front cover of Red Eagle's Children
Red Eagle's Children
Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al.
Edited by J. Anthony Paredes and Judith Knight
University of Alabama Press, 2012

Red Eagle’s Children presents the legal proceedings in an inheritance dispute that serves as an unexpected window on the intersection of two cultural and legal systems: Creek Indian and Euro-American.

Case 1299: Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al. appeared in the Chancery Court of Mobile in 1846 when William “Red Eagle” Weatherford’s son by the Indian woman Supalamy sued his half siblings fathered by Weatherford with two other Creek women, Polly Moniac and Mary Stiggins, for a greater share of Weatherford’s estate. While the court recognized William Jr. as the son of William Sr., he nevertheless lost his petition for inheritance due to the lack of legal evidence concerning the marriage of his biological mother to William Sr. The case, which went to the Alabama Supreme Court in 1851, provides a record of an attempt to interrelate and, perhaps, manipulate differences in cultures as they played out within the ritualized, arcane world of antebellum Alabama jurisprudence.
 
Although the case has value in the classic mold of salvage ethnography of Creek Indian culture, Red Eagle’s Children, edited by J. Anthony Paredes and Judith Knight, shows that its more enduring value lies in being a source for historical ethnography—that is, for anthropological analyses of cultural dynamics of the past
events that complement the narratives of professional historians.
 
Contributors
David I. Durham / Robbie Ethridge / Judith
Knight / J. Anthony Paredes / Paul M. Pruitt
Jr. / Nina Gail Thrower / Robert Thrower /
Gregory A. Waselkov
 
[more]
front cover of Tohopeka
Tohopeka
Rethinking the Creek War and the War of 1812
Edited by Kathryn E. Holland Braund
University of Alabama Press, 2012
Tohopeka contains a variety of perspectives and uses a wide array of evidence and approaches, from scrutiny of cultural and religious practices to literary and linguistic analysis, to illuminate this troubled period.
 
Almost two hundred years ago, the territory that would become Alabama was both ancient homeland and new frontier where a complex network of allegiances and agendas was playing out. The fabric of that network stretched and frayed as the Creek Civil War of 1813-14 pitted a faction of the Creek nation known as Red Sticks against those Creeks who supported the Creek National Council.  The war began in July 1813, when Red Stick rebels were attacked near Burnt Corn Creek by Mississippi militia and settlers from the Tensaw area in a vain attempt to keep the Red Sticks’ ammunition from reaching the main body of disaffected warriors. A retaliatory strike against a fortified settlement owned by Samuel Mims, now called Fort Mims, was a Red Stick victory.  The brutality of the assault, in which 250 people were killed, outraged the American public and “Remember Fort Mims” became a national rallying cry.
 
During the American-British War of 1812, Americans quickly joined the war against the Red Sticks, turning the civil war into a military campaign designed to destroy Creek power. The battles of the Red Sticks have become part of Alabama and American legend and include the famous Canoe Fight, the Battle of Holy Ground, and most significantly, the Battle of Tohopeka (also known as Horseshoe Bend)—the final great battle of the war. There, an American army crushed Creek resistance and made a national hero of Andrew Jackson.

New attention to material culture and documentary and archaeological records fills in details, adds new information, and helps disabuse the reader of outdated interpretations.
 
Contributors
Susan M. Abram / Kathryn E. Holland Braund/Robert P. Collins / Gregory Evans Dowd /
John E. Grenier / David S. Heidler / Jeanne T. Heidler / Ted Isham / Ove Jensen / Jay Lamar /
Tom Kanon / Marianne Mills / James W. Parker / Craig T. Sheldon Jr. / Robert G. Thrower / Gregory A. Waselkov
[more]

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