians, they found they could manipulate the Indian.  The traders lived dangerous lives; more often than not the Indians hated them.  Spurred by economic necessity the Indians very rapidly depleted the deer population.
     From 1699 to 1715, Carolina exported an average of 54,000 deerskins per year.  The greatest number of deerskins in any one year was 121,355 in 1707.  In addition to trading for skins, Southeastern traders continued doing business in Indian slaves.  In 1708, the total population of South Carolina was 9,580 including 2,900 blacks, and 1,400 Indian slaves.  In 1712, an Indian man or woman sold for 18 to 20 pounds.  The French justified Indian slavery on the ground that it saved them from cruel deaths at the hands of their enemies.
     The Yamasee War, caused over trade, was a widespread revolt against the Carolina traders by the Creeks, Coctaws, some Cherokees and some of the Indian who lived along the Savannah River.  Because of the war, the Indians found themselves in debt.  In 1711 an estimated debt to the traders amounted to 100,000 deerskins; this meant that each male Indian found themselves in debt for about two years of his labor.  The deerskin trade crumbled during the hostilities and it was not fully rebuilt until 1722.  After the war, British power waned and French and Spanish power was enhanced.  The Lower Creeks allowed the French to build Fort Toulouse on the Alabama River in 1717.  Unlicensed traders "the lowest people" used rum to get the Creeks and Cherokees drunk and then cheated them out of their deerskins (Swanton, 1987).
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 The Removal of The Warrior Mountain Indians

     For some 12,000 years prior to the early 1800's, the entire area throughout the Warrior Mountains was inhabited, controlled, and ruled by our aboriginal ancestors.  Through the early European explorations of De Soto in 1540, other adventurous expeditions/military campaigns, and encroachments by early settlers, native peoples were weakened by the ravages of disease and wars that wiped out entire villages and towns.  The tragic stage for the decimation of our Warrior Mountain Indian people was finally set after some 275 years of fighting these diseases and wars brought about by the greed of the European settlers.
     The High Town or Ridge Path followed the east-west Continental Divide through the Warrior Mountains and was occupied home lands of the Chickasaws and Cherokees around the 1750's.  Long before their occupation, the Tennessee Valley was claimed as hunting territory for both tribes.  The southern drainages of the Divide were occupied by  Creeks  when De Soto marched his army through Alabama in 1540.   It was the lands in the heart of the Warrior Mountains that Creek people had called home for hundreds of years.
     Finally, Indian culture began to crumble from the European onslaught and pressure.  The first native lands of the Warrior Mountains were threatened by the Cotton Gin Treaty of 1806.  Later, the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814 took all theCreek homelands in the Warrior Mountains, south of the High Town Path.   Within two years, the Turkey Town Treaty of September 16 & 18, 1816, had taken the last remnants of ' native lands in the Warrior Mountains.
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Historic Animals of The Warrior Mountains

     Hunting parties, an important part of wilderness life, provided a means of obtaining meat for hungry families, hides and furs which could be traded for goods, and the thrill of the hunt along with the fellowship of friends and neighbors.  However, unregulated hunting practices began taking their toll on the native wildlife.  Between 1890 and 1910 big game species were eliminated from the Warrior Mountains and most of Alabama by "over hunting".  This tragedy is believed to have eliminated wildlife such as the whitetail deer, the black bear, the Timber Wolf (Grey Wolf), the Black Wolf, the Red Wolf, the Eastern Cougar, the Elk, and the Eastern Bison (Buffalo).

Whitetail Deer

     After the last original Warrior Mountains whitetail deer was eliminated from the forest, this herd was restocked with a northern subspecies of deer during the 1920's.  Again in the 1990's, deer from South Alabama were restocked in the Black Warrior Wildlife Management Area.

     Timber Wolf

    Tthe last known Timber Wolf of Bankhead was killed during snowy weather in the Hurricane Creek area in 1910 by William Straud Riddle.  In the early days of this county, Wolf scalps could be used in the payment of taxes.  Notice the following law:

ACTS OF ALABAMA 1835 SESSION.
ACT NO. 123 Pages 119, 120

     "After passage of this Act, it shall be lawful for Tax Collectors of Franklin and Lawrence Counties to receive all wolf scalps in payment of any county tax due from any person in the county, on prior affidavit made before an acting Justice of the Peace that the wolves were killed in Franklin or Lawrence County, as the case may be - Scalps received at the following rate; all scalps under one year $1.00; all scalps one year and upward $1.50.  Tax Collectors of each county to return affidavits with scalps to the County Treasurer as money for any county tax due from them as tax collectors - no money to be paid our for scalps; only receive scalps in payment of taxes."

     Three species of Wolves were known to exist in Bankhead Forest:  Grey, Black, and Red Wolves.  The last known Black Wolf was shot in 1917 and is now considered extinct.  The Red Wolf is recovering from the verge of extinction with one small pack re-established in Cades Cove of the Smokey Mountains National Park.  The Timber or Grey Wolf if found only in the northern portion of the United States.

Bear and Panther

     The Black Bear and Eastern Cougar were eliminated from Bankhead as a breeding population in the early 1900's.  Specific information about the demise of the last bear and cougar in Bankhead is unknown, however, many mountaineers tell stories of encounters their grandparents had with bears and panthers during the early 1800's.  Reports of bears and cougars still persist to this very day, but no known population of either exist in the Warrior Mountains.

 The Eastern Elk

Inhabited the Appalachian Mountains into Alabama in the early 1800's.  The elk were rapidly eliminated by Indian and early settler hunters.  The Eastern Elk were killed out in the state Tennessee by 1870.   No known record exists on the demise of eastern elk in the Warrior Mountains of Lawrence County.

 

Eastern Bison or Buffalo

     The Eastern Bison or Buffalo ranged from the Great Lakes into Alabama.  The Eastern Buffalo was much larger than the Western Buffalo and was very black.  The last known Eastern Bison were killed in West Virginia in 1825.