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By Jay Reeves
Oxford, Alabama (AP) 7-09
 Bucket loaders and bulldozers are tearing apart a hill that researchers call the foundation of an ancient Native American site to provide fill dirt for a wholesale warehouse, a move that appalls preservationists.
Tribal advocates and state officials say a large stone mound that tops
the 200-foot rise was put there a millennium ago by Indians during a
religious observance.
It is similar to rock mounds found up and down the Eastern Seaboard,
historians say, and likely dates to Indians of the Woodlands period
that ended in 1000 A.D.
“It’s just heartbreaking,” said Elizabeth Ann Brown of the Alabama
Historical Commission . “I find it hard to believe that for fill dirt
anyone would do this.”
Despite a city-commissioned study that found tribal artifacts in the
red clay that makes up the mound, Oxford Mayor Leon Smith denies the
work by the city is damaging anything important. He said the stones
atop the hill are a natural part of what locals call Signal Mountain
and were exposed by millions of years of erosion.
“It’s the ugliest old hill in the world,” said Smith, who has overseen
a mushrooming of big-box stores in this east Alabama city of 15,000
during his seven terms as mayor.
The hill certainly is an eyesore these days. Its wooded sides have been
stripped bare, and the red soil is being trucked downhill to the site
of a new Sam’s warehouse store and a small retail strip, where it’s
being used to build up a good base for foundations.
The rock mound perched atop the hill is mostly undisturbed so far,
though it is denuded save for a few spindly trees that haven’t been
knocked down. Officials with Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores
Inc., said no material from the rock mound is going into the site where
the store is under construction.
Brown said the state lacks the power to halt the project, and
petitions and protests haven’t done anything to stop the work. Big
yellow dump trucks rumble up and down the hill, located behind a retail
development just off Interstate 20.
City project manager Fred Denney said officials plan to remove the
top of the hill eventually to create an elevated, eight-acre site that
will overlook the Choccolocco Valley and the city of Oxford.
“It would be a beautiful view,” said the mayor, who envisions a motel or restaurant atop the hill.
Indian historian Robert Thrower is aghast at what he sees as the city’s
lack of concern for the historical importance of the site, which he
said is similar to others along the East Coast. Groups have saved rock
mounds in Montague, Massachusetts, North Smithfield, Rhode Island, and
elsewhere.
“With increasing development occurring, these sites are in jeopardy,”
said Thrower, a member of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama
and chairman of culture and heritage for the United South and Eastern
Tribes. “Here, you’re looking at a site that is a sacred site for us.”
Denney said the city purchased the hill and surrounding acreage several
years ago for $10 million for development. Faced with questions about
an ancient Indian site, Smith said the city paid the University of
Alabama $60,000 to study the mound.
University of Alabama researchers found six shards of Indian pottery
under rocks atop the mountain, and their report said the mound was
likely built by Indians during the late Woodlands period.
Researchers didn’t discover any evidence of burial sites among the
rocks, though they said such remains could have been lost to erosion or
looting. Oxford’s mayor said the lack of bones means there’s no reason
not to bulldoze the mound.
“It’s just a pile of rocks is all it is,” said Smith.
City officials deny they are insensitive to history. Denney said
officials have banned development at another site close to the hill
because archaeologists found evidence that Indians once had a community
there.
Thrower said Indians from that settlement possibly carried many of the
rocks up the steep hill to mark a place of prayer or to commemorate
special events. There’s no way to move the stones elsewhere and
preserve the site, he said.
“A colleague of mine referred to these places as `prayers in stone,”’
Thrower said. “For us it’s immaterial whether there are burial or
historical artifacts present. The site itself is historic.”
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