# GA's native americans.



## redneck_billcollector

There are a good many posts in this forum and some others about indians in in GA, namely Cherokee but some about the the Creek also.  In reading them it seems alot of peoples' beliefs about the native georgians are based on some 1940s movie about indians and not on fact.

The biggest myth I see is when someone finds arrowheads (basically any lithography) they want to assign it to being of either cherokee or creek origin.  Less than .00001% of artifacts found in Ga could be asigned to even the earliest period of these two groups.   The cherokee and creeks, as we know them came about in the wake of DeSoto's travels through the south east.  There were numerous non-cherokee and non-creek peoples in GA when the spaniards first started snooping around GA.  They had large towns that would rival many in europe, but they also had no immunity to european viruses and they started getting wipped out once the first carib indian came to the mainland to trade after Columbus.  

What became GA was a frontier between spanish holdings to the south and english holdings to the north and the residual natives left after the first epidemics swept through the native population during post columbian contact were caught up in european political disputes.  The early english settlers relied on indian slaves as much as they did african slaves for their tobacco, indigo and rice plantations.  The english settlers in the carolinas relied on slave raids, and encouraged slave raids into what became GA, because those natives were somewhat under spanish influence (through missions and trading relations).  The smaller tribes that began to form after the final colapse of the mississipian culters due to numerous reasons along with european viruses in GA were not the peoples most georgians are familiar with, they were the guale, the timucuan, the yamasee, the apalachi the yuchee and numerous other groupings; some of who were incorporated into the creek nation later on.  These earlier small groupings were largely wiped out by the carolina slave trade in the 17th and early 18th centuries.  The indians who were the raiders were basically the people who became the creek nation and the cherokee nation.  The creeks and the cherokees filled the void created by the carolina indian slave trade.  They carried muskets, rode horses, etc....17th century travelers in what became GA talked about how depopulated it was, and there was no mystery as to why it was, the slave trade and disease.  By colonial times in GA the indians left, pretty much the creek nation and the cherokee nation, continued to get caught up in european political squabbles and both sided with one side or the other during the numerous european wars that were fought on america also.  Both of these nations had adopted numerous european customs and styles by this time and many were only distinguishable from the white colonist by their complextion and language, even though most all of them spoke english, many spoke spanish and their own native tongue.  A huge economy grew based on the trade in deer hides and slaves.  

The indians that became the creek nation tended to side with the english a good bit whereas the cherokee sided with the french when war broke out between those two european powers, the creek sided with the english against the spaniards also.  The english attempted to protect the creeks because they were loyal allies and most of the colonial period conflicts occured when white people disobeyed english law and encroached on creek land.  The creeks were assimilated very early on and lived in log cabins or homes that were indistinguishable from many that the colonist lived in.  The contact with the settlers was common and inter marrying was also very common.  Some of the most famous creek leaders looked more european than they looked like what we think of as "looking" indian.  The creek indians suffered because of their ties to england during the revolution, the creek and tories made up most of the english fighters in GA during the revolution and most of the fighting in GA was on the frontier of FLA against tories and creeks or in the "upcountry" with tories and creek indians against the patriots (alot of who were jacobites recently from the troubles in scotland).  The fighting with creeks after the revolution took place because they still had strong ties with the english and the the war of 1812 and the indian wars stirred up by british agents basically was the nail in the coffin for the creeks in GA.  They continued on fighting georgians during the subsequent seminole wars that were fought until  they peatered out in 1858 or there about.  Oseola, the famous seminole war leader was born in a creek town near present day Bainbridge GA. on the banks of the flint, where also the first shots were fired in the seminole wars. Early on many lower creeks sided with the US against other creeks during the seminole wars, but Jackson never trusted them(even though he adopted one).  Those creeks are still around somewhat, they married into the local population and took on white ways.  

The cherokee fared differently, they sided with the american patriots during the revolution and therefor were rewarded for their loyalty.  They were basically left alone until gold was found.  By then they were indistinguishable from the europeans (white americans) in GA, they had nice homes, plantations, slaves and had pretty much taken up the whiteman's ways.  But for the discovery of gold, there would still be plenty of cherokees in north GA, they were the last indians to suffer under the removal act and that was only because of the gold.  Heck, they fought being removed in the US Supreme Ct., not in the hollers of N GA, which sided with them (if I remember correctly), but Jackson went ahead anyhow.  As for every other person in GA having cherokee blood, well, they did not intermarry near as much as the creeks did.  

The creeks lived in areas that were easier to access, and more attractive to the whites.  The rivers were ideal for travel and the creek lands were 1000 times better for agriculture plus Ga had a robust free range cattle industry that the creek lands were ideal for.  Until the gold rush, the only whites going into the the mountains tended to be folks running from the law or hiding out for some other reason.  The remaining creeks in GA were not moved in mass out west, they were bred out of existance (except for the seminole holdouts in the okefenokee swamp) and have their genes in many of the SOWEGA cracker families in GA, but somehow all the SOWEGA folks swear the got cherokee blood which is funny as all get out to me. I could go on an on about some of the myths about GA's natives, but time and GON  probably would not allow me.


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## fishfryer

Very interesting,I know very little about native peoples of Georgia. More articles along this line would please me a great deal.


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## Keebs

Good read!  Keep posting, I, for one, find it VERY interesting!


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## Nicodemus

Carry on, Jay. You doin` good.


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## deadend

The flat earthers/trail treers still ain't gonna come 'round.


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## mclellandk

Interesting read . Thanks. On our land in s.e. Alabama , we have an indian mound down in a bottom near a creek.from time to time we find lots of flint and points, some pottery. There is even a marker on the highway in front of our place showing  the greek indian boundary line. Pretty interesting


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## mclellandk

Meant creek indian not greek lol


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## Artfuldodger

Very interesting reading. Almost every person i grew up with who said he was part Indian was always Cherokee. I always thought this was a little off as I grew up in South Georgia. I never heard much about the Creeks. I had read that about the arrowheads belonging to earlier tribes. I toured the Chief Vann House a few years back. Like you said they lived just like all the other people in the vicinity. It was an enjoyable tour.


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## Whiteeagle

This used to be taught in schools out of books called American History when I was a Kid in Highschool. Some how, it got taken out of school and nobody wants our History any more. However, let me point out that some of US actually do have Cherokee Blood mixed in our veins. I, for one, am proud of mine. There were also several other tribes that lived in Georgia in small numbers that migrated in from neighboring states. The Seminoles were the only Southeastern tribe to never sign a Treaty with the U.S. Govt.


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## redneck_billcollector

mclellandk said:


> Interesting read . Thanks. On our land in s.e. Alabama , we have an indian mound down in a bottom near a creek.from time to time we find lots of flint and points, some pottery. There is even a marker on the highway in front of our place showing  the greek indian boundary line. Pretty interesting



There are a couple of mounds on my family property in Mitchell Co. on the banks of the flint.  Creeks were in the area, but the mounds predated the creeks by a goodly bit of time.  The mounds on our property are woodland type and were long abandoned before DeSoto came through, and he did, he followed the flint for a lil bit.  There are numerous books out there that are based on accounts of DeSoto's travels and I would suggest you read every one you can if you are interested.   To hear folks talk, the cherokee were everywhere from New York on down to Florida and all the way out to California......I have met folks from all over this country who claim cherokee blood, I just say "cool" and keep my thoughts to myself.  I have been to the site of Chehaw Town, a good friend of mine owns the property where it was located.  The history of that town is sad, One of Jackson's flanks was heading down to present day Apalachicola to capture a fort where there were some seminoles, run away slaves and english agents held up and they accidently attacked Chehaw Town killing old men, children and women....The men were of with the rest of Jackson's forces heading down to capture the fort (whose name was "Old Negro Fort" or "Town")  I have found a mess of artifacts on the property both pre columbian and from historic times.  Cheahaw town was on the banks of the Muckalee creek in what is now Lee Co.  Just west of present day Albany was a lil frontier settlement known as Pretoria, a couple of settler families were killed there by some creeks running from US troops and State Militias after the battle of Horseshoe Bend.  This was during the "red stick" war which was a part of the war of 1812 and was largely a civil war amongst the Creeks, with the lower creeks siding with the US against the upper Creeks who sided with the british.  A group of militia from Macon hunted them down and killed them in what is now Chickasawhatchee WMA, (which is also the second biggest swamp in GA).  The lower creeks got the raw end of the deal after the war and many of them ended up down in FLA siding with other creeks, residual apalachi, and other smaller tribes that became the seminoles.  Folks used to see the swamp gas glowing out there and thought it was ghosts of the indians that were pretty much slaughtered in the swamp by the GA militia.  Cheahaw Town, Fowl Town, Coweta Town and numerous other creek towns scattered throughout SOWEGA and west GA and east AL looked like any other cracker town with general stores, fields, log and split wood homes, etc.....those of us that live in this part of the state are familiar with these names because we see the name places everywhere.  They all were part of what became the Lower Creek confederation.  

