Archaeological Survey of the Old Federal Road in Alabama

Moniac’s “Statement of property destroyed” does tell us something more. His “Dwelling House,”valued at $230, was evidently his principal residence located at the river plantation, where he had $190 incash and where his cotton gin house and machinery, worth $220, were burned. Far down the inventory,with a $6 barrel of salt and two corkscrews worth 50 cents, was his “House on the Federal Road” valuedat $30. Judging by its low worth, this was, almost certainly, a notched log building, probably a dogtrotstylelog house so popular at that era in the region among Creeks as well as Americans. The unavailabilityof planks at the Federal Road house to construct a coffin, noted by Peggy Dow in 1811, and thearchaeological find of unclenched nails strengthens the impression of a simple log structure.One historical reference indicates that Moniac had a cowpens in the vicinity of his house on theFederal Road. Creek-owned cattle usually roamed free in the woods, foraging at will for much of the year.Because unfenced cattle would damage crops, most wealthy Creeks kept their cattle at some considerabledistance from the major settlements, which probably partially explains the isolated locations of both ofMoniac’s residences. Cowpens were small fenced enclosures where the normally free-ranging cattle couldbe rounded up as needed. Thomas Woodward, in a reminiscence written in 1858, recalled Moniac havinga cowpens “on the Pinchong creek,” referring to Pinchona Creek, immediately northeast of Moniac’shouse on the Federal Road. Woodward, Moniac, William Weatherford and some others went on a cowhunt there in the summer of 1814, just after the collapse of Redstick resistance, to find food for thedestitute and starving Upper Creeks. 47Traveling the Federal Road, 1814-1820With the defeat in March 1814 of a large Redstick force at Tohopeka, Horseshoe Bend, by anAmerican army led by Andrew Jackson, the Creek War ended except for continued skirmishing near thecoast by a few hundred recalcitrant Redsticks. During the war, civilian travel on the U.S. mail route andwagon road essentially came to a halt. Apart from a few intrepid dispatch riders (including ZachariahMcGirth, who had briefly considered contracting with Joseph Wheaton to carry the mail back in 1807),few Americans risked their lives to cross the Creek Nation during wartime. The road mainly functioned asa conduit for American armies marching into the nation. Samuel Moniac guided General Claiborne’sforces up the road to attack the Redstick stronghold of Holy Ground in December 1813. General Floyd’sGeorgia militiamen made two forays along the road from the east in November 1813 and January 1814,followed by a Carolina militia army in mid-April. Those invading American forces built forts –Claiborneand Deposit in the south and Mitchell, Hull, Bainbridge (Figure 2-5), Burrows, and Decatur in the east –that remained important landmarks for years to come. With the formal conclusion of hostilities by theTreaty of Fort Jackson, signed August 9, 1814, the Creek Nation ceded 21,086,793 acres of land to the41