Resources

There has been much written on the European colonization of the Southeastern U.S. and on the specific efforts of the French, British, and Spanish. The following lists of resources focus largely on the French colonial period, as that represents the majority of Fort Tombecbe’s history. These resources are not exhaustive; they are meant only to serve as a starting point for anyone interested in the fascinating history and archaeology of the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries in this region.

Print Resources

Pate, James P. and Joe B. Wilkins, Jr. 1980. The Fort Tombecbe Historical Research and Documentation Project. Report submitted to the Alabama Historical Commission and Livingston University. Manuscript on file at the Black Belt Museum, University of West Alabama, Livingston. [A must-read history of Fort Tombecbe. Copies available upon request for the price of copying and mailing.]

Parker, James W. 1982. Archaeological Test Excavations at 1Su7: The Fort Tombecbe Site. Journal of Alabama Archaeology 28(1). [Descriptions of excavations conducted primarily on the Spanish-period remains at the site.]

D’Iberville, Pierre LeMoyne. 1981. Iberville’s Gulf Journals, edited by Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams.The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. [This journal pre-dates the establishment of Tombecbe but offers a firsthand account of Gulf Coast explorations by one of the founders of La Louisiane.]

Dumont de Montigny, Jean-François-Benjamin. 2012. The Memoir of Lieutenant Dumont, 1715-1747: A Sojourner in the French Atlantic, edited by Gordon M. Sayre and Carla Zecher. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. [Wonderful firsthand account of adventures in La Louisiane by someone who was at Fort Tombecbe and took part in the first Chickasaw campaign.]

Hamilton, Peter J. 1910. Colonial Mobile: An Historical Study. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York. [A good general read on the early colonial history of the region.]

Pénicaut, André. 1988. Fleur de Lys and Calumet: Being the Narrative of French Adventure in Louisiana, edited by Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams, The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. [Though pre-dating the establishment of Fort Tombecbe, this is an eyewitness account by André Pénicaut, a carpenter, of La Louisiane from 1699 to 1721. Pénicaut’s chronology is inaccurate, but the narrative has value as a primary document of events.]

Rowland, Dunbar, and Albert G. Sanders (editors). 1929. Mississippi Provincial Archives, French Dominion, 1701-1743. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson. [Invaluable source of information for correspondence pertaining to La Louisiane. Readers should be aware that there are transcription and translation errors.]

Other sources of historical and cultural information on the colonial period

Crane, Verner W. 2004. The Southern Fronier, 1670-1732. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. [A classic work on the colonial period in the Southeast.]

Galloway, Patricia. 1995. Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. [A synthesis of anthropological, archaeological, and historical work on the origins of the Choctaw.]

Hudson, Charles. 1976. The Southeastern Indians. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. [An introductory text on Southeastern Indians.]

Johnson, Cecil. 1943. British West Florida, 1753-1783. Yale University Press, New Haven.

Romans, Bernard. 1999. A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida, by Bernard Romans, edited by Kathryn Holland Braund. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. [Romans, a surveyor and naturalist, mentions the remains of Fort Tombecbe and tells of how one of its commandants built cedar barges. A good description of the late eighteenth-century lower South.]

Surrey, Nancy M. Miller. 1916. The Commerce of Louisiana during the French Regime, 1699-1763. Columbia University Studies in the Social Sciences 167, New York. [Essential source on the economy of La Louisiane.]

Thomas, Daniel H.. 1989. Fort Toulouse: The French Outpost at the Alabamas on the Coosa. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa

Waselkov, Gregory A., Peter H. Wood, and Tom Hatley. 2006. Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. [A significant collection of works on the interactions of Native Americans and Europeans in the colonial South.]

French colonial archaeology

Walthall, John A. (editor). 1991. French Colonial Archaeology: The Illinois Country and the Western Great Lakes. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago.

Walthall, John A., and Thomas E. Emerson (editors). 1992. Calumet and Fleur-de-Lys: Archaeology of Indian and French Contact in the Midcontinent. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington.

Waselkov, Gregory A. 2005. Old Mobile Archaeology. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Waselkov, Gregory A., and Diane E. Silvia. 1995. Archaeology at Krebs House (Old Spanish Fort), Pascagoula, Mississippi. Center for Archaeological Studies Archaeological Monograph 1. University of South Alabama, Mobile.

Internet Resources

Fort Tombecbe in the Encyclopedia of Alabama online

http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-3080

Fort Toulouse, Alabama

http://www.fttoulousejackson.org/

Old Mobile, Alabama

http://www.southalabama.edu/archaeology/old-mobile.html

Fort St. Jean Baptiste, Louisiana

http://www.crt.state.la.us/louisiana-state-parks/historic-sites/fort-st-jean-baptiste-state-historic-site/index

Fort de Chartres, Illinois

http://www.ftdechartres.com/

Fort Michilimackinac, Michigan

http://www.mightymac.org/michilimackinac.htm

Fortress Louisbourg

http://www.fortressoflouisbourg.ca/

Choctaw Nation History

http://www.choctawnation.com/history/choctaw-nation-history/

Chickasaw History and Culture

http://www.chickasaw.tv/#/history