Ocmulgee National Monument
Encyclopedia
Ocmulgee National Monument preserves traces of over ten millennia of Southeastern Native American
culture, including major earthwork
s built more than 1,000 years ago by Mississippian culture
peoples: the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches. They represented highly skilled engineering techniques and soil knowledge, and the organization of many laborers. The site has evidence of "17,000 years of continuous human habitation." The 702 acres (2.8 km²) park is located on the east bank of the Ocmulgee River
. Present-day Macon, Georgia
developed around the site after the United States built Fort Benjamin Hawkins
nearby in 1806.
Varying cultures of prehistoric indigenous peoples
settled on what is called the Macon Plateau at the Fall Line
, where the rolling hills of the Piedmont met the Atlantic Coastal Plain
. The monument designation includes the Lamar Mounds and Village Site, located downriver about three miles (5 km) from Macon. The monument park was designated for federal protection by the National Park Service
(NPS) in 1934 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places
in 1966. In 1997, the NPS designated the monument a Traditional Cultural Property, the first so recognized east of the Mississippi River
.
during the Great Depression
. The Works Progress Administration
(WPA) sponsored large-scale archaeological digs at the site between 1933 and 1942. Workers excavated portions of eight mounds, finding an array of significant archeological artifacts
that revealed a wide trading network and complex, sophisticated culture. On June 14, 1934, the park was authorized as a National Monument
and formally established on December 23, 1936 under the National Park Service
. As an historic unit of the Park Service, the National Monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
on October 15, 1966.
In the early 1990s, the National Park Service renovated its facilities at the park. In 1997, it designated the Ocmulgee National Monument as a Traditional Cultural Property, the first such site named east of the Mississippi River
. Ocmulgee's visitor center
includes an archaeology museum. It displays artifacts and interprets the successive cultures of the prehistoric Native Americans who inhabited this site, as well as the historic Muscogee and diverse peoples of the colonial
era.
The large park encompasses 702 acres (2.8 km²), with 5½ miles (9 km) of walking trails. Near the visitor center is a reconstructed ceremonial earthlodge, based on a 1,000-year-old structure excavated by archeologists. Visitors can reach the Great Temple Mound via a half-mile walk or the park road. Other surviving prehistoric features in the park include a burial mound, platform mound
s, and earthwork trench
es. The historic site of the English colonial Ocumulgee trading post
is also part of the park. The visitor center includes a short orientation film for the monument site and a gift shop.
The main section of Ocmulgee National Monument is accessible from U.S. Route 80
, off Interstate 16
(which passes through the southwest edge of the monument land). It is open daily except Christmas Day and New Year's Day.
The Lamar Mounds and Village Site is an isolated unit of the monument, located in the swamps about 3 miles (5 km) south of Macon. The Lamar Site is open on a limited basis.
. From Ice Age
hunters to the Muscogee (Creek) of historic times, the site has evidence of 17,000 years of human habitation. The Macon plateau was inhabited during the Paleoindian, Archaic, and Woodland
phases.
The major occupation was ca. 950-1150 during the Early Mississippian
-culture phase. The people of this sophisticated, stratified culture built the complex, massive earthworks that expressed their religious and political system. Archeologists call this society the Macon Plateau culture, a local expression of the Mississippian culture. During this period, an elite society supported by skillful farmers constructed a town. Leaders directed the complex construction of large, earthwork mounds, the central structures on the plateau.
Carrying earth by hand in bags, thousands of workers built the 55 ft (16.8 m).-high Great Temple Mound on a high bluff overlooking the floodplain of the Ocmulgee River. Magnetometer
scans have revealed the platform mound
had a spiraling staircase oriented toward the floodplain. The staircase is unique among any of the Mississippian-culture sites. Other earthworks include at least one burial mound.
The people built rectangular wooden buildings to house certain religious ceremonies on the platform mounds. The mounds at Ocmulgee were unusual because their distance apart from each other was more than that of other Mississippian complexes. Scholars believe this was to provide for public space and residences.
Circular earth lodge
s were built to serve as places to conduct meetings and important ceremonies. Remains of one of the earth lodges were carbon dated to 1050 CE. This evidence was the basis for the reconstructed lodge which archeologists later built at the monument center. The interior features a raised-earth platform, shaped like an eagle with a forked-eye motif. Molded seats on the platform were built for the leaders. The eagle was a symbol of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
, which the people shared with other Mississippian cultures.
. This is now protected as the Lamar Mounds and Village Site.
Lamar pottery was distinctive, stamped with complex designs like pottery of the earlier Woodland peoples. It was unlike the pottery of the Macon Plateau culture. Many archaeologists believe the Lamar were related to the earlier Woodland inhabitants, who, after being displaced by the newer Mississippian culture migrants, developed a hybrid culture.
conquistador
Hernando de Soto recorded its travel through the chiefdom
of Ichisi Historians and archeologists believe this was likely the Lamar site. The Spaniards left a trail of destruction in their wake as they wandered throughout the present-day Southeastern U.S. in a failed search for precious metals. Their deadliest legacy was likely related to the pigs they brought. Escaping, the pigs became feral and spread Eurasia
n infectious diseases to which American Indians had no acquired immunity
. Fatalities were high, causing social dislocations and likely contributing to a collapse of the Mississippian cultures.
