Turkeytown outtake

This is an outtake from Where You Come From Is Gone, a body of work Jared and I made as part of our collaborative tintype project called Gusdugger. This plate was shot in Cherokee County, Alabama at the former site of Turkeytown, which was one of the most important Cherokee cities in our region circa 250 years ago. The project focuses on sites of Native American habitation and removal in Alabama and there is much more information at the project page. 

Site of Turkeytown, Cherokee County, Alabama, 2017

Established some time prior to 1770, Turkeytown was one of the most important Cherokee cities in the region. Following his victory over the Muscogee Creek, General Andrew Jackson visited his Cherokee allies at Turkeytown in 1816 for a Council of the Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw to negotiate boundaries and ratify a peace treaty as Alabama opened to white settlers. At the council the Cherokee ceded a large portion of their ancestral lands in north-central Alabama to the US government and agreed to the building of roads throughout their domain, including construction of the Alabama Road over the ancient hunting and trading paths that once ran east to Rome, Georgia. Soon after the treaty the Eastern Woodland native Americans were forced west on the Trail of Tears.