Editing Lawrence County, Alabama (section)

==History==
[[File:Lawrence County Courthouse, Courthouse Square bounded by Main Street, Lawrence Street, Market Street & Court Street, Moulton (Lawrence County, Alabama).jpg|left|thumb|200px|Old Lawrence County Courthouse]]
For thousands of years, this area was inhabited by differing cultures of [[indigenous peoples]]. People of the Copena culture in the Middle [[Woodland period]] (1–500 CE) built complex earthworks as part of their religious and political system. Their [[burial mound]] and ceremonial [[platform mound]], the largest in the state, are preserved at [[Oakville, Alabama#Oakville Indian Mounds Park and Museum|Oakville Indian Mounds Park and Museum]]. The museum includes exhibits on the [[Cherokee]], an Iroquoian-speaking people who inhabited the area at the time of European encounter. Other historic [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American]] tribes in this state were [[Choctaw]] and [[Muscogee (Creek)|Creek]], who both spoke Muskogean languages.

Lawrence County was established by the legislature of the [[Alabama Territory]] on February 6, 1818. Under the [[Indian Removal Act]] of 1830, the U.S. government forced most of the members of these Southeast tribes to go west of the [[Mississippi River]] to [[Indian Territory]] to the west. They wanted to extinguish their land claims to open the area to settlement by Americans.

Numerous Cherokee and [[mixed-race]] European-Cherokee descendants, sometimes called "[[Black-Dutch|Black Dutch]]", have stayed in the Lawrence County area. According to the census, the county has the highest number of self-identified Native Americans in the state. The state-recognized [[Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama]] has their Blue Clan in this county with 4,000 enrolled members.