In the aftermath of De Soto's expedition, the Mississippian cultures disappeared. Hierarchical chiefdom
s crumbled. They were replaced by loose confederacies of clans. The clans did not cultivate the agricultural surpluses which had supported the former population density. Agriculture had enabled the development of hierarchy in the larger population. Its leaders planned and directed the corvée
labor system that raised and maintained the great earthen mounds.
and Alabama
was the Muscogee (known during the colonial and federal periods as the Creek Indians), part of the Muskogean-speaking peoples. They considered the ancient Mississippian mounds at Ocmulgee to be sacred and made pilgrimages there. According to Muscogee oral tradition, the mounds area was "the place where we first sat down," after their ancestors ended their migration journey from the West.
In 1690, Scottish
fur traders from Carolina
built a trading post
on Ochese Creek (Ocmulgee River), near the Macon Plateau mounds. Some Muscogee created a village along the Chattahoochee River
near the post, where they could easily acquire trade goods. They defied efforts by Spanish Florida
to bring them into the mission province
of Apalachee
.
The traders referred to both the river and the peoples living along it as Ochese Creek. Later usage shortened the term to Creek, which traders and colonists applied to all Muskogean-speaking peoples. The Muscogee called their village near the trading-post Ocmulgee (bubbling waters) in the local Hitchiti
language. The British colonists called it Ocmulgee Town, later the basis of their naming the river.
The Muscogee traded pelts of white tailed deer and Indian slaves captured in raids against other tribes. They received West Indian rum
, cloth, glass beads, axes, swords, and flintlock
s. Carolinian fur traders, who were men of capital, took Muscogee wives, often the daughters of chiefs
. It was a practice common also among the British fur traders in Canada; both the fur traders and American Indians saw such marriages as a way to increase the alliances among the elite of both cultures. The fur traders encouraged the Muscogee slaving raids against Spanish "Mission Indians
." British colonists were so few in number that they depended on Indian alliances for security and survival.
In 1702 South Carolina Governor Col. James Moore
raised a militia
of 50 colonists and 1,000 Yamasee
and Ochese Creek warriors. From 1704 to 1706, they attacked and destroyed
a significant number of Spanish missions of coastal Georgia and Florida
. They captured numerous Mission Indians: the Timucua
and Apalachee
, some of whom the colonists and their Indian allies sold into slavery
. Together with extensive fatalities from infectious disease
epidemics, the warfare caused Florida's indigenous population to fall from about 16,000 in 1685 to 3,700 by 1715.
As Florida was depopulated, the English-allied tribes grew indebted to slave traders. They paid other tribes to attack and enslave Indians, raids that were a catalyst for the Yamasee War
in 1715. In an effort to drive the colonists out, the Ochese Creek joined the rebellion and burned the Ocmulgee trading post. In retaliation, South Carolina began arming the Cherokee
, whose attacks forced the Ochese Creek to abandon the Ocmulgee
and Oconee
rivers, and move west to the Chattahoochee
. The Yamasee took refuge in Spanish Florida
.
With the defeat of the Yamasee, the English created the new colony of Georgia
, founding Savannah
on the coast in 1733. Although various development schemes were started (silkworm cultivation, production of naval stores), the colony did not become profitable until after Georgia ended its prohibition of slavery. The earliest intention of the founders had been to provide a colony for hardworking English laborers but not enough were willing to bear its conditions. The colony began to import African slaves as laborers and to develop the labor-intensive rice
, cotton
and indigo
plantation
s in the 1750s in the Low Country. These commodity crops, based on slave labor, made the wealth of the planter elite of South Carolina.
Because of continuing conflicts with land-hungry European settlers and other Muscogee groups, many Ochese Creek migrated from Georgia to Florida in the eighteenth century. There they joined with earlier refugees of the Yamasee War, remnants of Mission Indians, and escaped African slaves, to form a new tribe which they called the Seminole
.
The Ocmulgee mounds evoked awe in early travelers. The Naturalist
William Bartram
journeyed through Ocmulgee in 1774 and 1776. He described the "wonderful remains of the power and grandeur of the ancients in this part of America." He was the first to record the Muscogee oral histories of the mounds' origins.
The Lower Creek of Georgia initially had good relations with the federal government of the United States, based on the diplomacy of both Benjamin Hawkins
, President George Washington
's Indian agent, and the Muscogee Principal Chief Alexander McGillivray
. The son of Sehoy, a Muscogee woman of the Wind Clan, and Lachlan McGillivray, a wealthy Scottish
fur trader, Alexander McGillivray achieved influence both within the matrilineal tribe because of his mother's family, and among the Americans because of his father's position and wealth. In 1790 he secured U.S. recognition of Muscogee and Seminole sovereignty
by the Treaty of New York
. But, after the invention of the cotton gin
in 1794 made cultivation of short-staple cotton more profitable, Georgians were eager to acquire Muscogee corn-fields of the uplands area to develop as cotton plantations; they began to encroach on the native territory.
Under government pressure in 1805, the Lower Creeks ceded their lands east of the Ocmulgee River
to the state of Georgia, but they refused to surrender the sacred mounds. They retained a 3x5-mile-square area on the east bank called the Ocmulgee Old Fields
Reserve. It included both the mounds on the Macon Plateau and the Lamar mounds.
In 1806 the Jefferson administration
ordered Fort Benjamin Hawkins
built on a hill overlooking the mounds. The fort was of national and state military importance through 1821, used as a US Army command headquarters, and a supply depot for campaigns in the War of 1812
and later. Economically, it was important as a trading post or factory to regulate the Creek Nation's trade in deerskins. In addition, it served as a headquarters and mustering area for the Georgia state militia, so was a point of contact among the Creek Nation, the US, and the state of Georgia military and political representatives.
