Dauphin Island and the History of North Americas Colonization in Miniature
Dauphin Island, Alabama is a barrier island at the Mouth of Mobile Bay. It is a tourist attraction, the home of around 1,200 people, the site of the Estuarium marine sciences laboratory and a164-acre Audubon Bird Sanctuary. Its a pleasant, pretty and useful place that receives most of its income from tourism. On the face of it one could hardly guess that Dauphin Island bore the name Massacre Island for 8 years, or that it was occupied by every major European power in American history at one time or another.
The earliest records of human activity on Dauphin Island are the burial sites of the Native Americans known as the Mound Builders. The Serpentine shell middens on Dauphins northern shore suggest that this culture had been using the island for 1,000 years before the 1st Europeans arrived in the Americas, possibly occupying it on a seasonal basis, and definitely using it as sacred ground for the honored dead.
Spain got the jump on the rest of the Old World when in came to the Americas. Since we attribute the continents discovery to that country (even if Columbus is to be taken at...