Natural Respite Amongst A Confederacy of Dunces
October 11th, 2009
A scene from the Wind Creek State Park campground on Lake Martin…
Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson
WIND CREEK, Ala. — In the early morning hours before even the ducks awake, while the noisy campers are still asleep in their gas guzzling RVs and the lake is so calm it looks like a blue-green sheet of glass, that is the best time to contemplate the past, the present and the future. There is nothing like a hiatus into nature to put the mind on the right track.
It’s just too bad that our ancestors who fought with each other not far from here on the Horseshoe Bend of the Tallapoosa River in the early nineteenth century didn’t have the communications skills to negotiate a better future for themselves and this place.
Although I suspect it would not have mattered to General Andrew Jackson what anybody said. He was a hard-headed son-of-a-bitch who was determined to defeat the Creek Nation, represented by 1,000 Red Stick braves, and to run the Native American population out of the American South. It’s just too bad about 600 Cherokee didn’t know better than to fight on his side.
In case you’ve forgotten your state history, Alabama became a state in 1819, carved out of 23 million acres ceded to the United States government in the Treaty of Fort Jackson in August, 1814 after the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. The land was initially ceded to the Cherokee Nation as an ally of the U.S., but after Jackson became president in 1829, he pushed through Congress and signed the so-called Removal Bill, sending all the Native Americans he could round up on the “Trail of Tears” to live on reservations in the Oklahoma territory.
Chief Junaluska, the Cherokee Chief who led 500 braves in support of Jackson and who saved the general’s life in the battle, would say later, “If I had known that Jackson would drive us from our homes, I would have let him die at Horseshoe.”
If only…
