New Findings about Creek War Battle Site Highlight 101st Issue of UA’s Alabama Heritage Magazine

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A key battle in a war pitting the United States against the Creek Nation took place about a half-mile away from where historians had thought it took place, an article in the upcoming Alabama Heritage magazine states.

Dr. Greg Waselkov, an archaeologist, states in an article titled “Uncovering Holy Ground: Discovering a Legendary Battleground” that he and fellow researchers have found the fortified encampment known as “Holy Ground,” site of a famed 1813 battle in the Creek War. The site is west of Montgomery on a tributary once known as Holy Ground Creek, off the Alabama River near White Hall, Ala.

The article will appear in the 101st issue of Alabama Heritage, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2011. Published by The University of Alabama, in partnership with The University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the magazine features entertaining and scholarly articles illuminating the history of Alabama for both longtime residents and newcomers.

In December 1813, U.S. soldiers attacked the Holy Ground stronghold of the Redsticks during the Creek War. The Redsticks were a religiously motivated offshoot of the Creek Nation; Redstick followers had attacked and sacked a settler refuge, Fort Mims, in August 1813. During the December battle, U.S. troops drove the Redsticks out of the Holy Ground encampment. The ensuing retreat featured the Redstick leader, William Weatherford, leaping on his horse from an embankment of the Alabama River and into Alabama folklore.

“It’s a very famous site,” said Waselkov, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Alabama. “Everybody who has grown up here or went to grade school in Alabama has heard about Weatherford’s leap off the bluff at the end of the battle. That event alone is iconic of the early period of Alabama history.”

Waselkov noted that with subsequent retellings, the leap grew by leaps and bounds.

“There were a lot of legends about that leap, especially by popular writers who embellished it in the 1840s and ’50s,” Waselkov said. “They made it sound like it was a 40-foot jump. But even at the time, acquaintances said it was only a 10 or 15 foot drop, which still was a lot for a horse.”

Scholars had assumed the Holy Ground site was on a high bluff overlooking the Alabama River north of White Hall. Later on, others speculated that the settlement was on a site near the mouth of Cypress Creek in the same area, Waselkov writes. The latter area became the site of Holy Ground Battlefield Park.

Waselkov, however, armed with a grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program, joined with other scholars to track down clues about the actual site. Eventually, they found evidence of a Creek village on private land a half-mile up a tributary creek that once was called Holy Ground Creek. Preservationists are now buying parcels of land to preserve the battlefield.

“Some of the contemporary accounts of the battle didn’t make sense in the previous locations,” said Waselkov, author of the book “A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813-1814.” “The Redsticks couldn’t escape in the ways that were described. But the fact that we know the settlement was a half-mile to the south clarifies those accounts. To preserve a spot, you need to know exactly where it was.”

Alabama Heritage has been a longtime advocate of preservation in the state.

“We’re excited Dr. Waselkov chose to tell his story here,” said Donna Baker, editor of Alabama Heritage. “The article demonstrates that, even as we work to preserve history, we have to be prepared to revise it. Truth has to trump tradition now and then.”

Alabama Heritage magazine offers revealing articles such as Waselkov’s four times a year. For more information on the magazine, go to http://www.alabamaheritage.com/.