Inland Alabama

The first Europeans to make contact with the nations of Alabama were the Spanish, with Hernando de Soto's expedition of 1540 to 1541. France claimed the region as part of Louisiana from the founding of Mobile in 1702, and Britain claimed it after the Treaty of Paris in 1763, but the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw held the interior throughout. Britain ceded the ground to the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Georgia claimed it and Spain disputed its southern part until Pinckney's Treaty in 1795. The land south of 32 degrees 28 minutes joined the Mississippi Territory when it was created on April 7, 1798, and the land north of that line was added in 1804, after Georgia gave up its claim in 1802. By the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814 the Creek ceded much of central Alabama to the United States; the remaining Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw lands in Alabama were ceded between 1816 and 1835. The eastern half of the Mississippi Territory became the Alabama Territory on August 15, 1817, and Alabama was admitted to the Union as the twenty-second state on December 14, 1819. After Indian Removal forcibly displaced most Southeast tribes west of the Mississippi River, European Americans arrived in large numbers. The region was politically divided during the Civil War, with most Unionist opposition concentrated in northern Alabama.

Pre-contact era

Inhabited by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. The Woodland period spanned from around 1000 BC to 1000 AD, marked by the development of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, followed by the Mississippian culture of Native Americans lasting to around 1600 AD.

Colonial history

Territorial period

The Territory of Mississippi was created under an organic act signed into law by President John Adams on April 7, 1798. The Territory was dissolved on December 10, 1817, when the western half was admitted as the State of Mississippi. The eastern half was redesignated as the Alabama Territory on August 15, 1817, sandwiched between the new state of Mississippi in the west, Georgia to the east, and Tennessee on the north. The Alabama Territory lasted until December 14, 1819. The Chattahoochee River played a significant role in the definition of the Territory's borders during its brief two years of existence, 1817–1819.

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