Qualla: Hickory Ground https://qualla.com/hickory-ground en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Hickory Ground https://qualla.com/hickory-ground Hickory Ground: Introduction https://qualla.com/hickory-ground/ The Muscogee called it Oce Vpofa -- Hickory Ground -- and for the twelve years between 1802 and 1814, it served as the last capital of the National Council of the Creek Nation. Several thousand people lived along the lower Coosa River here, near where it joins the Tallapoosa to form the Alabama River, in a town documented by the naturalist William Bartram in the 1770s and the Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins in 1799. By 1832, every one of them had been forced west to Indian Territory. The ground they left behind held their dead, their ceremonial fires, and artifacts stretching back to the Early Archaic period -- 8,000 years before the first European set foot in Alabama. That ground is still contested today.

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/f/9/hickory-ground-wp/djf9-hickory-ground-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Hickory Ground: The Last Capital https://qualla.com/hickory-ground/ Hickory Ground was established by Muscogee Creeks who migrated from Little Tulsa on the Coosa River. Among its residents was Billy Weatherford, the Red Eagle, whose attack on Fort Mims in 1813 triggered the Creek War. When that war came to Hickory Ground itself, the inhabitants w...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/f/9/hickory-ground-wp/djf9-hickory-ground-the-last-capital.mp3 0:06 2 full Hickory Ground: Ten Thousand Years Underfoot https://qualla.com/hickory-ground/ The 33-acre archaeological site, designated 1EE89, sits outside Wetumpka on a bend of the lower Coosa River. In 1968, archaeologist David Chase of Auburn University rediscovered the site, though his findings remained unpublished for years. When plans surfaced to build apartments ...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/f/9/hickory-ground-wp/djf9-hickory-ground-ten-thousand-years-underfoot.mp3 0:06 3 full Hickory Ground: Sacred Ground, Sovereign Claims https://qualla.com/hickory-ground/ In August 1980, the property was granted to the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. What happened next split two peoples. After years of holding the land, the Poarch Band began construction of a gaming hall in 2001, which required excavating the site and exhuming Muscogee graves. The O...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/f/9/hickory-ground-wp/djf9-hickory-ground-sacred-ground-sovereign-claims.mp3 0:06 4 full Hickory Ground: What the River Remembers https://qualla.com/hickory-ground/ The Coosa River still bends past Hickory Ground the way it did when Bartram sketched its banks in the 1770s. The ceremonial ground, the burial sites, and the refuse middens that archaeologists catalogued are now beneath or beside a modern commercial development. The controversy h...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/f/9/hickory-ground-wp/djf9-hickory-ground-what-the-river-remembers.mp3 0:06 5 full