The cherokee sent a milita unit down here too, to fight down this way.  Interestingly, the massacre of Ft. Mims which sent shockwaves throughout the southeast was Upper Creeks wanting to kill mainly lower Creek mixed bloods (indian/white) who had taken refuge there in Alabama because the british had stirred up the indians from Canada all along the frontier down into FLA to help in the war of 1812 and the lower creek sided with the young US government thinking they would get some respite for siding with the british during the revolutionary war.   We all learned in school that fort mims was where whites were massacred, it was mainly mixed lower creek / whites, there were very few 100% white folks living in those regions of the young nation.  The history of this region is much more interesting than any novel and sadly largely unknown by those of us who call this region home.


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## redneck_billcollector

Whiteeagle said:


> This used to be taught in schools out of books called American History when I was a Kid in Highschool. Some how, it got taken out of school and nobody wants our History any more. However, let me point out that some of US actually do have Cherokee Blood mixed in our veins. I, for one, am proud of mine. There were also several other tribes that lived in Georgia in small numbers that migrated in from neighboring states. The Seminoles were the only Southeastern tribe to never sign a Treaty with the U.S. Govt.



I ain't doubting that there is cherokee blood in some folks in GA, just not as much as folks think.  I know folks whose families have been in SOWEGA since the first white settlers who claim cherokee blood....Back then it was illegal for whites to go into cherokee territory up until the gold rush, they got special protection because they sided with the patriots during the revolution.  The Cherokee were not near as populous in GA either, heck, over towards the west GA mountains, it was Upper Creek more so than Cherokee, and they never really got along AT ALL.  For most of the history the creek were stronger and larger than the cherokees in GA because they were friendly with the colonial Governors, whereas the cherokee and the british had a checkered history....Remember that movie with Mel Gibson...it were the cherokees he fought with the militia during the french indian wars, and what he was talking about was true, the militias slaughtered a goodly many of them.  There was a reason they were in the mountains, that was the least desirable of all the lands, it wasn't good for agriculture for the most part.  They were not in the mountains by choice, they were there because they had nowhere else to be.  The creeks pushed them out of the peidmont in GA (with british help) and other tribes did so in the carolinas.  The cherokee were much more isolated than the creeks as a result of the early european politics and because of this isolation they simply did not imtermarry as much as the creeks.

Back in college (dang near when the dinosaurs roamed) I read some journals of Gov. Wright's indian agents, they continually were siding with the creeks against the cherokee.  Heck, when Augusta fell to the british, all the patriots were able to move up the savannah to the mountains and join up with the "over the mountain" boys because of the anomosity amongst the cherokee towards the british.


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## Fletch_W

Creek words are what all of these Indian named places bare:

Anything beginning with "O"- 

Oconee
Ogechee
Ocmulgee

"O" means "People/Place of-"

So "Oconee" means "People/Place of Conee" According to professor M. Williams at UGA, "Conee" means skunk. 

It doesn't actually mean "crystal waters" or whatever the real estate agents say it means. 

Anyways, the point is that I agree, all the native Amercian archeology and anthropology of Georgia that I learned at UGA is consistent with the fact that Creeks were the dominant people, by alot. 90-1 or more.


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## chehawknapper

Historically, Cherokees lived in only a small part of Georgia, mainly the northern 1/4 of the state. The NW corner was still Creek territory until the Cherokee won a ball game against the Creeks to settle the dispute over NW Ga. The Creeks were not a "tribe". They were a confederation of many small tribes scattered through Ala., Ga. & even S.C. They were mainly separated as "upper" and "lower" Creeks. The upper Creeks spoke a more formal Muscogee language. The lower Creeks spoke a related musgoegan tongue called Hitchitee. The Seminole did not exist until historic times. The Spanish had wiped out all of the native peoples in Fla. through the slave trade, war or disease. As the American colonists were moving into SE Ga. the lower Creeks fled into Spanish held Fla. Today that first wave are known as the Miccosukee and they speak Hitchiti. They are made up of what was left of the Guale, Yamasee, Oconee, Chiaha, Osochi and others. Another large group of lower Creek tribes moved up into Ala. with the upper Creeks as the treaty boudries kept shrinking their land. Before,during and after the Creek war many lower and upper Creeks escaped into Fla. to become known today as the Seminoles. Both the Miccosukee and Seminoles intermarried with whites and blacks. 
There were 3 Chehaw towns in the Albany area in the early 1800's. The main village was Aumuckalee on the muckalee creek. Phileme town was on the Kinchafoonee creek and Huricane town was on the Flint river across from Radium Springs. There is an entry in the U.S. Congressional archives known as "The Chehaw Affair". I can't remember the dates but I will try to give you the basic story. The Seminoles just inside of Fla. had been raiding the settlers in SW Ga. so Andrew Jackson was sent to attack them. He stopped at Aumuckalee and picked up the warriors there to assist in the attack on the Seminoles. While he was gone, a couple of Creeks from Phileme town stole some cattle and other "depradations". The settlers complained to Gov. Rabun who sent col. Obed Wright and the Ga. militia to quell the problem. As he was approaching the area he received word that the quilty men were hiding out in Aumuckalee which only had old men, women and children at the time. Col. Wright burned the town killing quite a few innocent Creeks in the process. When Jackson returned he was furious at what had happened to the town that had willingly joined him to help with the Seminoles. Getting no satisfaction from Ga., he took it all the way to the U.S. congress which demanded that Gov. Rabun have Col. Wright arrested. Two weeks after the arrest Col. Wright escaped and was never heard from again.


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## redneck_billcollector

Glad for you to chime in Ben, I was writting from memory from what seems like 1000 years ago, but it was from along time ago.  I have got a mess of books over in my parents' attic I am going to have to get down, there were  compilations of letters to the war department, trader reports, agent reports and a couple of published journals from earlier travelers.  If you know Buck, his family owns that place on the Muckalee where they have the little monument.  I remember one letter that was published in one of my books from  William McIntosh where he was trying to get the agent to arrest some settlers for passing counterfit money in Coweta and another settler who was stealing hogs and cattle.  I think out of all the people in Georgia's history he would have been one of the more interesting people to sit down with and drink a beer.

Ben, weren't the miccosukee the ones that settled around Tallahasee from south GA? Later moving on down to the everglades during the wars?


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## chehawknapper

I believe that is correct but am not positive. At one time they were called the seminole. They moved south in advance of the latter group and kept separate villages.


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## westcobbdog

Great topic and many interesting posts. The Indians fought a huge battle on Blood Moutain, Creek vs Cherokee. Would this have been before the "ball game" contest? Wonder it that was played at Ballground,Ga. I read an acct of a story where a beautiful Indian Princess ruled a large village in Middle Ga. One of the early Spanish Explorer's, looking for gold, moved up from Fla. and came upon a great town with many Indians living there. The Spaniards were given feasts, many gifts and then proceeded to start killing Indians and captured their Ruler, and hauled her off towrds N Ga. She managed to escape. 

Read recently abound a mound located at Peachtree Creek and the Chattahoochee River.


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## Gary Mercer

Some of the most interesting posts I have ever read here.
You guys please keep this one alive.  I have a little Souix blood, from about 4 generations back in SD.  So am very interested in Native American history.
What about McIntosh and his history around Fayette County?
I was told once that Fayette County was one of the largest in GA back before the War of Northern Agreession.  And that is was commonly referred to as the "Indian Lands."  Any truth in this?


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## redneck_billcollector

I have a book somewhere that has a number of reproduced maps that were made during a survey of mounds in the Southeast during the earlier part of the 19th Century.  It seems that most all the major river systems are ate up with them.  I saw there appeared to be a couple on my family's land back in the 80's so I went out and checked.  Sure enough they were there and I had seen them hundreds of times but never gave them a second thought.  I had seen mounds numerous times at parks and such that had been cleaned up and looked how they are supposed to.  The ones on the property were covered with trees and in places were eroded.  I had always just thought they were natural formations caused by whatever forces of nature.  I climbed one and it was perfectly flat topped big enough for a small house to sit attop.  The other was round topped.  I could see shape to what looked like a worn down earthen wall too.  They are in an ideal location in the flood plain of the Flint (a little over 100 or so yards from the river)  about 50 or so ft from a series of big springs that form a small creek that meanders to the river.  It made sense, it was the only place I had found pottery on the property (looked like weeden island) and post archaic lithography.  The rest of the property is ate up with archaic lithography.

Ben, maybe you can clear something up for me, I have read sources that refer to the battle of Chickasawhatchee that say it took place after the battle of Horseshoe bend and a band of "red sticks" got caught on their way to Florida.  I have read in a couple of other sources that say it was during the second Creek War, the so   called  "Chattahoochee War" that took place in the late 1830s that was fought mainly in the western teir of counties from just south of Columbus to the Panhandle of Fla, with the exception of the fighting on the westward approaches to the okefenokee.  Every source refers to the indians as red sticks.  The sources that talk about it earlier talk about a really small band whereas the sources that talk about it during the second war refer to a band numbering in the hundreds.  Do you think there could have been two battles of chickasawhatchee?

