The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-11-22
LAST OF THE INDIANS
 IN THE STATE OF ALABAMA

3L Ok ALAUANAA the death of another until the last shall have gone.
 AmaiRamation is slowly but surely removing the Creek Indian from Ala bana. There is not now, as was sald before. in all this section single full- blooded Indian. The race has merged with the white. There are some who are said to be halfbreeds, some said to bo as much as three-fourtns indian blood. A silent, morose man, We pass ed upon the road near Little River, was pointed out to me as Alex Dave, man of seven -eightfis Indian blood He was said tS be nearer the full blood cd Indian than any other man of the comnunity. In appearance he was In- dian in every characteristic, and might ! have stood in aboriginal dress for one of the Creeks who captured Fort Mims and massacred the women and children. But like all the Alabama Creeks of the l twentieth century his ways are the ways of peace and there is no harm in him.
 But every other man, woman or child | we met or who watched us from the doors and windows of the little farm | houses, bore marked evidences of their racial history. The child who looked | from a window might be round and fat
 but she had beady black eyes or trans parent bronze complexion and straicSlt
 black hair. The man we met might ! be unkempt or uncouth in appearance. but he walked with certain free ] grace, his cheek bones were high, his | lips thin and compressed and his ex- pression solemn and saturnine. Still, lko aF ha af
 people may have been larger than that part which came from their Indian an- cestors.
 The oldest families of Virginia, some of them boast of their descent from Pocahontas. It is a thing of which they feel proud. There are men in the State now, and some of them have achieved prominence, feel the same sort of pride in their descent from William wetherford. Red Eagles" descendants and his family connections are thick in the lower edge of Monroe County. They glory in the history he
 made and recount his deeds with frank satisfaction4
 Regarded as Indians.
 It matters not how thin the strain of Indian blood is. or how many times there have been marriages in the fam- lily with white men and white women. the descendants are looked upon by their white neighbors as Indians, not in contempt but still as Indians.
 It has been said if another inferior
 race and how truly may be judged
 "one one-hundredth of blood can make a negro, but it takes !e hundred ones hundredth to make a white man." The time may come when this saying may not be applied to the remnant of the Alabama indians. for even now an ap- preciative sympathy is felt for the pride of the descendants of Weather ford.
 Nor are the descendants of Red Eagle's" humber warriors condemned l and despised. They are held by their
 white neighbors not to measure up to
 the full standard of the white man. but they are not denied social Tecogni- 1 tio1 and social consideration. TSere is pathos in the thought of a dyibg race. One feels it when he
 meets face to face the few remaining representatives of q once mighty na- tfon and considers that their racial dis
 solution is already at hand. But no inferior race has ever with
 stood the white heat of the white
 mans civilization. The inferior race.
 whether 1t be black, brown or yellow.
 has withered away when 1t came to the
 white mans civilization, e when that civilization was brought to him.
 Neither the red man. nor the yellow man nor the black man has been able
 to stand up straight and look into the blue eye of the white man. The infe-
 rior race has been beaten back, oblit- | erated and removed.
 It s a law of nature but some of ha- lures laws seem harsh, and cruel and their workings seem pitifuE and pathe- , tic.
 No Tribal Organization.
 There is no tribal organization, no village, no Indian government or re- stralnt among the descendants of the Alabama Red Men Even were they st
 disposed, they are too widely scatter ed for any community ties or community | action. The families live singly, or in widely separated neighborhoods We drove sixty-five miles through Escam- bia and Monroe Counties visiting In- dian families and there were other neighborhoods where families of In- dian descent live which we dld not visit The drive was out from Atmore passing Mortimer and Steadham in Monroe County. and Mineola and Jerdo. in Monroe County. The very fact of their living there is reminiscent of AlabRma's early history. The Indians as well as the white men. in the early days of the State, lived in greater mum bers near the Alabama river and its tributaries and later near the old Stage road from Mobile to Montgomery. a
 road which followed an old Indian trail. That territory in which the descen- aFg nf hn Tod AHan .,