Photo by Erin Nelson.
Water flows into the Cahaba River along Old Overton Road on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021.
Indigenous Peoples' Day is designed as a day to remember the Native Americans who, for generations before colonization, guarded the nature of the land on which Americans live today.
Some historians estimate that the land along the Cahaba River sustained the Creek, Cherokee and Choctaw tribes for 8,000 to 10,000 years.
In her 1989 book “A History of Mountain Brook, Alabama, and Incidentally of Shades Valley,” author Marilyn Davis Barefield details the innovations, cultures and families of the indigenous people.
“Mudtown” was the settlement on the edge of modern-day Vestavia Hills, approximately where Old Caldwell Mill Road meets the Cahaba River. The residents of Mudtown hunted alongside the Cahaba River and down in Mountain Brook Village where resources flourished.
Their tribal lands were overrun by settlers when the Creeks made a treaty with the federal government in the early 1800s, opening up territories such as Vestavia Hills in 1815.
While many settlers characterized Native Americans as uncivilized or primitive, evidence suggests that settlers copied their languages and habits.
By the Mississippian Period, tribes had developed into nations and had mastered farming, hunting and trade. “Alabama” comes from the Choctaw word for “Vegetation Gatherers,” which befits the resource-rich territory. The name for the Cahaba River comes from the Choctaw “oka,” meaning “water,” and “aba,” meaning “above.”
The Acton family settled on the tribal lands in Vestavia and kept a record of the native trails and burial grounds. Evidence suggests that the trail to Talledega from Mudtown along the Cahaba River was used by Andrew Jackson in one of his attacks against the Creek nation.
