Archaeological Survey of the Old Federal Road in Alabama

We stayed but a short time and continued on our journey. There we got a supply ofbread, such as it was; and there we met with three men that were travelling our road, thefirst company that we had found since we had left the Mississippi, being now not morethan one-third of the way through the Creek nation. 36The Dows reached Milledgeville, Georgia, a few weeks later and Peggy noted in herjournal “while we were here the earthquakes began, which alarmed the people very much.”These were the first of the New Madrid earthquakes, the most powerful tremors to strike theeastern United States in historic times. They began on December 16, 1811, which helps us datePeggy Dow’s visit to Moniac’s house on the Federal Road. Her account also suggests how basicwere the amenities available to travelers at this station – “bread, such as it was”; no sawn planksfor a coffin. 37Travelling the Federal Road in these early days entailed accepting a certain amount ofrisk. There were always chances of accident, drowning, snakebite, illness – and the rarerpossibility of injury inflicted by others. In 1805 a post rider named Webb, while “walking afterhis horse” along the path “in an open plain with a cluster of plumb trees only near him ... wasfired on from behind the plumb trees” about four miles from Catoma, not far from Pintlala. “Hesaw no one; as soon as he was wounded he fell down and fainted.... His saddle bags and bag ofcorn were left untouched where he got on his horse. The mails were gone and the staples of thesaddle drawn to which they were attached.” 38 Webb recovered, but mail riders were often thetarget of thieves, and seemingly random attacks on others occurred now and then as well.On March 26, 1812, Thomas Meredith, “a respectable old man traveling with his familyto Mississippi Territory was murdered on the post road at Kettoma,” one of several murders byCreeks of Americans travelling through Indian country that spring.39 Over the years, as the horsepath for mail riders had been widened and improved for the increasing stream of Americanimmigrants moving through the Creek Nation, opposition to the Federal Road had steadilyincreased among the Creeks. Now with war imminent between the United States and Britain,many Indian peoples felt the time was fast approaching for decisive action against theAmericans and against the Indian headmen who had signed treaties allowing road constructionand otherwise abetted American interference in Indian sovereignty. The murder of ThomasMeredith became a high-profile violent symbol of the growing rift between the United Statesand the Native American nations within its borders, and a significant cause of the Creek War of1813-1814.38