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The Coosa River is a tributary of the Alabama River in the U.S. states of Alabama and Georgia. The river is about long.〔U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. (The National Map ), accessed April 27, 2011〕 The Coosa River begins at the confluence of the Oostanaula and Etowah rivers in Rome, Georgia, and ends just northeast of the Alabama state capital, Montgomery, where it joins the Tallapoosa River to form the Alabama River just south of Wetumpka. Around 90% of the Coosa River's length is located in Alabama. Coosa County, Alabama, is located on the Coosa River. The Coosa is one of Alabama's most developed rivers. Most of the river has been impounded, with Alabama Power, a unit of the Southern Company, maintaining seven dams on the Coosa River. The dams produce hydroelectric power , but are costly to some species endemic to the Coosa River. == History == Native Americans had been living on the Coosa Valley for millennia before Hernando de Soto and his men became the first Europeans to visit it in 1540. The Coosa chiefdom was one of the most powerful chiefdoms in the southeast at the time. Over a century after the Spanish left the Coosa Valley, the British established strong trading ties with the Creek bands of the area around the late 17th century, much to the dismay of France. With a base in Mobile, Alabama, the French believed that the Coosa River was a key gateway to the entire South and they wanted to control the valley. The main transportation of the day was by boat. The convergence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers near present-day Montgomery forms the Alabama River, which has its mouth at Mobile Bay, the port used by the French for travel around the Caribbean and to France. They wanted to retain control of both the Coosa and the Alabama rivers. In the early 18th century, almost all European and Indian trade in the southeast ceased during the tribal uprisings brought on by the Yamasee War against the Carolinas. After a few years, the Indian trade system was resumed under somewhat reformed policies. The conflict between the French and English over the Coosa Valley, and much of the southeast in general, continued. It was not after Britain had defeated France in the Seven Years' War (also known as the French and Indian War that France relinquished its holdings east of the Mississippi River to Britain. This was stated in the Treaty of Paris signed by both nations in 1763. By the end of the American Revolutionary War, the Coosa Valley was occupied in its lower portion by the Creek and in the upper portion by the Cherokee peoples, who had a settlement near its start in northwest Georgia. After the Fort Mims massacre near Mobile, General Andrew Jackson led American troops, along with Cherokee allies, against the Lower Creek in the Creek War. This culminated in the Creek defeat at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Afterward, the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814 forced the Creek to cede a large amount of land to the United States, but left them a reserve between the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers in northern Alabama. Even there the Creeks were encroached on by European-American settlers who had begun moving into their territory from the United States. Finally, during the 1820s and 1830s the Creek, Cherokee, and virtually all the southeastern Indians were removed to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The Cherokee removal is remembered as the Trail of Tears. The Cherokee capital city of New Echota was located on the headwater tributaries of the Coosa River, in Georgia, until the tribe's removal. The Creek and Choctaw removals were similar to the Cherokee Trail of Tears. After the removals, the Coosa River valley and the southeast in general was wide open for American settlers. The cotton gin made short-staple cotton profitable to process, and it was a new cotton hybrid that could be grown in the upland regions; large-scale migrations known as "Alabama Fever" filled Alabama with new settlers. The first river town to form in the Coosa Basin was at the foot of the last waterfall on the Coosa River, the "Devil's Staircase." Settlers soon adopted the native name ''Wetumpka'' (meaning "rumbling waters" or "falling stream") for this new community. The Coosa River was an important transportation route into the early 20th century as a commercial waterway for riverboats along the upper section of the river for 200 miles south of Rome. However, shoals and waterfalls such the Devil's Staircase along the river's lowest 65 miles blocked the upper Coosa's riverboats from access to the Alabama River and the Gulf of Mexico. The building of the dams on the Coosa - Lay, Mitchell and Jordan — allowed Alabama Power to pioneer new methods of controlling and eliminating malaria, which was a major health issue in rural Alabama in the early 1900s. So successful were their pioneering efforts in this area, that the Medical Division of the League of Nations visited Alabama to study the new methods during the construction of Mitchell Dam.〔Jackson, Harvey H. III, ''Putting Loafing Streams To Work,'' Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, pp. 113, 145-46, 1997.〕 For a time, the ''Popeye the Sailorman'' cartoons were inspired by Tom Sims, a Coosa River resident in Rome, Georgia who was familiar with riverboat life and characters of the early 1900s .〔(Popeye "The Sailor Man" ), Rome, Georgia Website〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Coosa River」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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