For those who don't know what the red sticks were, they were the creek nations', (upper creeks) version of the later 'ghost dancers" of wounded knee fame.  They wanted to lose all trappings of the white man and go back to the traditional ways.  It were red sticks that attacked fort mims.  They were originally encouraged by the british.


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## westcobbdog

I have read the account of the counter attack if you will on the red sticks whom massacred Ft Mims inhabitants. Interesting read. The red sticks were wiped out.


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## Artfuldodger

Over here around Augusta & the Savannah River lived the Yuchi/Uchee Indians. They later moved west to the Chattahoochee River Valley and joined the Creek. Were there any tri-racial tribes like the Lumbee living in Georgia? In Augusta they were sometimes referred as Croatan. Croatan was the tribal name before Lumbee. Some Croatans migrated to Bulloch County in 1890. They came to work in the turpentine industry. Some of the surnames were Chavis, Locklear, Oxendine, & Collier.


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## DCHunter

This topic is very interesting to me. But I've found the available reading material to be vague and lacking of information. Can you point me to some books about the topic?


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## Son

Some anthropologist say, the Creek and their type people originally came from the Southwest when it became an arid region. Too dry to support many and their way of life. The Cherokee did occupy parts of five states, so says the books. My Mom was half Cherokee, our Indian and part Indian relatives were the Reeds, and Murphys, believe they're listed in the Henderson Rolls. It's said, my Great Grandmother, Lou Vicy Reed lived to about 115. All lived, or came from SW Va and some were in Ky near the Va line. Creeks, and Choctaws to me were the same type people. Many other names are listed in the books for those people. Seminoles were mixed with a few remnants of the original Florida Indians. Probably the Timucuans, Calusa and others less known. Muskogee, Brighton and Cow Creek bands come to mind these days. Interesting subject and one that can be researched to no end. My main interest are the prehistoric Early Americans. No history was written, so we have lots of guessing when it comes to that subject.
Best contact I've ever had on the subject was with Professor Roger Early of the Hillsborough Co. Fl, Community College, Plant City campus. Mr. Early surmised that the Cherokee were actually a dark caucasoid race, and he put up some good reasons for that thought. One thing that could possibly had something to do with that is. Seafarers probably came ashore from time to time during the prehistoric eras. Vikings were the most notorious for going out to sea. Could it be, that may have given the Cherokee the difference? You research it, and decide.


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## chehawknapper

Jay, it is my understanding that there were several different waves of groups trying to flee to, what was then, Spanish held Florida. It would not surprise me at all that some groups used the same routes of previous groups. I know that there was one band that went down the Alapaha. Jack Boedeker might be able to shed more light on this as he has done extensive research including Spanish archives.
To further clear up some things about the Creeks - Creek towns were separated as red stick towns and white stick towns. The red sticks ruled during times of war and white sticks ruled during times of peace. There could be no bloodshed in a white stick town. Understanding this, the "Chehaw Affair" story makes sense. The quilty men were from Phileme town which was a red stick town. It was said that they were hiding out in Aumuckalee which was a white stick town. It would be natural in their culture to think that they were safe in a white stick town.


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## grouper throat

redneck_billcollector said:


> Glad for you to chime in Ben, I was writting from memory from what seems like 1000 years ago, but it was from along time ago.  I have got a mess of books over in my parents' attic I am going to have to get down, there were  compilations of letters to the war department, trader reports, agent reports and a couple of published journals from earlier travelers.  If you know Buck, his family owns that place on the Muckalee where they have the little monument.  I remember one letter that was published in one of my books from  William McIntosh where he was trying to get the agent to arrest some settlers for passing counterfit money in Coweta and another settler who was stealing hogs and cattle.  I think out of all the people in Georgia's history he would have been one of the more interesting people to sit down with and drink a beer.
> 
> Ben, *weren't the miccosukee the ones that settled around Tallahasee from south GA*? Later moving on down to the everglades during the wars?



Yes. If I remember correctly weren't the Miccosukee just essentially a branch (for the lack of a better term) of the Seminoles? 

I can vaguely remember my great grandmother telling me stories of my great great grandfather running into Creek indians on their farm in Ga (Douglas County). He would say his dad didn't trust them even though they never posed a threat. When stuff would go missing out of the barn during the night and if the dogs were barking, they blamed the Creeks. I wish I could recall all the details but I was just a kid.


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## chehawknapper

The miccosukee were not called the miccosukee until after they had been in Florida for some time. Yes, basically an offshoot of the Creeks but mostly made up of what is generally called the lower Creeks that spoke Hitchitee - the remains of many small tribes mostly from the Ga. area.


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## Flaustin1

Please keep it coming guys.


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## HossBog

Interesting! My maternal great grandmother was Indian. I assumed Creek since she was from the Candler county area. Her maiden surname was Warnock. She had 15 children one of which was my grandmother. I learned that makes me 1/8 Indian. I would like to learn more about her. She died in 1948.

I read an old book about DeSoto's travels here, and it said he came to the Savannah River near Augusta, Silver Bluff, and crossed the river there. The tribe was lead by a princess or queen the book said. I love this kind of history! Much more to learn and read...


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## Sweetwater

grouper throat said:


> Yes. If I remember correctly weren't the Miccosukee just essentially a branch (for the lack of a better term) of the Seminoles?
> 
> I can vaguely remember my great grandmother telling me stories of my great great grandfather running into Creek indians on their farm in Ga (Douglas County). He would say his dad didn't trust them even though they never posed a threat. When stuff would go missing out of the barn during the night and if the dogs were barking, they blamed the Creeks. I wish I could recall all the details but I was just a kid.



If you don't mind me asking..but what part of Douglas county was your ancestor's farm on? Strictly curiosity...I grew up in Winston.


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## westcobbdog

Sweetwater said:


> If you don't mind me asking..but what part of Douglas county was your ancestor's farm on? Strictly curiosity...I grew up in Winston.



Douglas County was formed in 1870, formed from Campbell and Carroll Counties. If you research your family roots or farm check those two counties. In 1929 Campbell became Fulton.


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## RNC

Many thanks to those who both started an contributed to this thread ....some great reading in here ! 

My family is from the Coweta,Fayette,Heard an what was Campbell county .

My Papaws mother was a Creek lady. Her name was Vassie Ola Landrum before she married my G-grandpaw Elias Columbus Barge .....

The reason I am so fond of my avatar (Dan George) is it reminds me so much of what my Papaw looked like in his latter years ...His hair was white and he had let it get below his collar ,he never had much facial hair and loved his country lifestyle ...

This thread has renewed my  interest to get back to digging on my ancestry ...... Thanks Yall :]

Please keep this thread going with all you know an want to share ...


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## lcopeland22

I am definitely of Cherokee descent.  It is documented on my family tree that my 5th great grandfather was "Chief Bushyhead of the Paint Clan".  I am very proud of my Cherokee Heritage.


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## chehawknapper

Then you are probably related to Eddie Bushyhead, an old friend of mine, though I have not seen him on the powwow circuit in years.


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## Gary Mercer

All of this is great.  Does anyone have anything on Fayette County?  Before the war, they called it the "indian lands."
I am sure this had to do with McIntosh, and his kin.  Would like some more info.
I was told, by a historian of Fayette County, that it stretched from up near Cedartown to down around Columbus at one time.  And that it was mostly made up of indian towns and a few trader families.
Any body have some more info?
Thanks


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## westcobbdog

Historical Atlas of Ga Counties shows Fayettes first shape in 1821 sorta like a pickle..looks to be 2 miles wide, 10 miles long, didn't include Fayetteville in it! Changed in 1822 and enlargened, 1823 map shows Indian boundry to west along the flint river, along with Henry County to the east, it was the frontier in 23'.


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## olcowman

lcopeland22 said:


> I am definitely of Cherokee descent.  It is documented on my family tree that my 5th great grandfather was "Chief Bushyhead of the Paint Clan".  I am very proud of my Cherokee Heritage.





chehawknapper said:


> Then you are probably related to Eddie Bushyhead, an old friend of mine, though I have not seen him on the powwow circuit in years.



My great Grandmother's maiden name was 'Bushyhead'... her Dad was a full-blood. Is this a common last name among the Cherokee... is it Eastern Band or Western?


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## lcopeland22

olcowman said:


> My great Grandmother's maiden name was 'Bushyhead'... her Dad was a full-blood. Is this a common last name among the Cherokee... is it Eastern Band or Western?


Are you a Gunter or related to any?


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## chehawknapper

Bushyhead is Eastern band for certain - that is where Eddie is from. I would assume that there are some in the western band but have no personal knowledge of it.


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## Nuttin Better

What about the name Buffington on the Cherokee side from Hall County GA


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## waddler

olcowman said:


> My great Grandmother's maiden name was 'Bushyhead'... her Dad was a full-blood. Is this a common last name among the Cherokee... is it Eastern Band or Western?



There is a college baseball player named Bushyhead playing in the College World Series.


