The first time Selma appeared on a map in the early 1700s, it was known as Ėcor Bienville and named after John Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur de Bienville, a French explorer and colonial Governor of Louisiana. The monument, erected in 1932 by the National Society of Colonial Dames of America, was placed to commemorate the engagement between Bienville and the Alibamo Indians on the bluff along the Alabama River.