Mobile (people)
The Mobile , also Mobila or Mauvilla , were a North American Indian people who lived at the beginning of European contact in what is now the southwestern US state of Alabama in the fortified city of Mauvilla on the Alabama River, southwest of today's city of Selma . They spoke a dialect from the Muskogee languages . The Mobile belonged to several chiefdoms in the 15th century who later united with the Choctaw tribe . Historians suspect that the word “mobile” from “moeli” for “paddler” was derived from a Choctaw language.
Tuscaloosa chiefdom
In 1981, the American ethnologist Robert L. Carneiro defined the chieftainship as an autonomous political unit. It consisted of a number of villages or towns and was under the control of a supreme chief, after whose name it was named. The chiefdom of Tuscaloosa stretched along the Coosa and Alabama Rivers and consisted of several tributary places, including Mauvilla , each of which was led by its own chief. They owed obedience to the chief in his residence city Atahachi . The Spaniards named the chieftainship after the ruling chief Tuscaloosa at the time .
Spanish records show that the surrounding area was very fertile and populous. The city itself lay on a flat area around five meters high, which was surrounded by palisades. These consisted of tree trunks driven into the ground that touched each other. On the outside and inside they were reinforced with crossed beams and thick ropes. The entire construction was smeared with clay and all openings were sealed so that it looked like a solid wall. Fifty paces apart there were towers in the wall that could accommodate seven or eight warriors. In the lower part of the palisades there were loopholes for the archers at man height. The entire complex had only two gates, one to the west and one to the east, and in the middle there was a large rectangular plaza surrounded by large houses.
history
Hernando de Soto met the Mobile and their chief Tuscaloosa in 1540 on his expedition through what is now the southern United States . The expedition moved north and southwest along the eastern Appalachian Mountains , leaving a trail of devastation. The Spaniards exchanged food with some tribes for a few specimens from their herd of pigs, but mostly they took the provisions with force and without consideration. They crossed what is now Georgia , South Carolina and North Carolina . On these largely aimless marches they were driven further west by the false promise of huge gold reserves. In northern Alabama they met the city of Mauvilla , (also Mobila or Mavila ). The Indians, led by Tuscaloosa, lured the Spaniards into an ambush on the main square of the heavily fortified city, and the battle of Mauvilla broke out . But the fighting strength and the weapons of the Spaniards were far superior to those of the Indian warriors. The arrows of the Indians proved to be ineffective against the iron armor. The Europeans fought their way through and then continued to attack the city's residents. In a nine-hour slaughter , almost all the Mobile warriors, the numbers fluctuate between 2,500 and 3,000, were killed in battle or died as a result of Spanish executions and suicide . Mauvilla was eventually burned down and completely destroyed. The Spaniards won in the end, losing only 18 men, most of their equipment and 12 horses. After the battle of Mauvilla, the indigenous people's respect for foreigners decreased noticeably and the Spaniards were increasingly victims of attacks and guerrilla actions . Although de Soto's men had lost courage at this point and wanted to go to the coast to meet the expected ships from Cuba , de Soto still had the urge for discovery and the expedition moved on to Chicaza in what is now the state of Mississippi .
The surviving Mobile probably moved further south to Mobile Bay at the end of the 17th century . When the French planned to found a colony here around 1700 , they met members of this tribe. They asked the French colonists for protection from their enemies and around 1708 received permission to settle with the Tohome near Fort Louis . In the same year, a large group of enemy warriors, tribesmen from the Alabama , Cherokee , Abihka and Catawba , moved down the Mobile River to attack the French and their allied tribes. For some inexplicable reason, they limited themselves to destroying only a few mobile homes. The Mobiles had friendly relations with the French from the start and the majority appeared to have converted to Christianity. At that time the Mobile and Tohome numbered about 350 families together. The local church has records of registered tribesmen until 1761, after which they are no longer mentioned as a tribe and are considered extinct.
language
The so-called mobile trade language was a simplified Choctaw dialect and was used for intertribal communication between the tribes from Florida to Louisiana and even north to the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers .
Individual evidence
- ↑ John R. Swanton: The Indian Tribes of North America . Genealogical Publishing Com, 1952, ISBN 978-0-8063-1730-4 , pp. 159 .
- ↑ a b Mobile Tribe. Retrieved January 27, 2017 .
- ^ A b c Klaus Harpprecht / Thomas Höpker: America - The story of the conquest from Florida to Canada . GEO published by Gruner & Jahr, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-570-07996-1 , p. 64-65 .