Tales of Dadeville STORY BY BETSY ILER & PHOTOS BY BETSY, KENNETH BOONE & CLIFF WILLIAMS
The Tallapoosa County courthouse went through a series of renovations and still serves as the seat of government today
When the Spanish came to this area up through Florida in the 1540s, they found a rich country where history had been in the making for centuries. Established towns in the area were home to hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, mostly Creek clans, said Ralph Banks, a Dadeville native whose family in the area dates back to 1852. “The Spanish came looking for gold, and early traders wanted furs and hickory nut oil. By the time of the Revolutionary War, every major chief among the Creeks was at least one-quarter European, but they were very good at playing the European powers off each other. Of course, they ran into a problem when they started dealing with the American settlers because they wanted the land,” Banks explained. Following the Revolutionary War, the Upper Creeks and Lowers Creeks, which included the Poarch Creeks, engaged in a civil war over the influx of European settlers. The Lower Creeks were complacent with the
66
newcomers. “They figured there wasn’t much they could do to stop it, but the Upper Creeks wanted to fight it,” Banks said. During the War of 1812 between the U.S. and Great Britain, four armies converged on what is now Alabama, as the U.S. troops and Federal Creeks came against the Red Stick Upper Creeks at what is now Horseshoe Bend National Military Park in Daviston. “Horseshoe Bend was basically a fortified refugee camp, and the people there thought it was more defensible. They thought they could hold off long enough to escape by the river. That didn’t work out very well for them,” Banks said. The Red Sticks were massacred asthey attempted to cross the river. Through the subsequent treaty, in which the Creeks ceeded most of what is now the Southeast U.S., the chiefs and their households were given land but were encouraged to sell their property and move
WE MAKE IT GREAT HERE! | FEBRUARY 2022
