I hope that you are able to build a successful relationship with the people who have the power to make the right decision to protect the site at Oxford instead of building another Wally-World. The laws won’t do it, but maybe appealing to people’s sense of decency and sacredness will.

Good luck,
Elisa

The people of Central Alabama are allowing our sacred sites stripped bare by bulldozers and backhoes without respect or any consequences. It befuddles me that so many in Alabama are quick to claim Indian descent proudly and yet destroy their own heritage for Wal-mart, Sam’s Club or a sports complex?

Alabamaians must escape the notion that a site isn’t sacred unless it has documented human remains. Having burials in a site allows us to protect an area using both state and federal laws like NAGPRA, but we need stronger laws on the state and local level. And, we need to demand ethical, moral behavior from our elected leaders. The multi thousands of dollars archaeological report for Signal Hill should make the people of Oxford and the state rise up against their hard earned paychecks being used for a suspect document that allows them to destroy a beautiful, sacred mound.

But wait! Destroying Signal Hill isn’t enough for Leon Smith and his posse of developer buddies!

The Office of Archaeological Research allowed them to totally destroy- forever- the amazing Davis Farm Mound and village site to build a sports complex and then claim they have no idea what happened to it?! What? They’ve even proclaimed Signal Hill isn’t worth saving because they themselves denuded it and made it a hideous mess. Now they claim nobody knows anything about the destruction of the Davis Farm mound site and yet those responsible are so painfully clear? What has happened to consequences, people?

This looming rock mountian of an Indian mound is just as sacred and deserving of protection as Moundville yet is, right now being gouged, ripped into shreds by heavy equipment and hauled away even while promises are made and broken by Leon Smith and his cronies.

Indians, many other other archaeologists and the Alabama Historical Commission know Signal Hill is a manmade, sacred Indian mound site fitting within a vast network of thousands of years’ old sacred mounds stretching from Florida to Illinois, South America into North America like a spiderweb of cites. These are what is left of the very cities the first Europeans traded upon exploring the south in the 1600′s. Signal Hill Mound is an amazingly huge collection of sacred stones taken there by my ancestors and placed on the hill top with intention. Mounds like Signal Hill are precious and to suggest it be treated any differently than a Church, Synagogue, Easter Island statues or Stonehenge is willfully ignorant and disrespectful.

The continued destruction of sacred Indian sites in Alabama is an outrage the world should know and Glynn is doing his best to get behind this horror. This is the most decent, respectful article I’ve seen about the wanton destruction of sacred Signal Hill mound. For anyone to complain about semantics while sacred sites are being bulldozed is pure foolishness and a laughable attempt to deflect from their own poor behavior or lack of common sense. Three cheers for what Glynn is trying to do to save Alabama’s heritage and natural wonders.

Donna Knoke Cobb, MA
Maskoki Creek and Archaeozoologist

While that could have been an educational moment, it turned into a meme.

When I have time and get further into this story, I will flesh this story out a bit more. But not tonight…

Those who know me also know that, one of the reasons I am interested in this story as a writer, is my own search for Cherokee ancestry. I’ve told this story in other places in this archive, but for here and now:

My grandmother on my father’s side was no doubt of Cherokee decent. I have photos and physical descriptions as well as a full family tree on the Love family from St. Clair County, Alabama. I’ve seen the Love names in the books of my Cherokee brother Wayne Perkins, who played with the Rolling Stones and others, who is a card carrying member of the Wolf Clan out of the old Cherokee Capitol, Rome, Georgia.

I plan to get the DNA test ASAP.

Besides, anyone who meets up with me in summer when my hair is long and my face is more red than tanned in the summer, and I’m not talking about sunburn, can see it in my face. Then there’s my warrior-like spirit as a hard-charging reporter.

I am at a point in my life when I want, no, I need, to track these connections to the past. Like I said in the original A River Runs Through It column, I feel it in my bones…

There must be a vision quest in here somewhere : )