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## Throwback

Way too many people "hear stories about their cherokee heritage" as children and fail to realize it is just parents/old people telling them a tale to entertain them. They grow up and think it was real. 

most of us have messed with little kids in a similar way about some subject. Tell them a tale enough times and they believe it and pass it on as  "fact". 

If you hear "my ggggrandmother was a cherokee princess" watch out!

I have  a relative that says that, but then again she will also tell you she is an alien in human form---and she is quite serious. 

T


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## Mako22

Too lazy to research it myself but I do believe that the Seminoles were not really a distinct indian tribe but were more of a collection of many different tribes that even included escaped black slaves.  I think that there are black Seminoles in the tribe to this day.


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## mickbear

Gary Mercer said:


> All of this is great.  Does anyone have anything on Fayette County?  Before the war, they called it the "indian lands."
> I am sure this had to do with McIntosh, and his kin.  Would like some more info.
> I was told, by a historian of Fayette County, that it stretched from up near Cedartown to down around Columbus at one time.  And that it was mostly made up of indian towns and a few trader families.
> Any body have some more info?
> Thanks


i did survey work in and around Peachtree city for about 20+/- years.when the work was being done on falcon field you could pick up points ,scrape blades,knifes pottery all kinds of stuff by the handfull.i'v got 2 or 3 shoe boxes full of stuff i picked up on construction sites around peachtree city over the years.i allways heard there was a large site along line creek.there used to be a guy that lived on lees lake road that knew all about the indian sites around fayette county,and another guy in Turin @ the block co that knew a lot about that area.i'v seen some unreal collections (and i mean unreal) that came from around the peachtree city area and all down line creek.


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## jonjon528

Very interesting gentlemen.  Are there any opinions on why it seems that having Cherokee ancestry seems to be so coveted over other types of indian lineage?


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## slightly grayling

This is a great read!  I printed this out for my 12 YO last night.  My father spent a lot of time in his childhood collecting artifacts in the Sylvester area.  I recently purchased a copy of Bertram's travels and will add this information for his reading pleasure.


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## redneck_billcollector

Woodsman69 said:


> Too lazy to research it myself but I do believe that the Seminoles were not really a distinct indian tribe but were more of a collection of many different tribes that even included escaped black slaves.  I think that there are black Seminoles in the tribe to this day.



There were lots of run away slaves that ended up being seminoles....the first campaign of the 1st seminole war was to capture "old negro town (or) fort" which was near present day Apalachicola  FLA.  The seminole were a haven for run aways, they were early on in south GA and all over fla and it was a good bit shorter run than to northern states for slaves escaping in the deep south.  It also goes back to the fact that the british authorities in both british east florida and british west florida encouraged slaves in GA to flee during the revolutionary war and later the spanish authorities did the same thing after the revolutionary war until ol Jackson "captured" FLA from the spanish and executed two british agents during the first seminole war.  

The creeks and cherokee both kept african slaves by the early 19th century (at least the wealthy ones did).  Alot of lower creeks from GA and piney wood crackers made a good living by raiding into spanish florida recovering run aways and stealing seminole cattle and horses.....a number of historians seem to think the run aways amongst the seminoles were the cause of the first seminole war.  I personally think Jackson just used it as an excuse to invade florida....and capture it for the US (and boost his reputation/ego AND...kill an englishman or two...he hated the british).  Remember the cost of african slaves after the legal importation ended was really high, upwards in the thousands of dollars and that was in the first decades of the 19th century, that would be dang near 6 figures in todays money.  

I think someone with an interest in this and who  has a talent for writing ought to write a novel about this period of early American history, it is one of the longest military conflicts in america's history.

Oh yeah, I imagine the seminole mangled up a mess of trees pointing the way to where all their hidden gold was buried......just saying.


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## redneck_billcollector

jonjon528 said:


> Very interesting gentlemen.  Are there any opinions on why it seems that having Cherokee ancestry seems to be so coveted over other types of indian lineage?



Danged if I know.  It actually made news in the MASS senatorial race recently.  The woman running against Brown claimed cherokee ancestry which apparently caused an uproar amongst some voters.  Of all the eastern indians they were some of the most isolated ones......no body choose to live in the mountains as their first choice unless they were running from something or had nowhere else to live.  I of course am talking about in the days before trains, automobiles, etc....the southern appalachians only in my life time came out of isolation.  I will say this about the cherokee if only 1/10th of the people who claim them as forefathers/mothers is true, Don Juan had nothing on the cherokee when it comes to being amorous.  To hear folks talk there is more Cherokee blood in Ga than there is Scotts-Irish.


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## Mako22

redneck_billcollector said:


> There were lots of run away slaves that ended up being seminoles....the first campaign of the 1st seminole war was to capture "old negro town (or) fort" which was near present day Apalachicola  FLA.



I believe you are talking about Fort Gadsden just South of Sumatra Florida. I grew up fishing Fort Gadsden creek and still take my family down there to camp and we usually visit the fort while there. They have an "open" air museum which is a pavillion with some glassed in historical displays in the center of it. They also have the boilers out of a sunken steam boat over by the forts parade grounds. Beautiful view of the river from there.


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## redneck_billcollector

Woodsman69 said:


> I believe you are talking about Fort Gadsden just South of Sumatra Florida. I grew up fishing Fort Gadsden creek and still take my family down there to camp and we usually visit the fort while there. They have an "open" air museum which is a pavillion with some glassed in historical displays in the center of it. They also have the boilers out of a sunken steam boat over by the forts parade grounds. Beautiful view of the river from there.



Yeah, I always say apalachicola cause that is the town most folks know....it is not too far north of there on the river.  What is it, less than 30 miles upstream from the coast?


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## Mako22

redneck_billcollector said:


> Yeah, I always say apalachicola cause that is the town most folks know....it is not too far north of there on the river.  What is it, less than 30 miles upstream from the coast?



The sign on Hwy 65 just out of East Point says Sumatra is 37 miles (North) of there so yeah Fort Gadsden would be about 30-35 miles North. Thats one of the most sparsely populated stretches of Florida left and it used to be you could go all the way to Hosford and maybe pass one or two cars. As I remeber the Negro fort was blown up by a heated shell hitting the fort's magazine and it killed most if not all of the black folks there.


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## redneck_billcollector

Woodsman69 said:


> The sign on Hwy 65 just out of East Point says Sumatra is 37 miles (North) of there so yeah Fort Gadsden would be about 30-35 miles North. Thats one of the most sparsely populated stretches of Florida left and it used to be you could go all the way to Hosford and maybe pass one or two cars. As I remeber the Negro fort was blown up by a heated shell hitting the fort's magazine and it killed most if not all of the black folks there.



I used to  hunt over east of there as a kid on all the paper company land (I think it was 5 bucks for an annual hunting pass for adults), we hunted bobcats with hounds, I spent most of my youth outside of panacea.  It was very sparsely populated back then, lots of bears were in the area (hunted them too with hounds in Franklin Co.).  I loved going over St. Marks way as a kid, that was where Jackson marched to afterwards and executed a couple of british agents.  Hunted up Sumatra way too......it was great being a kid loving to hunt and fish in that area.  We used to find all kind of artifacts, both pre and post columbian down there.  My parents have a spanish sword hilt I found after a hurricane back in the early 70s eroded alot of the shoreline where my grandfather lived (about three lots towards the gulf from claytons on the bay in the 70s).  

Yeah, if I remember correctly almost all of the folks in the fort died when the powder went up in the fort, I think they flew a british flag and a flag meaning no quarter taken or given,  they all ended up back in GA (at least the ones that lived).

It all started when a party of militia, soldiers and civilians were going down either the flint or chattahoochee got ambushed just north of present day bainbridge (so it must have been the flint).  That was the pretense to send federal troops and militia down that way, plus jackson heard there were british agents down there and the governor of GA was raising cane about the run aways....a perfect situation for Andy to go on down and conquer florida....I think it almost caused us to go back to war with britian.  The indians fled at the approach of US forces from around present day bainbridge, one of the fleeing indians was supposedly Osceola who was from west of  that area in AL (at least that is what I remember my grandfather telling me, he is long dead now so I can't ask him).  

I have always been interested in the fighting on the Ga frontier and its border with colonial florida, and later the state of florida.  It was a bloody border that saw fighting off and on from the 17th century (before there was a GA and spain and england were fighting for it) until nearly the mid 19th century.


