Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/374

 the people, and in some of their institutions and diversions. Steam, electricity, sewers, waterworks, shell roads and handsome buildings have caused a long and romantic history to be half forgotten. Let us recall its chief events.

The region had a story even back of the European. Not only are Dauphine Island and the Portersville coast at the mouth of the bay fringed with banks of oyster-shell, but on the marsh islands of the Mobile delta, and in the swamps adjoining, one often finds huge piles of clam-shells and high mounds of earth. These sometimes contain human bones and ornaments, and point to a large native population before the white man came.

An Indian race, the Choctaw, gave the name to the river and bay, and thus to the present city; for Maubila, or "paddling" Indians, long occupied what is now South Alabama, and their language was in later days the trade jargon from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Their primitive manner of living was interrupted about three centuries and a half ago. The West Indies then became Spanish, and the mainland was explored in all directions for colonization. A map of 1513, attributed