Tensions among the Upper Creek and Lower Creek towns increased with encroachment by European-American settlers in Georgia. Many among the Upper Creek wanted to revive traditional culture and religion, and a young group of men, the Red Sticks, formed around their prophets. The US and Georgia forces used the fort during the Creek War
of 1813-1814. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend
in 1814, General Andrew Jackson
defeated the Red Stick faction of the Upper Creek. Together with their own issues, they had been influenced by the Shawnee
chief Tecumseh
and were seeking to drive the Americans out of their territory. The Lower Creek fought alongside the U.S. against the Red Sticks.
Led by Chief William McIntosh, the Lower Creek also allied with the United States in the First Seminole War
. McIntosh's influence in the area was extended by his family ties to Georgia's planter elite
through his wealthy Scots father by the same name. He was connected to the McGillivray clan. A resident of Savannah
, the senior McIntosh had strong ties to the British and had been a Tory
officer during the American Revolution
. He tried to recruit the Lower Creek to fight for the British in the war. Remaining in the new United States, he became a cotton planter
after the war.
In 1819, the Lower Creek gathered for the last time at the Ocmulgee Old Fields. In 1821, Chief McIntosh agreed to the first Treaty of Indian Springs
, by which the Lower Creek ceded their lands east of the Flint River
, including the Ocmulgee Old Fields. In 1822 the state chartered Bibb County
, and the following year the town of Macon
was founded.
The Creek National Council struggled to end such land cessions by making them a capital offense. But in 1825, Chief McIntosh and his paternal cousin Georgia Governor George Troup
negotiated an agreement with the US. McIntosh and several other Lower Creek chiefs signed the second Treaty of Indian Springs
in 1825. McIntosh ceded the remaining Lower Creek lands to the United States, and the Senate ratified the treaty by one vote, despite its lacking the signature of the Muscogee Principal Chief John Ross
. Soon after that, the chief Menama and 200 warriors attacked McIntosh's plantation. They killed him and burned down his mansion in retaliation for his alienating communal lands.
Ross and a Muscogee delegation from the National Council went to Washington to protest the treaty to President John Quincy Adams. The US government and the Creek negotiated a new treaty, called the Treaty of New York
(1826), but the Georgia state government proceeded with evicting Creek from lands under the 1825 treaty. It also passed laws dissolving tribal government and regulating residency on American Indian lands.
In 1828, Andrew Jackson
was elected president, and he supported Indian removal, signing legislation to that effect by Congress in 1830. Later he used US Army forces to remove the remnants of the Southeastern Indian tribes through the 1830s. The Creek, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw and the Seminole were all removed to Indian Territory.
Following Indian Removal
, the Muscogee reorganized in the Indian Territory
(now Oklahoma). In 1867 they founded a new capital, which they called Okmulgee
in honor of their sacred mounds on the plateau of the Georgia fall line.
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
culture, including major earthwork
Earthworks (archaeology)
In archaeology, earthwork is a general term to describe artificial changes in land level. Earthworks are often known colloquially as 'lumps and bumps'. Earthworks can themselves be archaeological features or they can show features beneath the surface...
s built more than 1,000 years ago by Mississippian culture
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....
peoples: the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches. They represented highly skilled engineering techniques and soil knowledge, and the organization of many laborers. The site has evidence of "17,000 years of continuous human habitation." The 702 acres (2.8 km²) park is located on the east bank of the Ocmulgee River
Ocmulgee River
The Ocmulgee River is a tributary of the Altamaha River, approximately 255 mi long, in the U.S. state of Georgia...
. Present-day Macon, Georgia
Macon, Georgia
Macon is a city located in central Georgia, US. Founded at the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is part of the Macon metropolitan area, and the county seat of Bibb County. A small portion of the city extends into Jones County. Macon is the biggest city in central Georgia...
developed around the site after the United States built Fort Benjamin Hawkins
Fort Benjamin Hawkins
Fort Hawkins was a fort built in 1806-1809 in the historic Creek Nation by the United States government under President Thomas Jefferson and used until 1821...
nearby in 1806.
Varying cultures of prehistoric indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
settled on what is called the Macon Plateau at the Fall Line
Fall line
A fall line is a geomorphologic unconformity between an upland region of relatively hard crystalline basement rock and a coastal plain of softer sedimentary rock. A fall line is typically prominent when crossed by a river, for there will often be rapids or waterfalls...
, where the rolling hills of the Piedmont met the Atlantic Coastal Plain
Atlantic Coastal Plain
The Atlantic coastal plain has both low elevation and low relief, but it is also a relatively flat landform extending from the New York Bight southward to a Georgia/Florida section of the Eastern Continental Divide, which demarcates the plain from the ACF River Basin in the Gulf Coastal Plain to...
. The monument designation includes the Lamar Mounds and Village Site, located downriver about three miles (5 km) from Macon. The monument park was designated for federal protection by the National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
(NPS) in 1934 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1966. In 1997, the NPS designated the monument a Traditional Cultural Property, the first so recognized east of the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
.