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## Mako22

redneck_billcollector said:


> I used to  hunt over east of there as a kid on all the paper company land (I think it was 5 bucks for an annual hunting pass for adults), we hunted bobcats with hounds, I spent most of my youth outside of panacea.  It was very sparsely populated back then, lots of bears were in the area (hunted them too with hounds in Franklin Co.).  I loved going over St. Marks way as a kid, that was where Jackson marched to afterwards and executed a couple of british agents.  Hunted up Sumatra way too......it was great being a kid loving to hunt and fish in that area.  We used to find all kind of artifacts, both pre and post columbian down there.  My parents have a spanish sword hilt I found after a hurricane back in the early 70s eroded alot of the shoreline where my grandfather lived (about three lots towards the gulf from claytons on the bay in the 70s).
> 
> Yeah, if I remember correctly almost all of the folks in the fort died when the powder went up in the fort, I think they flew a british flag and a flag meaning no quarter taken or given,  they all ended up back in GA (at least the ones that lived).
> 
> It all started when a party of militia, soldiers and civilians were going down either the flint or chattahoochee got ambushed just north of present day bainbridge (so it must have been the flint).  That was the pretense to send federal troops and militia down that way, plus jackson heard there were british agents down there and the governor of GA was raising cane about the run aways....a perfect situation for Andy to go on down and conquer florida....I think it almost caused us to go back to war with britian.  The indians fled at the approach of US forces from around present day bainbridge, one of the fleeing indians was supposedly Osceola who was from west of  that area in AL (at least that is what I remember my grandfather telling me, he is long dead now so I can't ask him).
> 
> I have always been interested in the fighting on the Ga frontier and its border with colonial florida, and later the state of florida.  It was a bloody border that saw fighting off and on from the 17th century (before there was a GA and spain and england were fighting for it) until nearly the mid 19th century.



I am from Leon and Wakulla Counties and so I have run all over that coast down there from Saint Marks to Sumatra. This is a little off topic but during the war of Yankee aggression there was a lot of salt work raiding that occured around the Saint Marks/Panacea area. The Confederates would build a salt work and then the Yankee invaders would come in on small boats and destroy everything. If you ever find a pile of really old bricks on the beach down there you may be looking at a salt work from that time.


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## redneck_billcollector

Woodsman69 said:


> I am from Leon and Wakulla Counties and so I have run all over that coast down there from Saint Marks to Sumatra. This is a little off topic but during the war of Yankee aggression there was a lot of salt work raiding that occured around the Saint Marks/Panacea area. The Confederates would build a salt work and then the Yankee invaders would come in on small boats and destroy everything. If you ever find a pile of really old bricks on the beach down there you may be looking at a salt work from that time.



Yeah, I saw some of the old salt works back when I was a kid (early  to mid 70s), I don't know if any of that is still around now, after my grandfather died I kinda did not go down there near as much.  Way off topic, I was at the first blue crab festival in panacea back in the mid 70s, I must have won a couple of hundred dollars on the foose ball table at he old arcade that used to be in the strip center the first festival.  

I remember finding all kind of stuff after a hurricane back in the early mid 70s when a shell midden right up the bay got cut in two by the storm surge: pots and pot shards, lithography, carved shells and broken deer bones.  My grandmother gave it all to FSU when I went back to GA for school....I was ticked off at her.


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## Mako22

redneck_billcollector said:


> Yeah, I saw some of the old salt works back when I was a kid (early  to mid 70s), I don't know if any of that is still around now, after my grandfather died I kinda did not go down there near as much.  Way off topic, I was at the first blue crab festival in panacea back in the mid 70s, I must have won a couple of hundred dollars on the foose ball table at he old arcade that used to be in the strip center the first festival.
> 
> I remember finding all kind of stuff after a hurricane back in the early mid 70s when a shell midden right up the bay got cut in two by the storm surge: pots and pot shards, lithography, carved shells and broken deer bones.  My grandmother gave it all to FSU when I went back to GA for school....I was ticked off at her.



Well maybe this will turn it back on topic a little bit. The area around Wakulla beach and in fact that entire area I "believe" has old indian shell mounds where they threw their discarded oyster shells.


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## waddler

Here's some reading material I have come across on this subject.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Swanton%2C%20John%20Reed%2C%201873-1958

http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/lawson/lawson.html


http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cachejEmBmthkOYJ:www.southalabama.edu/archaeology/writings/pdfs/evolution-of-deer-hunting-in-the-eastern-woodlands.pdf+hunting+techniques+of+georgia+indians&cd=44&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us


http://books.google.com/books?id=_8MX4d1xJmoC&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq=creek+indian+hunting+parties&source=bl&ots=FHJqMNasa5&sig=HRm7y2TvIGrnUrQBr0w60MvrHoc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TkzqT4yuJoK29QSihOjxDw&ved=0CFAQ6AEwAzge#v=onepage&q=creek%20indian%20hunting%20parties&f=false




http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/se/mtsi/index.htm


http://lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=3002


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## redneck_billcollector

Woodsman69 said:


> Well maybe this will turn it back on topic a little bit. The area around Wakulla beach and in fact that entire area I "believe" has old indian shell mounds where they threw their discarded oyster shells.



There used to be numerous middens all over Wakulla Co. where ever there was any amount of water.  I was down there a while back and most of the ones I remember are gone, I reckon folks figured out that shells were not the only items in those middens.  There was one at the mouth of the Sopchoppy river that you would find all kinds of stuff at low tide after a storm.  An ol' alligator used to sun himself on it for years until a poacher got him (back in the mid-70s).


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## southGAlefty

Hey RBC what do you know about the area around Grady/Thomas county and Ochlocknee River? That's where I'm from and always wondered if any significant history happened. I've read about Camp Recovery in Bainbridge but just never hear much about anything over this way.


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## redneck_billcollector

southGAlefty said:


> Hey RBC what do you know about the area around Grady/Thomas county and Ochlocknee River? That's where I'm from and always wondered if any significant history happened. I've read about Camp Recovery in Bainbridge but just never hear much about anything over this way.



I used to hunt on the Kauka land in that area before Mr. Rolf Kauka died.  I know his wife (Alexandra, a very beautiful and intelligent lady) was an amateur archeologist and she allowed a dig on the banks of the river on one of their properties and they found some old spanish mission artifacts, a bell and a small cannon back in the 80s or 90s (I personally saw alot of the items found in the mid-90s).  She had a huge collection of precolumbian artifacts along with trade artifacts associated with spanish missions that she recovered off of their property over the years.  I think the artifacts were linked to the Appalachi Mission district (or whatever the name of it was that started in the St. Mark's area and was on up to around present day Tallahassee).  If I am not mistaken I think Ben (chehaw knapper) spent some time on their property also years ago.  I think that area of Ga stayed under spanish influence longer than most other areas simply because of its distance from the Atlantic and its closeness to the Gulf which was the last bastion of spanish influence in the eastern US.  Alot of spanish documents in Fla. were destroyed or burned during british raids or indian rebellions so I am sure there are numerous mission sites unkown waiting to be found in that area because there were numerous missions around Tallahassee .  I imagine there are some other sites from DeSoto's trek because they wintered the first winter near where the present day capital building is in Tallahassee and no doubt there were foraging and trading parties venturing into that area all that winter.  There are numerous accounts of DeSoto's travels and if you ever get a chance you should read them.


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## waddler

You might like this.

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/CREEK-SOUTHEAST/2001-06/0992457341


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## redneck_billcollector

A shout out to Ben or anyone else who might know the answer.  I came across a letter to the GA Government dated 26 Oct. 1825 from members of the McIntosh party (from what I can tell, pro-US faction of the creek confederecy) signed by various members in different towns, a couple of the towns named were New York and San town.  I am curious if anyone knows if New York was anywhere near Chehaw town on the muckalee creek in Lee Co.  There is a New York road out that way and I have always wondered about the name of the road.  Coweta, Talidago (that is how it was spelt) and Acorn Bluff were some other towns that the signators were from.  The letter was an attempt to buy back some land east of the Chattahoochee River above flat shoals to the "horse path"(supposedly a mountainous section about 40 miles long) because of the hostilities of other creeks (I am assuming it was some red sticks) which was given up at the treaty of Indian Springs.  They were also talking about a Gen'l McIntosh who was murdered by these hostile indians, the special agent who had an attachment to the letter was one T. P. Andrews.  

In my boredom as of late, I have been reading letters to the Federal and GA governments about the infighting that followed the civil war (creek wars 1811-1814) and the continued problems with the red sticks.  Makes for some interesting reading and lets you know just how assimilated the creek nation had become.

Here are a couple of interesting reads on the creek wars of the 1830s, mainly in south west Ga, south east alabama and north Fla.  Also a little bit in south east GA.  http://www.southernhistory.us/2crekwar1.htm http://www.southernhistory.us/2crekwar2.htm


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## Sutallee

You don't hear much about it, but the Shawnees lived both in the Savannah River and Suwannee river valleys before they settled in Ohio. The names Savannah and Suwannee are English corruptions of the word "Shawnee".


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## Gary Mercer

What tribe is located in the Wedowee, AL area?
I know there are a bunch of Native Americans over there.
Just not sure what their history is.
Interesting


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## chehawknapper

That is Creek Confederacy territory.


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## AMobley

Wow! Great read fellas!


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## Gary Mercer

The man that owns our camper community on Lake Wedowee is Bill Almenson, and he is known to all as "Chief."
I have no doubt that he is Native American, I will ask him next week when I go over.


