Diversity and Biodiversity: Applying Oral History to Community, Ecology, and Archeology in America’s Amazon

The Mobile-Tensaw Delta, known as “America’s Amazon,” supports incredible biodiversity—including oaks, turtles, birds, and snakes, who fill the landscape that has been carved by glaciation, flowing rivers, flood basins, and tidal patterns. Archeology also demonstrates varied human habitation. Prehistoric mound cultures illustrate the lives of a hereditary elite. Woodland cultures populated areas now named Little Lizard Creek and Bottle Creek. When Europeans arrived, they joined, and sometimes enslaved, native tribes such as Apalachees, Taensas, Chitimachas, and Alabamas (143). The landscape also bears marks of colonization by the British, African slavery, Civil War battles, and the American Black Freedom Struggle. In the spirit of “telling the stories of science,” in this paper I draw on recent oral history interviews to connect contemporary scholarly understanding of the ecology and pre-history of this area with the popular understanding of its environment, ecology, and archaeology. I argue that landscape, biodiversity, and human diversity create unique ecological juxtapositions in this little-studied part of Alabama. I will rely on oral histories of self-proclaimed "Delta rats," such as Lucy "Pie" Hollings, Sylvester Crook, and Jimbo Meador, who embody Native American, African-American, Creole, and/or European heritage (151-154). These interviews study local ways of life—including turtle harvests and farming, tourism, rattlesnake round-ups, and wildlife festivals—and how these demonstrate and relate to contemporary scientific understanding of the area. Notes from A State of Knowledge of the Natural, Cultural, and Economic Resources of the Greater Mobile-Tensaw River Area, Natural Resource Report NPS/NRSS/BRD/BRD/NRR--2016/1243.