Rickey “Butch” Walker
TUSCUMBIA-The Tennessee Valley Historical Society will hold its Summer Quarterly Meeting at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, 27 July 2014 at the Helen Keller Library Conference Room located at 511 North Main Street, Tuscumbia, AL.
Guest speaker Rickey “Butch” Walker, Cherokee Indian, author, researcher and historian will deliver a Power-point presentation and discuss “Indian Trails of North Alabama” citing that while descendants of Alabama’s first settlers often lay claim that their ancestors, with the aid of their black slaves were the folks that built all the roads and cleared all the land in North Alabama, the guest speaker challenges and clarifies this historical perception – defending the position that “Indian people utilized our areas thousands of years before the first white Europeans and African slaves ever set foot in Alabama.”
Referencing that American Indian people have occupied North Alabama area for some 14,000 years and maintained routes connecting farms, villages, and towns he further contends that the aboriginal landscape of northwest Alabama comprised numerous Indian trails and roads that interconnected Native people throughout the Tennessee Valley and surrounding areas. He’ll discuss major river crossings and the crisscrossing of these trails that include: Black Warrior’s Path; Black Warrior Road; Browns Ferry Road; Byler’s Old Turnpike (Cherokee Trail); Chickasaw Path; Chisholm Road; Coosa Path or Muscle Shoals Path; Creek Path ; Doublehead’s Trace or Old Buffalo Trail; Gaines Trace; High Town Path, Old Huntsville Road, Tennessee Trail, or Great South Train; Jackson’s Old Military Road; Jasper Road, McIntosh Road, Georgia Road, or Federal Road; Natchez Trace; North River Road; Sipsie Trail (Cheatham’s Turnpike and Lamb’s Ferry Road and South River Bend.
The meeting is free to the public. Refreshments will be served at the meeting’s conclusion. Visit us on internet. http://buildingthepride.com/tvhs/
MEDIA RELEASE/Tennessee Valley Historical Society/Thomas McKnight