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## southgaoriginal

mighty interesting thread you guys have going here, just out of curiosity any info about bulloch or jenkins county


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## gin house

Great reads on here for sure.   I live in SC just across lake Hartwell from Toccoa GA.   There is a mound over here in the middle of the lake that has a lot of history.   Its called Old Tugaloo Town.  There is plenty of articles of it on the internet.  From what i read it was a Cherokee settlement.   The French thought it to be the Cherokee capital as there were so many.   Eventually the Creeks came in to live with them but they killed all the creek indians as they found they were spies for the French and the town was later overtaken by the British if im not mistaken.  Said they came off the ridge above and killed them all.....   Im not at all as educated on this subject as any of you guys but from what ive gathered the Cherokee were pretty much concentrated in North GA and TN.    Im not sure but this is a great thread, you guys keep it up.


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## addison blakeslee

For anybody interested, a good read is a book by Farris W. Cadle titled Georgia Land Surveying History and Law. It shows the progression of how land was split up in georgia and how it affected the indians. Mostly dealing with Surveying but some very good information available.


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## Swamp Devil

I sure meet a lot of blue eyed, red headed, "Cherokee's" with freckles...Dang! That Irish gene sure must be dominant!


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## Gary Mercer

Followq up on the man in Wedowee I mentioned earlier.
"Full blooded" Creek is what he tells me.  I have met his wife and I don't think she is Creek.


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## Gary Mercer

Sort of off topic, but not really.  I saw something on TV not long ago, about the Cherokee being decendants of the 7th tribe of Judah.
Anybody shed any light on that myth?


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## White Horse

The myth that American Indians were the lost tribe of Israel was widespread in the early 19th century. The Mormon church believed that until recently, calling Indians "Lamanites," but they have downplayed it in recent years. The idea got its start in a literal translation of the Bible; the thought was that since the Bible had nothing to say about the New World and its inhabitants, they must have had origins in the Old World.

One of the best sources about the Southeastern Indians in colonial times is James Adair's History of the American Indians. Adair believed fully in the "Lost Tribe of Israel" theory, but his work is a fine source once you get past all of that.

My main research interest in the Southeast is the Yuchi. Here is an annotated bibliography about the Yuchi, who are part of the Creek confederacy, but who speak a completely unrelated language. Their village in colonial and Federal times was just across the river from modern day Columbus, Georgia, on land now owned by Fort Benning. The explorer William Bartram and and the Revolutionary war hero Lafayette, to name two, visited the Yuchi village. All the books in this bibliography should be readily available through inter-library loan or from any of the big internet book sites.

I'll list another source or two soon.



Speck, Frank G.  Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Anthropological Publications of the University Museum, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1909.

	Speck’s work on the Yuchi is still the most complete description of the tribe, and is the 
	standard reference.

Jackson, Jason Baird. Yuchi Ceremonial Life: Performance, Meaning, and Tradition in a Contemporary American Indian Community. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.

	Dr. Jason Jackson has spent time among the contemporary Yuchi in Oklahoma, and 
organized an exhibit of Yuchi artifacts at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa while working there 	
as a Research Associate. 

Swanton, John R. The Indians of the Southeastern United States. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1946, 1979.

	Swanton’s work is a valuable background study on the Southeastern peoples and their
	lifeways, and contains a summary of the Yuchi’s historical migrations.

Taylor, Colin F., and William C. Sturtevant. (Eds.) The Native Americans: The Indigenous People of North America. New York: Smithmark Publishers, Ltd., 1991.

	This book contains double page layouts, in color, of clothing and artifacts of several
	tribes, including the Yuchi items collected by Frank G. Speck in 1904-1905.

Jackson, Jason Baird. “Dressing for the Dance: Yuchi Ceremonial Clothing.” In: American Indian Art Magazine, Vol. 23, No. 3, Summer 1998, pages 32- 41. 

	This article was published in conjunction with the Gilcrease exhibit organized by Dr. Jackson.
	It contains color pictures of contemporary Yuchi clothing and artifacts.

Hvidt, Kristian. (Ed.) Von Reck’s Voyage: Drawings and Journal of Philip Georg Friedrich von Reck.
Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990.

Von Reck came to Georgia in association with the Salzburger community in 1736. The Yuchi were at that time living near the Salzburger settlement of New Ebenezer not far from today’s
Augusta, Georgia. This book contains several color drawings of the Yuchi as observed by von Reck, including pictures of the Yuchi Chief and his wife, and Yuchis leaving to go hunting, with
their guns, bows, and other equipment.


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## chehawknapper

Excellent bibliography on research material White Horse! There are others but that will keep folks busy for a while.


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## hunter dan

*Thanks!*

Bet when people talk about us and our current times 100-200 years from now it won't be this interesting. Think its great that I've hunted some of the same ground in SW Ga you all have talked about.


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## redneck_billcollector

I was bored not to long ago and was going through some applications for the "Sons of the American Revolution" for GA applicants and I noticed a large amount of them for decendants of young men who were mustered into various GA militias in the 1790s to battle indians at the age of 16 or 17 so obviously too young for the actual revolution. They were all approved.  I have two questions for you history buffs that is relavent to this thread. First off it was obviously some indian war in the state of GA against the creeks yet I can find very little information about it other than some action around and east of present day Macon....curious can anyone (Ben?) shed some light on it.  Second off, these folks were born around the start of the Revolution so how could they qualify for pensions (also membership in the SOAR was granted)?....which is what the ancestors were presenting, their pension papers and land grant papers. Could it be because the creeks were being egged on by the british?  The reason I was looking was because I was on the ancestory.com site and they have tons of records along those lines and one of my maternal grandfather's dirrect ancestors was one of the persons on the pension / land grant papers.  I find alot about the indian wars that coincided with the war of 1812 and the later creek civil war but very little about this conflict in the late 18th century.


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## westcobbdog

Redneck I have a questions for ya'...down in extreme S Central Ga, in eastern Ben Hill County very near the Ocmulgee River, 2 1821 or so Spanish Coins were found in the 1950's, one in a creek, one in a tobacco field, both on the same plain but a mile or two apart. Any ideas house these could have arrived here?


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## redneck_billcollector

Early in our history the US used spanish coins because we did not mint enough for our own use.  I am sure you have heard the term "2 bits"...that comes from the use of the spanish Piece of Eight which basically was worth a dollar.   For fractional coinage you literally cut it in 1/8 pieces...hence 2 bits (2/8 or 1/4)  equals a quater.  Heck the term dollar is believed to come from an Austrian coin that was popular in trade at the birth of our nation called the Thaller which many pronounced as "dollar".  It was not so much who minted the coin as it was the weight of the silver or gold used in it.  That is why we early on put rigdes and other devices on the rims of the coin...to keep people from "sweating" the coin...shaving or rubbing a small amount of the silver off the rim....It was a common practice.  But spanish coinage was used as legal tender on through the early 19th century in the US, especially in the south due to our closeness to spanish colonies such a florida, cuba, mexico...etc...etc...Few people trusted or would accept paper money in the early days for obvious reasons, they wanted precious metal for trade and they really did not care who's face was on it nor what language was minted on it....they only cared for the weight of the silver or gold in it.

As I am sure you know, early on the way coinage got into circulation was an individual would take his precious metal to a mint and exchange it for coinage of the same weight.  Hence there being branch mints established where ever there was a gold boom or silver boom like in Charlotte N.C., Dahlonega GA, Carson City Nevada and San Fransisco CAL.  The government did not have much gold or silver in reserve to just mint coinage early on....so there was a serious coin shortage until we started having decent silver and gold mines.

What I have always wondered about was some roman coins found in woodland period burial mounds in the Great Lakes region....I don't think it is the romans that brought the coins here, but someone did and the burials are pre-columbian, I would imagine they came by way of the vikings because once again, roman coinage was in use in europe long after the fall of the roman empire.


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## westcobbdog

I had not ever pondered many of your points Red, thanks for the informative reply. I agree with the Roman coin theory as some sort of Viking symbol was found in Minnesota if memory serves.


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## Artfuldodger

Yeah, that coinage info. was interesting. I'd rather have a real gold Spanish coin that a copper U.S. coin myself. I could see the same thing happening around the world with the Roman coins too. They would still be valuable long after the Empire was gone and could be used for trade.


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## redneck_billcollector

westcobbdog said:


> I had not ever pondered many of your points Red, thanks for the informative reply. I agree with the Roman coin theory as some sort of Viking symbol was found in Minnesota if memory serves.



There was a runestone found in Minnesota many years back (late 19th century) known as the "Kensington Runestone".  No one has been able to verify it and the location alone makes me a little skeptical. Who were the primary settlers in Minnesota?  Norwegians and Swedes.....well, they would certainly know about runes and no doubt many would be able to reproduce them from their memories...And of course, everyone wants to lay national claim to just about everything ever done....ethnic pride.  Soooooo, had the runestone been discovered in say North Carolina by some Scotts-Irish settler I would be more prone to be less skeptical, but seeing how they were found where the majority of settlers were decendants of vikings.....well.  I tend to approach most fantastic claims with skepticism and ponder it before I will buy the goods being sold.  But you never know, there might really have been vikings that made it to Minnesota but I am going to need something other than one runestone that hasn't been verified as being authentic.  I am not saying it did not happen, I am just saying I am not convinced yet. Oh yeah, the runestone was found by a Swedish settler named Olof Ohman.....


