The Tie-Snake

The Creek told of a serpent that dragged people beneath the Chattahoochee. The folktales recorded alongside it would echo, years later, in the Uncle Remus stories.

On the Phenix City Riverwalk (between Dillingham Street and 13th Street), Phenix City, Russell County, AlabamaDirections Open in Maps

The Marker

The The Tie-Snake historic marker — The marker, photographed on site.

The Creek Indians believed this section of the river was inhabited by a giant Tie-Snake, a mythical monster that snared the unwary and dragged them down into the watery underworld. The Tie-Snake was but one of many strange creatures and natural forces featured in the myths and folk tales of the native people of this region. Among these were the Winds, the Thunder Helper, the Orphan, the Trickster Rabbit, and the Tarbaby. LaGrange lawyer W.O. Tuggle recorded many of these tales in the late 1800s. Joel Chandler Harris read Tuggle's collection, which formed part of the material out of which Harris fashioned his Uncle Remus stories.

Erected by Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the Phenix City-Russell County Chamber of Commerce, 2004.

Where it is

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Street View, oriented toward the marker.

The fuller record

The marker draws a clean line from Creek folklore to Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, but the real history is more tangled — and worth naming. Harris's tales came first and foremost from enslaved and formerly enslaved African American storytellers he heard as a young man; W.O. Tuggle's Creek collection was an additional source he drew on. The trickster-rabbit and Tar-Baby tales have deep roots in BOTH African and Native Southeastern traditions, and scholars still debate their origins; Harris himself wrote that the animal stories had "become in a measure blended." The Uncle Remus framing — a contented elderly former slave entertaining a white child — is itself a product of its time that later readers have rightly questioned.

Source: History: Tie-Snake legend leads to Uncle Remus stories; Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation); Shem, Ham & Japheth: The Papers of W. O. Tuggle, comprising his Indian diary, sketches & observations, myths & Washington journal in the territory & at the capital, 1879-1882

Sources

History: Tie-Snake legend leads to Uncle Remus stories — The Citizen of East Alabama (citizenofeastalabama.com)
Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation) — Joel Chandler Harris · Public domain (published 1880).
The Tie-Snake · Marker text is public factual information; the photograph is © the project owner.
Creek Legends, Myths, and Stories (Muskogee, Muscogee) — Native Languages of the Americas (native-languages.org)
Tie-Snakes, fearsome snake-monsters of Southeast Indian legend — Native Languages of the Americas (native-languages.org)
Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians — John R. Swanton (Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 88) · U.S. government publication (public domain).
Shem, Ham & Japheth: The Papers of W. O. Tuggle, comprising his Indian diary, sketches & observations, myths & Washington journal in the territory & at the capital, 1879-1882 — William Orrie Tuggle; edited by Eugene Current-Garcia with Dorothy B. Hatfield · Bibliographic reference (not reproduced).

About this film

The cinematic period scenes are AI-generated — a dramatized visualization, not real historical footage.

The narration is an AI-generated voice, not a human recording.

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