National Monument
While the mounds had been studied by some travelers, professional excavation under the evolving techniques of archeology did not begin until the 1930s, under the administration of President Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. The Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
(WPA) sponsored large-scale archaeological digs at the site between 1933 and 1942. Workers excavated portions of eight mounds, finding an array of significant archeological artifacts
Artifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...
that revealed a wide trading network and complex, sophisticated culture. On June 14, 1934, the park was authorized as a National Monument
U.S. National Monument
A National Monument in the United States is a protected area that is similar to a National Park except that the President of the United States can quickly declare an area of the United States to be a National Monument without the approval of Congress. National monuments receive less funding and...
and formally established on December 23, 1936 under the National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
. As an historic unit of the Park Service, the National Monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
on October 15, 1966.
In the early 1990s, the National Park Service renovated its facilities at the park. In 1997, it designated the Ocmulgee National Monument as a Traditional Cultural Property, the first such site named east of the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
. Ocmulgee's visitor center
Visitor center
A visitor center or centre , visitor information center, tourist information center, is a physical location that provides tourist information to the visitors who tour the place or area locally...
includes an archaeology museum. It displays artifacts and interprets the successive cultures of the prehistoric Native Americans who inhabited this site, as well as the historic Muscogee and diverse peoples of the colonial
Colony
In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....
era.
The large park encompasses 702 acres (2.8 km²), with 5½ miles (9 km) of walking trails. Near the visitor center is a reconstructed ceremonial earthlodge, based on a 1,000-year-old structure excavated by archeologists. Visitors can reach the Great Temple Mound via a half-mile walk or the park road. Other surviving prehistoric features in the park include a burial mound, platform mound
Platform mound
A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity.-Eastern North America:The indigenous peoples of North America built substructure mounds for well over a thousand years starting in the Archaic period and continuing through the Woodland period...
s, and earthwork trench
Trench
A trench is a type of excavation or depression in the ground. Trenches are generally defined by being deeper than they are wide , and by being narrow compared to their length ....
es. The historic site of the English colonial Ocumulgee trading post
Trading post
A trading post was a place or establishment in historic Northern America where the trading of goods took place. The preferred travel route to a trading post or between trading posts, was known as a trade route....
is also part of the park. The visitor center includes a short orientation film for the monument site and a gift shop.
The main section of Ocmulgee National Monument is accessible from U.S. Route 80
U.S. Route 80
U.S. Route 80 is an east–west United States highway, much of which was once part of the early auto trail known as the Dixie Overland Highway. As the "0" in the route number indicates, it was originally a cross-country route, from the Atlantic to the Pacific...
, off Interstate 16
Interstate 16
Interstate 16 , also known as Jim Gillis Historic Savannah Parkway or State Route 404 , is an intrastate Interstate Highway located entirely within the state of Georgia, United States...
(which passes through the southwest edge of the monument land). It is open daily except Christmas Day and New Year's Day.
The Lamar Mounds and Village Site is an isolated unit of the monument, located in the swamps about 3 miles (5 km) south of Macon. The Lamar Site is open on a limited basis.
Macon Plateau culture
Ocmulgee is a memorial to ancient indigenous peoples in Southeast North AmericaNorth America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. From Ice Age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
hunters to the Muscogee (Creek) of historic times, the site has evidence of 17,000 years of human habitation. The Macon plateau was inhabited during the Paleoindian, Archaic, and Woodland
Woodland period
The Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures was from roughly 1000 BCE to 1000 CE in the eastern part of North America. The term "Woodland Period" was introduced in the 1930s as a generic header for prehistoric sites falling between the Archaic hunter-gatherers and the...
phases.
The major occupation was ca. 950-1150 during the Early Mississippian
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....
-culture phase. The people of this sophisticated, stratified culture built the complex, massive earthworks that expressed their religious and political system. Archeologists call this society the Macon Plateau culture, a local expression of the Mississippian culture. During this period, an elite society supported by skillful farmers constructed a town. Leaders directed the complex construction of large, earthwork mounds, the central structures on the plateau.
Carrying earth by hand in bags, thousands of workers built the 55 ft (16.8 m).-high Great Temple Mound on a high bluff overlooking the floodplain of the Ocmulgee River. Magnetometer
Magnetometer
A magnetometer is a measuring instrument used to measure the strength or direction of a magnetic field either produced in the laboratory or existing in nature...
scans have revealed the platform mound
Platform mound
A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity.-Eastern North America:The indigenous peoples of North America built substructure mounds for well over a thousand years starting in the Archaic period and continuing through the Woodland period...
had a spiraling staircase oriented toward the floodplain. The staircase is unique among any of the Mississippian-culture sites. Other earthworks include at least one burial mound.
The people built rectangular wooden buildings to house certain religious ceremonies on the platform mounds. The mounds at Ocmulgee were unusual because their distance apart from each other was more than that of other Mississippian complexes. Scholars believe this was to provide for public space and residences.
Earth lodge
An earth lodge is a semi-subterranean building covered partially or completely with earth, best known from the Native American cultures of the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands. Most earth lodges are circular in construction with a dome-like roof, often with a central or slightly-offset smoke...
s were built to serve as places to conduct meetings and important ceremonies. Remains of one of the earth lodges were carbon dated to 1050 CE. This evidence was the basis for the reconstructed lodge which archeologists later built at the monument center. The interior features a raised-earth platform, shaped like an eagle with a forked-eye motif. Molded seats on the platform were built for the leaders. The eagle was a symbol of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex is the name given to the regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies, and mythology of the Mississippian culture that coincided with their adoption of maize agriculture and chiefdom-level complex social organization from...
, which the people shared with other Mississippian cultures.