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## David Parker

Going back to the OP, the existence of indians in Georgia predates the Cherokee and Creek.  We have Rock Eagle and Ocmulgee Indian Mounds to evident that.  I'd probably argue that there is even more indian-blood in family trees than people are aware of.  

Regarding the March to relocate the tribes, is it the consensus that many/most of the Cherokee accepted the culture of the white man and as a reciprocal gesture, the U.S. Government (Indian Removal Act) rejected them and rid the area as best they could, from all Indians including the ones who embraced the white culture and supported it?


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## westcobbdog

yes Jeremy they didn't care if you were wild or a domesticated Indian..all Indians had to go.


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## redneck_billcollector

The removal act removed them all, be they "civilized" or wild.  Were not many wild indians in the South East. The so called "wild indians" lasted longer down here than the civilized ones after the removal act (think Seminoles and a few hold out Creeks).....Heck, a mess of the cherokee hired them some lawyers and fought the act all the way to the U S Supreme Court and won one of their cases in 1831 which said they were a sovereign government in GA....but to no avail.  The Governor of GA wanted them gone (along with Andy Jackson who had adopted a creek child at one time), he needed the land and they wanted the gold up in Cherokee country.

The so called "five civilized" nations had adopted the plantation system with gusto, large agricultural fields, white style mansions and holdings of african slaves in an attempt to make the white settlers accept them, BUT all they ended up doing was make many of the poorer whites envious of what they had.  After the removal act they kept up the "civilized" life style in Oklahoma and many ended up joining the confederate cause during the war between the states.


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## David Parker

boy, glad we can trust those in power now.  Not at all like it was back in them days right?


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## Mac

gin house said:


> Great reads on here for sure.   I live in SC just across lake Hartwell from Toccoa GA.   There is a mound over here in the middle of the lake that has a lot of history.   Its called Old Tugaloo Town.  There is plenty of articles of it on the internet.  From what i read it was a Cherokee settlement.   The French thought it to be the Cherokee capital as there were so many.   Eventually the Creeks came in to live with them but they killed all the creek indians as they found they were spies for the French and the town was later overtaken by the British if im not mistaken.  Said they came off the ridge above and killed them all.....   Im not at all as educated on this subject as any of you guys but from what ive gathered the Cherokee were pretty much concentrated in North GA and TN.    Im not sure but this is a great thread, you guys keep it up.



There use to be a small display of artifacts at Jarret Manor that came from one of the mounds.  There is a couple mounds that stick up in lake Hartwell just North of Hwy 123 bridge.  Also there is a mound near where Chauga Creek runs into the Tugalo river.  This is about 1.5 miles down stream of the bridge. This one is below the full pool level of the lake but you can see it when the lake is down.

I found this one the hard way years ago while water skiing when the lake was down.


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## Mac

Thanks guys a great thread,  I enjoyed the read.



Woodsman69 said:


> The sign on Hwy 65 just out of East Point says Sumatra is 37 miles (North) of there so yeah Fort Gadsden would be about 30-35 miles North. Thats one of the most sparsely populated stretches of Florida left and it used to be you could go all the way to Hosford and maybe pass one or two cars. As I remeber the Negro fort was blown up by a heated shell hitting the fort's magazine and it killed most if not all of the black folks there.




We actually went up hwy 65 on our way home one time, with the idea to check out the Fort area, 
We did not see any signs showing where the fort was located.  Sounds like a neat area and would like to check it out.

What should we look for, will be down in Carrabelle  during Spring break and would like to check it out.

Also anyone know in likely places to find a artifact or two in the Franklin county area?


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## olcowman

Sorry that it looks like I'm shooting in here with a scatter gun... but I been following this post all along and some of the posts I'm referencing are way back I figure...

This link and the link associated with it is about the best read I've found on the web about the general history and popular theories concerning many of the lingering questions regarding these unique natives. I never really realized the extent of their impact on the tribes we are more familiar with, and it surmises in some easy to understand language the circumstances that lead to their sudden demise. Evidently, the Yuchi were pretty powerful and not the sort you would want to go to war with, but on the other hand lived scattered out in villages near the other tribes and thus the contact, including acting as interpretors which according to the link, was crucial to the co-existence because they spoke a totally unrelated language, had a greater influence on these cultures than what is commonly thought. It's a great article if you got a few minutes.

http://www.yuchi.org/

Someone had mentioned the spanish and roman coins found thru out the state... I can't say that I actually saw him dig it up, but I did see the coin itself... and it belongs to a real serious amateur relic hunter I worked with at Fort Benning and was found right where Upitoi and the river meet. From what he and i could find on the web, it was the spitting image of what they identified as a Octavian/Augustus and Julius Caesar coin from I believe 28BC... Reckon where all that coin has been in the last 2000 years? Well until some Spanish explorer or Native lost it there on the creek bank...

Someone just commented about the Seminole and a few Creeks that actually avoided the relocation... and I'm not sure of the numbers, but there were some Cherokee who escaped into the mountains of East Tennessee and N. Carolina. My gr. grandmother's maiden name was Bushyhead and she firmly believed that she was directly descended from a pretty large group, which consisted primarily of Bushyheads and members of the Walkingstick family, that had managed to avoid capture and as she put it, actually thrived in some remote sections up there near Big Frog. Although I have never found anything to document this, I can still take you to the spot up there where in 1969 she showed us the remains of what looked liked to all of us, old rock foundations and even a few rotted timbers from several small cabin type structures. She even pointed up the hill to where they got their water, which prompted some of us boys to climb up and check out. Although the spring had long since dried up or found another exit further down the slope, we did find a hollowed out area with the remants of stacked stone walls on three sides, right where she pointed.

I haven't came across anything myself that offers any historical documentation regarding this area, which is now part of Cohutta WMA... I really believe her recollections. She never lived there herself but said she visited several times with her father and spent the night many times with a few elderly relatives that were still there. This would have been in the 1890s until 1905 best I can figure. If any of ya'll every run up on a story that sounds something like this I sure would apreciate you passing it along for me. Thanks


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## westcobbdog

Interesting post Olcow, its a shame that your descendents had to hide out for so long from essentially a stronger power that took over their land. Hadn't considered Roman coins as really possible in Ga., either.


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## NickW

Great discussions...I haven't read all of them so forgive me if this info was already shared. I am sure many of you have been or attempted to go to the Scull Shoals Indian Mounds in the northern part of the Oconee NF. They are not near the actual Scull Shoals Historic Site but are down a trail near them. I went there recently and it is so overgrown and little care has been taken in the area. I don't know if that is the "plan" so as not to draw attention to them or due to lack of funding/interest etc. I am starting to videotape my hikes (unprofessionally) so there is a short clip that shows how overgrown the first mound is. (it is around 2:58 into the clip if ya want to skip thru)I did not find the second mound yet(I actually missed the turn for the first one the first attempt). Has anyone here found the second mound? Is it bigger or smaller? Im going back soon

here is the clip
http://www.thegeorgiahiker.com/Scull_Shoals_Hiking.html

Also, here is an article a visitor to my site sent me last week. Interesting stuff:
http://thelamarinstitute.org/images/PDFs/publication_01.pdf

Thanks,

Nick


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## Mac

NickW said:


> Also, here is an article a visitor to my site sent me last week. Interesting stuff:
> http://thelamarinstitute.org/images/PDFs/publication_01.pdf
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Nick



Interesting info,  I have never been to that area,  but based on your video and the document above,  it looks confusing to me.

Page 14 fig 4 shows the mound to the north to be much bigger and taller than the the one to the SE.  
Even the smaller mound, based on the topo and contour intervals shows a much bigger and taller mound than it appeared to be on the video.  
I would guess the mound you did not find would be bigger and to the NW of the one in the video.

Might have to visit that site soon,  thanks for sharing.


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## NickW

Yes it is confusing Mac. I agree. I need to see that second mound and get a pic. If anyone has one or has seen it on here let us know.


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## olcowman

westcobbdog said:


> Interesting post Olcow, its a shame that your descendents had to hide out for so long from essentially a stronger power that took over their land. Hadn't considered Roman coins as really possible in Ga., either.



You just brought up another thing I really ain't sure of... reckon how long they actually did have to hide. I know Gr. Granny's daddy married a white women and moved down into Fannin county Georgia, he wasn't laying low obviously? It looks as if some of them stayed up on Big Frog on their own if they were there in 1900?

Is their any info concerning the relationship between whites and natives in the decades following the removal act. I'm sure some areas were more tolerant than others. I have never heard when the US Govt officially quit rounding them up and sending them west... reckon if they came across some hidden natives, say 15 years later in 1850 or so... would they send them west too?


