Chapter 12: The Great Plains and Prairies

As we learned in Chapter 12, much literature, songs and folktales have been dedicated to the grasslands of the Great Plains and Prairies.  Like this region, much has been written and sung about Mobile as well.  Perhaps the greatest known piece of our time is a novel by Mobilian Winston Groom called Forrest Gump.  Of course, everyone knows the movie, but in the novel, Forrest actually grows up in Mobile, not Greenbow.  Immortalized onscreen by Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump experiences adventures ranging from shrimp boating and ping pong championships to thinking about his childhood love. The Vietnam War and college football are all part of the story. Throughout his life, Gump views the world simply and truthfully. Throughout the course of the book, he really doesn't know what he wants to do in life. Author and narrator Groom uses intonations that capture Gump's personality. Gump is full of wisdom, but is considered an "idiot" because of his low IQ and disability. According to him, he "can think things pretty good", but when he tries "sayin or writin them, it kinda come out like Jello". He is also physically strong and falls into amazing adventures.  Many iconic scenes in the movie take place in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a small shrimping town in Mobile County, fifteen minutes south of my home.

Many of the Great Plains Indians are actually displaced Native Americans from Mobile.  My great-grandfather in fact is a Creek Indian, also known as the Muskogee.  The Creek or Creeks, are a Native American people traditionally from the southeastern United States.  Mvskoke is their name in traditional spelling. Modern Muscogees live primarily in Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.  They were descendants of the Mississippian culture peoples, who built earthwork mounds at their regional chiefdoms located throughout the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries. The historian Walter Williams and others believe the early Spanish explorers encountered ancestors of the Muscogee when they visited Mississippian-culture chiefdoms in the Southeast in the mid-16th century.  The Muscogee were the first Native Americans to be "civilized" under George Washington's civilization plan. In the 19th century, the Muscogee were known as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes", because they had integrated numerous cultural and technological practices of their more recent European American neighbors. In 1811, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, with the help of a prophetic comet and earthquake, convinced the Muscogee to resist the efforts of civilization. The Red Stick War, begun as a civil war within the Muscogee Nation, enmeshed them in the War of 1812.  During the Indian Removal of 1830, most of the Muscogee Nation moved to Indian Territory. The Muscogee Creek Nation based in Oklahoma is federally recognized, as is the Poarch Band of Creek Indians of Alabama. Creek tribe communities also have formed in Louisiana and Texas.

Creek Indians

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Gump_(novel)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscogee_people