Lamar Phase
As the Mississippian culture declined at the ceremonial center, ca. 1350 a new culture coalesced among people who lived in the swamps downstream. The Late Mississippian Lamar Phase people built two mounds that have survived, including a unique "spiral mound." They also had a village protected by a defensive palisadePalisade
A palisade is a steel or wooden fence or wall of variable height, usually used as a defensive structure.- Typical construction :Typical construction consisted of small or mid sized tree trunks aligned vertically, with no spacing in between. The trunks were sharpened or pointed at the top, and were...
. This is now protected as the Lamar Mounds and Village Site.
Lamar pottery was distinctive, stamped with complex designs like pottery of the earlier Woodland peoples. It was unlike the pottery of the Macon Plateau culture. Many archaeologists believe the Lamar were related to the earlier Woodland inhabitants, who, after being displaced by the newer Mississippian culture migrants, developed a hybrid culture.
Spanish contact
In 1540 the expedition of SpanishSpanish people
The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
conquistador
Conquistador
Conquistadors were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...
Hernando de Soto recorded its travel through the chiefdom
Chiefdom
A chiefdom is a political economy that organizes regional populations through a hierarchy of the chief.In anthropological theory, one model of human social development rooted in ideas of cultural evolution describes a chiefdom as a form of social organization more complex than a tribe or a band...
of Ichisi Historians and archeologists believe this was likely the Lamar site. The Spaniards left a trail of destruction in their wake as they wandered throughout the present-day Southeastern U.S. in a failed search for precious metals. Their deadliest legacy was likely related to the pigs they brought. Escaping, the pigs became feral and spread Eurasia
Eurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...
n infectious diseases to which American Indians had no acquired immunity
Immunity (medical)
Immunity is a biological term that describes a state of having sufficient biological defenses to avoid infection, disease, or other unwanted biological invasion. Immunity involves both specific and non-specific components. The non-specific components act either as barriers or as eliminators of wide...
. Fatalities were high, causing social dislocations and likely contributing to a collapse of the Mississippian cultures.
In the aftermath of De Soto's expedition, the Mississippian cultures disappeared. Hierarchical chiefdom
Chiefdom
A chiefdom is a political economy that organizes regional populations through a hierarchy of the chief.In anthropological theory, one model of human social development rooted in ideas of cultural evolution describes a chiefdom as a form of social organization more complex than a tribe or a band...
s crumbled. They were replaced by loose confederacies of clans. The clans did not cultivate the agricultural surpluses which had supported the former population density. Agriculture had enabled the development of hierarchy in the larger population. Its leaders planned and directed the corvée
Corvée
Corvée is unfree labour, often unpaid, that is required of people of lower social standing and imposed on them by the state or a superior . The corvée was the earliest and most widespread form of taxation, which can be traced back to the beginning of civilization...
labor system that raised and maintained the great earthen mounds.
Historic period
By the late 18th century, the largest American Indian confederacy in present-day GeorgiaGeorgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
and Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
was the Muscogee (known during the colonial and federal periods as the Creek Indians), part of the Muskogean-speaking peoples. They considered the ancient Mississippian mounds at Ocmulgee to be sacred and made pilgrimages there. According to Muscogee oral tradition, the mounds area was "the place where we first sat down," after their ancestors ended their migration journey from the West.
In 1690, Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
fur traders from Carolina
Province of Carolina
The Province of Carolina, originally chartered in 1629, was an English and later British colony of North America. Because the original Heath charter was unrealized and was ruled invalid, a new charter was issued to a group of eight English noblemen, the Lords Proprietors, in 1663...
built a trading post
Trading post
A trading post was a place or establishment in historic Northern America where the trading of goods took place. The preferred travel route to a trading post or between trading posts, was known as a trade route....
on Ochese Creek (Ocmulgee River), near the Macon Plateau mounds. Some Muscogee created a village along the Chattahoochee River
Chattahoochee River
The Chattahoochee River flows through or along the borders of the U.S. states of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. It is a tributary of the Apalachicola River, a relatively short river formed by the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers and emptying into Apalachicola Bay in the Gulf of...
near the post, where they could easily acquire trade goods. They defied efforts by Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida refers to the Spanish territory of Florida, which formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire. Originally extending over what is now the southeastern United States, but with no defined boundaries, la Florida was a component of...
to bring them into the mission province
Spanish missions in Florida
Beginning in the second half of the 16th century, the Kingdom of Spain established a number of missions throughout la Florida in order to convert the Indians to Christianity, to facilitate control of the area, and to prevent its colonization by other countries, in particular, England and France...
of Apalachee
Apalachee Province
Apalachee Province was the area in the Panhandle of the present-day U.S. state of Florida inhabited by the Native American peoples known as the Apalachee at the time of European contact. The southernmost extent of the Mississippian culture, the Apalachee lived in what is now Leon County, Wakulla...
.
The traders referred to both the river and the peoples living along it as Ochese Creek. Later usage shortened the term to Creek, which traders and colonists applied to all Muskogean-speaking peoples. The Muscogee called their village near the trading-post Ocmulgee (bubbling waters) in the local Hitchiti
Hitchiti
The Hitchiti were a Muskogean-speaking tribe formerly residing chiefly in a town of the same name on the east bank of the Chattahoochee River, 4 miles below Chiaha, in west Georgia. They spoke the Hitchiti language, which was mutually intelligible with Mikasuki; both tribes were part of the loose...
language. The British colonists called it Ocmulgee Town, later the basis of their naming the river.
