Chief Tuskaloosa Reimagined Through Extensive Research By TCSO Chief Deputy

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Loyd Baker is one of the most celebrated and accomplished investigators in the county's history.

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A lifelong native of Tuscaloosa and graduate of both Central High School and the University of Alabama, Chief Baker also has a knack for creativity and recently merged the two longstanding passions in reimagining an oversight in local history that is several hundred years in the making.

Indeed, when Baker was TCSO's chief of administration roughly two years ago, Sheriff Ron Abernathy tasked him with designing a new image for the sheriff's office's challenge coin.

Easy enough, right?

When thinking of how to replace the crimson and white Alabama "A" on the coin, he had the idea to commemorate the county's namesake — Chief Tuskaloosa.

This is where Baker ran into a figurative roadblock resulting in impassioned research that remains ongoing as of the publication of this story.

"I went looking for a good image of Chief Tuskaloosa and, guess what, there wasn't one," Baker told Patch in an interview at his office in the Tuscaloosa County Jail. "Nothing I found was culturally accurate."

To Chief Baker's credit, the minds of those familiar with local iconography are likely to go one of two places when pondering what the legendary paramount chief would have looked like, with the first being the beloved statue of Chief Tuskaloosa by Willie Logan that has been on display at the Tuscaloosa Public Library's main branch for years.

The other likely image conjured up when thinking of Chief Tuskaloosa's likeness can be found on the Tuscaloosa County seal, which features a side profile of a Native American man that closely resembles the controversial logo of the former Washington Redskins football team or the man depicted on the iconic Buffalo Nickel.

Baker explained that his research found the image used for the county seal, for example, was modeled after more contemporary Native American leaders, including a Cheyenne chief from the 20th Century — never mind that Chief Tuskaloosa met his fate nearly 500 years prior at the hands of the infamous Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto.

Then Chief Baker had an epiphany.

"When I figured out I wasn't going to find an accurate image, " he said, "I thought 'let's make one'."

This is where Chief Baker's connections proved the difference.

Indeed, when considering just how such a complicated task could be done, he reflected on a local case where an accused serial rapist is believed to have posed as a maintenance man from July 2008 and March 2009.

As Patch previously reported in August 2022, Alexander Valazquez-Hernandez was extradited back to the United States and charged with a string of sexual assaults against University of Alabama students living in an apartment complex on Reed Street near University Boulevard.

His arrest came around the time when Baker was laying the groundwork on his Chief Tuskaloosa project and he was reminded of the police sketch done of the suspect by the talented Sharron Rudowski.

"She did a police sketch of [Valazquez-Hernandez] and when we found him it was almost like she drew it from the picture," Baker said. "Then I thought, she can take limited information and draw from eyewitness accounts, so that was our start."

The Big Chief

Centuries before Chief Deputy Loyd Baker was born in Tuscaloosa — Oct. 10, 1540, to be specific — Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto was likely in captive awe of his alien surroundings as he met with a mountain of man who ruled as chief of the paramount village named Athahachi.

The spelling of the chief's name is truly difficult to translate and has many different variations, but a consensus in Spanish accounts of the man each corroborates his imposing size and sprawling influence over his wide domain of subject villages.

Tuskaloosa was a warrior chief, after all, which was no doubt taken into consideration by de Soto.

Centuries later, Chief Baker added context to much of the language, including the derivative meaning of Tuskaloosa's name, which translates roughly to "Black Warrior."

Sound familiar?

Baker was quick to point out that while many assume the incorporation of the color black in the name was a denotation of Tuskaloosa's skin color, it actually was in reference to his skill on the battlefield.

"If they were referred to as a 'white tribe' that meant they were a passive tribe, a red tribe was more fierce and a black tribe meant death," he explained.

De Soto earned a brutal reputation himself and was known for feigning diplomacy only to take advantage of his adversary the second their guard was down.

On this day, and after sending advanced notice to Athahachi that his army, with its gunpowder, steel and horses, was on the move toward the city, the Spanish explorer was brought before Chief Tuskaloosa as he sat in the shade atop a large earthen mound similar to those found in the Moundville Archaeological Park.

Penned in 1554 by Rodrigo Ranjel, one of the few existing accounts of the historic interaction reads:

"[T]he chief was on a kind of balcony on a mound at one side of the square, his head covered by a kind of coif like the almaizal, so that his headdress was like a Moor's which gave him an aspect of authority; he also wore a pelote or mantle of feathers down to his feet, very imposing; he was seated on some high cushions, and many of the principal men among his Indians were with him. He was as tall as that Tony (Antonico) of the Emperor, our lord's guard, and well proportioned, a fine and comely figure of a man. He had a son, a young man as tall as himself but more slender. Before this chief there stood always an Indian of graceful mien holding a parasol on a handle something like a round and very large fly fan, with a cross similar to that of the Knights of the Order of St. John of Rhodes, in the middle of a black field, and the cross was white. And although the Governor entered the plaza and alighted from his horse and went up to him, he did not rise, but remained passive in perfect composure and as if he had been a king."

