47. The Alabama and Choctaw Wars

47. THE ALABAMA AND CHOCTAW WARS

The Alabama and Choctaw fought each other. For a long time people were killed on each side and they took each other's scalps and ran off with them. After they had fought this way for a time the Alabama were victorious, not knowing how many scalps they had taken. Then they became friends.

An Alabama would come at night to a person's house when they could not see him. He would throw small leaves over his body so that he could not be detected. Then no Choctaw went out of his house at night lest some Alabama, looking like wood lying in the yard, should knock him down and kill him and run off with his scalp. When the men living in the house went hunting and a woman went out and bathed in the creek they killed her. They scalped her. Sometimes when all of the men were in camp the other tribe came, all the men being off hunting, and killed the women and children. Then they ran sticks through them and placed them over the fire. And the others, coming back, found their children roasted like squirrels.