The Muscogee traded pelts of white tailed deer and Indian slaves captured in raids against other tribes. They received West Indian rum
Rum
Rum is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from sugarcane by-products such as molasses, or directly from sugarcane juice, by a process of fermentation and distillation. The distillate, a clear liquid, is then usually aged in oak barrels...
, cloth, glass beads, axes, swords, and flintlock
Flintlock
Flintlock is the general term for any firearm based on the flintlock mechanism. The term may also apply to the mechanism itself. Introduced at the beginning of the 17th century, the flintlock rapidly replaced earlier firearm-ignition technologies, such as the doglock, matchlock and wheellock...
s. Carolinian fur traders, who were men of capital, took Muscogee wives, often the daughters of chiefs
Tribal chief
A tribal chief is the leader of a tribal society or chiefdom. Tribal societies with social stratification under a single leader emerged in the Neolithic period out of earlier tribal structures with little stratification, and they remained prevalent throughout the Iron Age.In the case of ...
. It was a practice common also among the British fur traders in Canada; both the fur traders and American Indians saw such marriages as a way to increase the alliances among the elite of both cultures. The fur traders encouraged the Muscogee slaving raids against Spanish "Mission Indians
Mission Indians
Mission Indians is a term for many Native California tribes, primarily living in coastal plains, adjacent inland valleys and mountains, and on the Channel Islands in central and southern California, United States. The tribes had established comparatively peaceful cultures varying from 250 to 8,000...
." British colonists were so few in number that they depended on Indian alliances for security and survival.
In 1702 South Carolina Governor Col. James Moore
James Moore (South Carolina politician)
James Moore was the British governor of colonial South Carolina between 1700 and 1703. He is remembered for leading several invasions of Spanish Florida, including attacks in 1704 and 1706 which wiped out most of the Spanish missions in Florida....
raised a militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
of 50 colonists and 1,000 Yamasee
Yamasee
The Yamasee were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans that lived in the coastal region of present-day northern coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida.-History:...
and Ochese Creek warriors. From 1704 to 1706, they attacked and destroyed
Apalachee Massacre
The Apalachee massacre was a series of brutal raids by English colonists from the Province of Carolina and their Indian allies against a largely pacific population of Apalachee Indians in northern Spanish Florida that took place during Queen Anne's War in 1704...
a significant number of Spanish missions of coastal Georgia and Florida
Spanish missions in Florida
Beginning in the second half of the 16th century, the Kingdom of Spain established a number of missions throughout la Florida in order to convert the Indians to Christianity, to facilitate control of the area, and to prevent its colonization by other countries, in particular, England and France...
. They captured numerous Mission Indians: the Timucua
Timucua
The Timucua were a Native American people who lived in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia. They were the largest indigenous group in that area and consisted of about 35 chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people. The various groups of Timucua spoke several dialects of the...
and Apalachee
Apalachee
The Apalachee are a Native American people who historically lived in the Florida Panhandle, and now live primarily in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Their historical territory was known to the Spanish colonists as the Apalachee Province...
, some of whom the colonists and their Indian allies sold into slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. Together with extensive fatalities from infectious disease
Infectious disease
Infectious diseases, also known as communicable diseases, contagious diseases or transmissible diseases comprise clinically evident illness resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism...
epidemics, the warfare caused Florida's indigenous population to fall from about 16,000 in 1685 to 3,700 by 1715.
As Florida was depopulated, the English-allied tribes grew indebted to slave traders. They paid other tribes to attack and enslave Indians, raids that were a catalyst for the Yamasee War
Yamasee War
The Yamasee War was a conflict between British settlers of colonial South Carolina and various Native American Indian tribes, including the Yamasee, Muscogee, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Catawba, Apalachee, Apalachicola, Yuchi, Savannah River Shawnee, Congaree, Waxhaw, Pee Dee, Cape Fear, Cheraw, and...
in 1715. In an effort to drive the colonists out, the Ochese Creek joined the rebellion and burned the Ocmulgee trading post. In retaliation, South Carolina began arming the Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
, whose attacks forced the Ochese Creek to abandon the Ocmulgee
Ocmulgee River
The Ocmulgee River is a tributary of the Altamaha River, approximately 255 mi long, in the U.S. state of Georgia...
and Oconee
Oconee River
The Oconee River is a river which has its origin in Hall County, Georgia, and terminates where it joins the Ocmulgee River to form the Altamaha River near Lumber City at the borders of Montgomery County, Wheeler County, and Jeff Davis County. South of Athens, two forks, known as the North Oconee...
rivers, and move west to the Chattahoochee
Chattahoochee River
The Chattahoochee River flows through or along the borders of the U.S. states of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. It is a tributary of the Apalachicola River, a relatively short river formed by the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers and emptying into Apalachicola Bay in the Gulf of...
. The Yamasee took refuge in Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida refers to the Spanish territory of Florida, which formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire. Originally extending over what is now the southeastern United States, but with no defined boundaries, la Florida was a component of...
.
With the defeat of the Yamasee, the English created the new colony of Georgia
History of Georgia (U.S. state)
The history of Georgia spans pre-Columbian time to the present day.-Pre-Columbian:Before European contact, Native American cultures are divided into four lengthy archeological time periods: Paleo, Archaic, Woodland and Mississippian....
, founding Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
on the coast in 1733. Although various development schemes were started (silkworm cultivation, production of naval stores), the colony did not become profitable until after Georgia ended its prohibition of slavery. The earliest intention of the founders had been to provide a colony for hardworking English laborers but not enough were willing to bear its conditions. The colony began to import African slaves as laborers and to develop the labor-intensive rice
Rice
Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...
, cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
and indigo
Indigo
Indigo is a color named after the purple dye derived from the plant Indigofera tinctoria and related species. The color is placed on the electromagnetic spectrum between about 420 and 450 nm in wavelength, placing it between blue and violet...
plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
s in the 1750s in the Low Country. These commodity crops, based on slave labor, made the wealth of the planter elite of South Carolina.
Because of continuing conflicts with land-hungry European settlers and other Muscogee groups, many Ochese Creek migrated from Georgia to Florida in the eighteenth century. There they joined with earlier refugees of the Yamasee War, remnants of Mission Indians, and escaped African slaves, to form a new tribe which they called the Seminole
Seminole
The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...
.
The Ocmulgee mounds evoked awe in early travelers. The Naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
William Bartram
William Bartram
William Bartram was an American naturalist. The son of Ann and John Bartram, William Bartram and his twin sister Elizabeth were born in Kingsessing, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. As a boy, he accompanied his father on many of his travels, to the Catskill Mountains, the New Jersey Pine Barrens,...
journeyed through Ocmulgee in 1774 and 1776. He described the "wonderful remains of the power and grandeur of the ancients in this part of America." He was the first to record the Muscogee oral histories of the mounds' origins.
The Lower Creek of Georgia initially had good relations with the federal government of the United States, based on the diplomacy of both Benjamin Hawkins
Benjamin Hawkins
Benjamin Hawkins was an American planter, statesman, and United States Indian agent . He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and a United States Senator from North Carolina, having grown up among the planter elite...
, President George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
's Indian agent, and the Muscogee Principal Chief Alexander McGillivray
Alexander McGillivray
Alexander McGillivray, also known as Hoboi-Hili-Miko , was a principal chief of the Upper Creek towns from 1782. Before that he had created an alliance between the Creek and the British during the American Revolution...
. The son of Sehoy, a Muscogee woman of the Wind Clan, and Lachlan McGillivray, a wealthy Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
fur trader, Alexander McGillivray achieved influence both within the matrilineal tribe because of his mother's family, and among the Americans because of his father's position and wealth. In 1790 he secured U.S. recognition of Muscogee and Seminole sovereignty
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
by the Treaty of New York
Treaty of New York
The Treaty of New York is one of several treaties signed between the United States and Native American tribes, conducted in the city of New York.-1790:...
. But, after the invention of the cotton gin
Cotton gin
A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, a job formerly performed painstakingly by hand...
in 1794 made cultivation of short-staple cotton more profitable, Georgians were eager to acquire Muscogee corn-fields of the uplands area to develop as cotton plantations; they began to encroach on the native territory.
Under government pressure in 1805, the Lower Creeks ceded their lands east of the Ocmulgee River
Ocmulgee River
The Ocmulgee River is a tributary of the Altamaha River, approximately 255 mi long, in the U.S. state of Georgia...
to the state of Georgia, but they refused to surrender the sacred mounds. They retained a 3x5-mile-square area on the east bank called the Ocmulgee Old Fields
Indian old field
Indian Old Field, or simply Old Field, was a common term used in Colonial American times and up until the early 19th century United States, by white explorers, surveyors, cartographers and settlers, in reference to land formerly cleared and utilized by Indians for farming or occupation...
Reserve. It included both the mounds on the Macon Plateau and the Lamar mounds.
In 1806 the Jefferson administration
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
ordered Fort Benjamin Hawkins
Fort Benjamin Hawkins
Fort Hawkins was a fort built in 1806-1809 in the historic Creek Nation by the United States government under President Thomas Jefferson and used until 1821...
built on a hill overlooking the mounds. The fort was of national and state military importance through 1821, used as a US Army command headquarters, and a supply depot for campaigns in the War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
and later. Economically, it was important as a trading post or factory to regulate the Creek Nation's trade in deerskins. In addition, it served as a headquarters and mustering area for the Georgia state militia, so was a point of contact among the Creek Nation, the US, and the state of Georgia military and political representatives.
Tensions among the Upper Creek and Lower Creek towns increased with encroachment by European-American settlers in Georgia. Many among the Upper Creek wanted to revive traditional culture and religion, and a young group of men, the Red Sticks, formed around their prophets. The US and Georgia forces used the fort during the Creek War
Creek War
The Creek War , also known as the Red Stick War and the Creek Civil War, began as a civil war within the Creek nation...
of 1813-1814. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend
Battle of Horseshoe Bend
The Battle of Horseshoe Bend , was fought during the War of 1812 in central Alabama...
in 1814, General Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
defeated the Red Stick faction of the Upper Creek. Together with their own issues, they had been influenced by the Shawnee
Shawnee
The Shawnee, Shaawanwaki, Shaawanooki and Shaawanowi lenaweeki, are an Algonquian-speaking people native to North America. Historically they inhabited the areas of Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Western Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, and Pennsylvania...
chief Tecumseh
Tecumseh
Tecumseh was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy which opposed the United States during Tecumseh's War and the War of 1812...
and were seeking to drive the Americans out of their territory. The Lower Creek fought alongside the U.S. against the Red Sticks.
Led by Chief William McIntosh, the Lower Creek also allied with the United States in the First Seminole War
Seminole Wars
The Seminole Wars, also known as the Florida Wars, were three conflicts in Florida between the Seminole — the collective name given to the amalgamation of various groups of native Americans and Black people who settled in Florida in the early 18th century — and the United States Army...
