Good News about Ocmulgee National Monument

Architect Richard Thornton is a member of an alliance of Creek, Choctaw and Seminole scholars, who over the past seven years have been intensely studying the heritage of the Muskogean peoples. Much of their activities have involved re-examination of the archives of the early Spanish, English and French exploration of the Southeastern United States. We have asked Richard to provide AccessGenealogy with some of his work.  As we add to these articles we will also be providing a question and answer section for the reader to ask questions of Richard.

People of One Fire
An alliance of Muskogean scholars
P.O. Box 941 ~ Blairsville, GA 30512
PeopleofOneFire@aol.com

News Update - 10/20/2010

Good News from Ocmulgee National Monument & the Southeastern Archaeological Center

We heard good news this week from our friends, Hank Kratt at the Southeastern Archaeological Center in Tallahassee and Ranger Lonnie Davis at Ocmulgee National Monument in Macon. Before I relay their emails, let me say this. The Creek People have always been known for their intelligence and their ancient, advanced cultural heritage. You look at the track record of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and several eastern Creek tribes, and it is clear that we are very supportive of archaeological and historical research. Most Creek people are interested, in a positive way, in the work you archaeologists and historians are doing. We are your friends.

The reason that the People of One Fire newsletters were started four years ago, was that up-to-date information about on-going studies was not be communicated at a broad enough scale to reach most Creek tribal members and descendants. Conversely, Creek researchers were very frustrated because cliques within academia were ignoring important information about Creek history and culture, when interpreting archaeological sites in the Southeast.

No better example of the past situation can be described than a certain archaeological conference in Charlotte, where archaeologists from North & South Carolina argued an entire Saturday morning about whether Kofitachiki was a Cherokee town or a Catawba town. The town's name is pure Hitchiti-Creek (means mixed-people - house of) and all the words recorded by the de Soto chroniclers in that part of the Southeast were pure Muskogean. Absolutely, no Cherokee word was recorded by the chroniclers of the de Soto and Pardo Expeditions. No one bothered to consult the Creeks or our dictionaries! Guaxule and Conesagua are Medieval Castilian ways of writing the Hitchiti words, Wahvle and Konesawa.

Please . . . if your firm or archaeology department is doing studies of a possible Muskogean archaeological site in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi or Florida, brag about it to us. We would love to hear what you are finding! Creeks will never show up at your site in Sioux war bonnets, war paint and ear rings to hassle you. We might drive by and cheer you on, or maybe try to find more money for your project, but will never be obstructive to the work of professional archaeologists and historians.

Now the good news about Ocmulgee

In the previous News Update, it was stated that the boxes containing artifacts from the 1930's excavation of Ocmulgee had never been opened or curated. This statement was based on the statements made by several books on Ocmulgee, and those of guides, who several years ago took guests through the inner sanctum of the Ocmulgee Museum. That is not the case. Here is what Hank Kratt and Lonnie Davis stated in their emails:

"Hi Richard,

I began working for the NPS's Southeast Archeological Center in Tallahassee in June of 2000. We have worked on Ocmulgee collections every year since I started. We have the majority of the OCMU collections here at the Center, technically "on loan" to us from the park. Lonnie Davis, a ranger there at OCMU in Macon has recently begun cataloging items he has up there. He brought some student interns down this past summer so they could learn how we do analysis and data entry. I believe they were working on the boxes you referred to in your previous email.

The majority of the artifacts we have cataloged here have come from excavations that took place around Mound D, also known as the Cornfield Mound. Much of the material is very fragmented, although we do occasionally run across sherds that are large enough for us to assign a form to the vessel. I have seen some large, shallow forms that could be considered salt pans. We don't reconstruct the vessels, so sometimes it's difficult to determine the original form. We do note when pieces cross mend and keep those together.

Thank you for your additional information. I know several local Muscogee folks and always enjoy learning from them. I would be interested in receiving your newsletter, if I may."

Ranger Davis added this important information:

“The artifacts collected in the 1930's were curated. In the 1930's these items were collected at the site by WPA workers identified by archeologists or archeology students, place in paper bags and shoe boxes. Later they were put into plastic bags, poly boxes and museum cabinets. I would also like to state that archeologist do not curate artifacts. “

Why Ocmulgee National Monument is important

In my humble opinion, the Ocmulgee-Oconee-Altamaha River Archaeological Zone is one of the most important in our region to understanding the true history of the Southeastern Indians. Newcomers to Ocmulgee were building post-ditch houses and platform mounds, plus practicing all the other traits of the "Mississippian" Culture 150 years before construction began on Monks Mound in Cahokia. My analyses of the Maya influence on Creek language and culture points to this zone being the point of entry for immigrants carrying Maya cultural traits. Yet it has received insufficient study. Many books on Native American culture in recent years have either completely ignored Ocmulgee National Monument or treated it as an insignificant zone of tertiary importance. Meanwhile, a 28 mound town site on the lower Ocmulgee River was completely obliterated by the bulldozers of a big pulpwood corporation in the late 20th century, without professional archaeologists being able to study it.

The first step to drawing more financial support for professional studies of the Ocmulgee-Oconee-Altamaha Basin is the upgrading and expansion of Ocmulgee National Monument into a national park. The Muskogean peoples of the Southeast wholeheartedly support the efforts of the leaders in central Georgia, who are trying to make this dream become a reality.

Notes About this Material

Source: Richard Thornton, an alliance of Muskogean scholars, professors and professionals. Copyright Richard Thornton, Blairsville, GA, 2010. Used here with permission. 

  Back to:   Free Genealogy > Indian Genealogy > People of One Fire