Between AD 1500 and 1600, indigenous inhabitants near the confluence of the Cahaba and Alabama Rivers built a flat-topped mound about 1/2 acre in size as the central feature of a semicircular village enclosed by a large defensive wall and surrounded by a moat. The village was the northern political center of a coastal Mississippian culture that controlled much of the region, and artifacts uncovered here show cultural connections to indigenous groups at Moundville to the north and to those affiliated with the Pensacola phase along the Gulf Coast to the south. In 1819, Alabama's first governor, William Wyatt Bibb, incorporated these earthworks into the centerpiece of the town plan he designed for Alabama's first capital. Although part of the moat remains visible today, the large mound inside it is gone; historical records indicate it was removed and used as fill for a nearby railroad embankment in the 1850s. The site remains deeply important to numerous Southeastern indigenous tribes who assert an ancestral connection to its builders and occupants, and the earthworks, objects, and information recovered there reveal a rich cultural tradition that still thrives today among these tribes.