 Although debated by Alabama historians, they may have been descendants of the Native American tribe whose small fortress town, Mabila, was used to conceal several thousand native warriors before an attack in 1540 on the expedition of Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto.About seven years after the founding of the French Mobile settlement, the Mobile tribe, along with the Tohomé, gained permission from the colonists to settle near the fort.The European settlement of Mobile began with French colonists, who in 1702 constructed "Fort Louis de la Louisiane", at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff on the Mobile River, as the first capital of the French colony of La Louisiane.