As was the case in most of his interactions with tribal leaders, de Soto indignantly demanded Tuskaloosa provide him porters and women for his men, lest risk the wrath of their modern firepower.

The chief no doubt considered de Soto's request foolhardy but in what can only be considered a tactical decision, he told the armored conquistador he would provide the labor at Athahachi but the women would have to come from another city — a fortress within a fortesss named Mabila.

As a token of gratitude, de Soto reportedly gave the chief a pair of boots and a red cloak for his cooperation.

The expedition, with Chief Tuskaloosa in tow as a prisoner and political bargaining chip, took nearly a week to reach Mabila and encountered guerrilla assaults along the entire way, with de Soto even seeing some of his own men taken prisoner.

When de Soto's frustrated army finally reached the city, it was clear they had walked into a trap when the entire population of the hamlet was found to be fighting-age men.

Then commenced the Battle of Mabila.

On paper, the Spanish were considerably outmanned but used their superior weaponry and modern military tactics to route the natives and burn down the village, killing nearly the entire population inside its palisades.

Chief Tuskaloosa's son was found dead among the ashes, viscera, and mangled bodies, but his father was gone.

While yet to be confirmed even to this day, many historians assert that Chief Tuskaloosa was killed in the battle and his body taken away for a proper burial away from the torch-wielding Spaniards.

Most accounts conclude that 82 Spaniards were killed in the fighting, while anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000 natives perished to the flames, bullets and blades of de Soto's army. It is classified as the bloodiest battle on American soil until more than 23,000 were killed at the Battle of Shiloh in early April 1862. The actual site of the battle has yet to be confirmed by archaeologists, although researchers insist they are closer than ever.

Despite successfully convincing regional native tribes that he was a God, Hernando de Soto died a pretty miserable and ironically human death on the banks of the Mississippi River a couple years after the Battle of Mabila. Accounts from the time claim that his body was intentionally sunk in the big river to save the conquistador's remains from falling into the hands of the natives de Soto had terrorized for years — much in the same way historians insist that Tuskaloosa's body was quietly whisked away for a dignified burial.

Until only recently, de Soto was hailed as a hero of exploration and even lent his name and likeness to the caverns and tourist trap in Childersburg.

It's worth noting that the "De Soto Caverns" moniker was dropped in 2022, with the attraction renamed Majestic Caverns.

In the years that followed De Soto's conquest of west Alabama, the countless people once governed by Chief Tuskaloosa were forcibly sent to the Oklahoma territory as part of President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act — a piece of legislation that resulted in the Trail of Tears.

From that incredibly dark moment in American history, Tuskaloosa's descendants and former subjects are believed to have become the Choctaw and Creek peoples.

As Chief Baker pointed out nearly 200 years after the Trail of Tears, a statue of Chief Tuskaloosa is on display at the Choctaw Cultural Center in Durant, Oklahoma, and he is considered their oldest recorded ancestor.

Resurrecting The Dead

Back in modern-day Tuscaloosa, Chief Baker was onto something when enlisting the help of police sketch artist Sharron Rudowski. But such a herculean task was going to require a bit more academic firepower to meet the standards desired by the career lawman.

Enter Ian Thompson — a Choctaw Tribal Historic Preservation Officer in Oklahoma and an archaeologist who has extensively researched the history of the Moundville Archaeological Park.

"The things we couldn't put into a sketch, [Thompson] helped us with for culturally and historically accurate things that he knows from his research," Baker said.

The process of developing a composite-style sketch of Chief Tuskaloosa was a tedious one and Chief Baker made a trip Oklahoma and stayed in constant communication with the small braintrust as they worked to flesh out the most accurate depiction possible.

While Rudowksi fine-tuned the smaller details of how Chief Tuskaloosa would have looked, Thompson is credited with incorporating into the sketch period-accurate finery such as Tuskaloosa's ear spools, gorget necklace and the feathered cape worn by the chief that is one of the few details mentioned in contemporary written accounts by the Spanish.

"Everything about him has been researched," Baker explained. "A lot of times you'll see him with a head dress and the Choctaw say that's pretty much cultural appropriation. The only head dress he was ever seen wearing was a kind of turban, so it's something he probably got from a trade with other explorers."

Once the image was polished up and refined to the satisfaction of the researchers involved, Chief Baker expressed pride in the two-year effort and said the next step calls for a full-body picture of Chief Tuskaloosa, which will feature a culturally appropriate smoking pipe, a war hatchet and leggings.

Baker also said he'd like to see a statue erected to serve as an educational tool for future generations.

"We've been a county since 1818, so it's been over 200 years that we've had a chance to get this right," Baker explained. "This is also 500 years ago. Our city, our county and our river is all named after this guy, so let's get it right."

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