. McIntosh's influence in the area was extended by his family ties to Georgia's planter elite
Plantations in the American South
Plantations were an important aspect of the history of the American South, particularly the antebellum .-Planter :The owner of a plantation was called a planter...
through his wealthy Scots father by the same name. He was connected to the McGillivray clan. A resident of Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
, the senior McIntosh had strong ties to the British and had been a Tory
Loyalist (American Revolution)
Loyalists were American colonists who remained loyal to the Kingdom of Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War. At the time they were often called Tories, Royalists, or King's Men. They were opposed by the Patriots, those who supported the revolution...
officer during the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
. He tried to recruit the Lower Creek to fight for the British in the war. Remaining in the new United States, he became a cotton planter
Planter
Planter may refer to:*A flower pot or box for plants**Jardinière, one such type of pot*A person or object engaged in sowing seeds**Planter , implement towed behind a tractor, used for sowing crops through a field*A coloniser...
after the war.
In 1819, the Lower Creek gathered for the last time at the Ocmulgee Old Fields. In 1821, Chief McIntosh agreed to the first Treaty of Indian Springs
Treaty of Indian Springs
There are two Treaties of Indian Springs with the Creek Indians. The first treaty was signed January 8, 1821. In it, the Lower Creek ceded land to the state of Georgia in return for cash payments totaling $200,000 over a period of 14 years...
, by which the Lower Creek ceded their lands east of the Flint River
Flint River (Georgia)
The Flint River is a river in the U.S. state of Georgia. The river drains of western Georgia, flowing south from the upper Piedmont region south of Atlanta to the wetlands of the Gulf Coastal Plain in the southwestern corner of the state. Along with the Apalachicola and the Chattahoochee rivers,...
, including the Ocmulgee Old Fields. In 1822 the state chartered Bibb County
Bibb County, Georgia
Bibb County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of 2000, the population was 153,887. The 2007 Census Estimate shows a population of 154,709...
, and the following year the town of Macon
Macon, Georgia
Macon is a city located in central Georgia, US. Founded at the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is part of the Macon metropolitan area, and the county seat of Bibb County. A small portion of the city extends into Jones County. Macon is the biggest city in central Georgia...
was founded.
The Creek National Council struggled to end such land cessions by making them a capital offense. But in 1825, Chief McIntosh and his paternal cousin Georgia Governor George Troup
George Troup
George Michael Troup was an American politician from the U.S. state of Georgia. He served in the Georgia General Assembly, U.S. House of Representatives, and Senate before becoming the 32nd Governor of Georgia for two terms and then returning to the Senate...
negotiated an agreement with the US. McIntosh and several other Lower Creek chiefs signed the second Treaty of Indian Springs
Treaty of Indian Springs
There are two Treaties of Indian Springs with the Creek Indians. The first treaty was signed January 8, 1821. In it, the Lower Creek ceded land to the state of Georgia in return for cash payments totaling $200,000 over a period of 14 years...
in 1825. McIntosh ceded the remaining Lower Creek lands to the United States, and the Senate ratified the treaty by one vote, despite its lacking the signature of the Muscogee Principal Chief John Ross
John Ross (Cherokee chief)
John Ross , also known as Guwisguwi , was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Native American Nation from 1828–1866...
. Soon after that, the chief Menama and 200 warriors attacked McIntosh's plantation. They killed him and burned down his mansion in retaliation for his alienating communal lands.
Ross and a Muscogee delegation from the National Council went to Washington to protest the treaty to President John Quincy Adams. The US government and the Creek negotiated a new treaty, called the Treaty of New York
Treaty of New York
The Treaty of New York is one of several treaties signed between the United States and Native American tribes, conducted in the city of New York.-1790:...
(1826), but the Georgia state government proceeded with evicting Creek from lands under the 1825 treaty. It also passed laws dissolving tribal government and regulating residency on American Indian lands.
In 1828, Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
was elected president, and he supported Indian removal, signing legislation to that effect by Congress in 1830. Later he used US Army forces to remove the remnants of the Southeastern Indian tribes through the 1830s. The Creek, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw and the Seminole were all removed to Indian Territory.
Following Indian Removal
Indian Removal
Indian removal was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river...
, the Muscogee reorganized in the Indian Territory
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land set aside within the United States for the settlement of American Indians...
(now Oklahoma). In 1867 they founded a new capital, which they called Okmulgee
Okmulgee, Oklahoma
Okmulgee is a city in Okmulgee County, Oklahoma, United States. The population at the 2010 census was 12,321 a loss of 5.4 percent since the 2000 census figure of 13,022. It has been the capital of the Muscogee Nation since the United States Civil War. Okmulgee means "boiling waters" in the Creek...
in honor of their sacred mounds on the plateau of the Georgia fall line.
See also
- Kolomoki Mounds Historic Park (Georgia)Kolomoki Mounds Historic ParkThe Kolomoki Mounds are the largest and oldest Woodland period mound complex in the Southeastern United States and currently stand in present day Early County, Georgia, near the Chattahoochee River. The mounds were named a National Historic Landmark in 1964...
- List of Mississippian sites
External links
- Official NPS website: Ocmulgee National Monument
- Virtual Tour of Ocmulgee
- Ocmulgee Mounds, New Georgia Encyclopedia
- Lamar Mounds coordinates: 32°48′45"N 83°35′34"W