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## jrickman

Catawbas predated the Cherokee and Creeks in the Toccoa area. The claim that Toccoa is a Cherokee word for "beautiful" is a myth that someone in real estate, or a chamber of commerce rep cooked up who knows when. The Cherokee word for beautiful is uwoduhi. The real origin is likely "Tagwa Hi" or Ta-qua-hi, which translates roughly to "place of the Catawbas."


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## redneck_billcollector

olcowman said:


> You just brought up another thing I really ain't sure of... reckon how long they actually did have to hide. I know Gr. Granny's daddy married a white women and moved down into Fannin county Georgia, he wasn't laying low obviously? It looks as if some of them stayed up on Big Frog on their own if they were there in 1900?
> 
> Is their any info concerning the relationship between whites and natives in the decades following the removal act. I'm sure some areas were more tolerant than others. I have never heard when the US Govt officially quit rounding them up and sending them west... reckon if they came across some hidden natives, say 15 years later in 1850 or so... would they send them west too?



I know the Forida Militia was running around the panhandle killing anyone they thought was an indian well into the 40s and even the early 50s from some sources that I have read.  Some of the acts were so dastardly that the local civilians complained of the militia's cruelty to the governor of Florida.  There is a story in one of my links of a creek holdout killed years after the removal act on the shore of St. Andrew's Bay in Bay County.  There were numerous holdouts in sowega that were able to pass themselves off as whites....many of their decendants still live south and west of Albany.  Outside of the mountains, sowega and the okeefenokee area were the (and still are) some of the least populated areas of the state. In Florida they were still sending them out west as long as they were capturing them in the Seminole wars which finally just petered out in the 1850s....


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## redneck_billcollector

This is a shout out to Ben or Nic or anyone else who might know the answer and be able to shed some light on this.  The Creek Confederacy Navy that patrolled the gulf coast and inland rivers that were in the territory of the creek confederacy with of all things, gunboats.  I have seen reference to it before and just found another reference to it that is in the link....but that is all that is ever said about, that it existed and nothing more.
http://thesga.org/2005/12/teaching-creek-heritage-in-the-21st-century/
The link also alludes to warfare with the various "wild" indians that controlled Oklahoma when they were removed to there....and a treaty in 1866 with the lower creeks who sided with the confederate states of america and the emanicpation of african slaves belonging to creeks in Oklahoma....many interesting acorns that are from an oak I would love to read more on.


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## justfishin

Wow.. What a wonderful read! Thanks to all of you. My family claims Cherokee heritage and there are definite north american indian traits that are very obvious in my great grandfather and great great grandmother. The name was Cowart from Tattnall county. But as I begin to discover a few things, I believe that the Creek may be a more reasonable choice. I am not sure why the Cherokee are more often the claim in Georgia lineage as mentioned before. Tomochichi's grave is in Savannah and he had a huge influence in the relations between the Creek and colonial settlers. So.. it seems as though the Creek would have had more influence in this area.
  As far as the vikings are concerned. One of Leif Ericson's brother's, I believe it was Thorvald, wanted to create a settlement in Savannah. He and his party were killed by indians. 
  Keep it up.. this is a wonderful blog. And yes, I have some of that ol' English in me but my Indian heritage shows in my features and I am very proud of it!


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## Artfuldodger

olcowman said:


> You just brought up another thing I really ain't sure of... reckon how long they actually did have to hide. I know Gr. Granny's daddy married a white women and moved down into Fannin county Georgia, he wasn't laying low obviously? It looks as if some of them stayed up on Big Frog on their own if they were there in 1900?
> 
> Is their any info concerning the relationship between whites and natives in the decades following the removal act. I'm sure some areas were more tolerant than others. I have never heard when the US Govt officially quit rounding them up and sending them west... reckon if they came across some hidden natives, say 15 years later in 1850 or so... would they send them west too?



I've read about Indians who hid out and were never relocated to Oklahoma. There must have been many. Too many isolated areas for people to hide. There must be some point when the army quit looking. I would think it just kinda tapered down and they told the press & higher up officials, we've finally got them all.


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## White Horse

A PhD dissertation could be written about the subject of Native blood being claimed by folks outside of the "accepted" or "recognized" Native communities. Many times it's just fantasy, and simply another aspect of the "Noble Savage" stereotype.

There were many people of mixed blood in the Southeast in the 1820's and 1830's, however, and some of them stayed behind when the bulk of the Southeastern Indians were removed. If a person was only 1/4 or less American Indian, and married to a person of Caucasian descent, it was quite possible to fade into the background, and some did. The people who did were the ancestors of some of the families who have a legend of Indian descent today.

A lot of times people say "Cherokee" just because that's the only tribal name they know.

There also are the communities of what are known as "tri-racial isolates." They are known to outsiders by several different derogatory names. They usually are a mixture of Black, White, and American Indian, and stay pretty much to themselves, or did until recent times.

The Smithsonian Handbook of American Indians, Vol. 15, Northeast has an extensive article about the isolate groups. There were/are several of those groups in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida.


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## 7 point

M great grandmother was Cherokee from Georgia last name Rooks I have searched the name but cant find anything.


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## NCHillbilly

Artfuldodger said:


> I've read about Indians who hid out and were never relocated to Oklahoma. There must have been many. Too many isolated areas for people to hide. There must be some point when the army quit looking. I would think it just kinda tapered down and they told the press & higher up officials, we've finally got them all.



There are thousands of Cherokee in western NC living on the Qualla Boundary who are decended from those who refused to go to Oklahoma. They bought back a bunch of land in the mid-1800s with the help of Colonel Will Thomas, and it eventually  was officially granted to their ownership as a reservation. Cherokees and the local people have historically gotten along quite well here, and there are very few long-standing families here in the mountains who haven't intermarried with the Cherokee at some point. Many people in my area when I was growing up were predjudiced against black people, but you pretty much never met someone who was predjudiced against Cherokee people.


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## Sweetwater

According to my now deceased maternal grandmother...I am the descendant of Kit Carson and a cherokee princess from the wolf clan. She, like my mother and brother, have thick dark hair, dark skin and eyes.


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## redneck_billcollector

justfishin said:


> Wow.. What a wonderful read! Thanks to all of you. My family claims Cherokee heritage and there are definite north american indian traits that are very obvious in my great grandfather and great great grandmother. The name was Cowart from Tattnall county. But as I begin to discover a few things, I believe that the Creek may be a more reasonable choice. I am not sure why the Cherokee are more often the claim in Georgia lineage as mentioned before. Tomochichi's grave is in Savannah and he had a huge influence in the relations between the Creek and colonial settlers. So.. it seems as though the Creek would have had more influence in this area.
> As far as the vikings are concerned. One of Leif Ericson's brother's, I believe it was Thorvald, wanted to create a settlement in Savannah. He and his party were killed by indians.
> Keep it up.. this is a wonderful blog. And yes, I have some of that ol' English in me but my Indian heritage shows in my features and I am very proud of it!



I imagine many who have native blood in them in the southeast claim cherokee simply because being a creek indian or claiming creek indian blood could get you killed up through the mid-19th century and many of the family traditions were started around that time. Almost every indian war fought in GA was against creeks, not cherokee and the last fighting was again against creeks and not cherokee.  Most of the so called massacres of whites in GA was by the creek too.  One of those massacres being right outside of Albany GA, at Pretoria. If you read some of my earlier links in this thread, just being thought to have creek blood would get you killed at times by over zealous militias. Remember, from early on all the truely desirable land for settlement in GA was creek land, it had the longleaf pine, savanna's for grazing,  the fertile soil, the wide river bottoms, all of the things a person wanted.  Living in the mountains was hard and it did not attract much in the way of settlers so cherokee/white conflict was actually rare as opposed to creek/white conflict. Not many others than traders and outlaws were attracted to the mountains until gold was found. 

Add to the fact that the last indian wars in the eastern US took place close to GA, in FLA and at times in south GA against the seminoles and creek holdouts who allied with them, you had a continued white "hatred" for the creek indians.  If you even looked like you had indian blood I imagine you would say cherokee just to keep alive during times of warfare.  I mean, the cherokee were seen as not being hostile and civilized more so than the creeks and once the revolution was finished we never really fought against them.  I can not think of a single white settlement attacked or a white community massacred by the cherokee in the state of Ga., yet where I live the roads are lined with historic markers of battles with the creek indians, just ride around in sowega, places like terrell co., randoph co., stewart co., clay co, etc... and read the historical markers, you find numerous ones pointing out battles between militia and creeks or settlers and creeks...never seen any in the n. GA mountains. Of course this is just speculation as to why folks said cherokee as opposed to the creeks, even though it is well known that the creeks assimilated into the white population of sowega, southeast alabama and north fla.  more so than just about any other native population in the US.  What I really find interesting is that people from all over the eastern US tend to claim cherokee blood more so than any other native blood.....never understood that, they were the most isolated indians in the southeast during the early 19th century other than maybe some seminole and creek holdouts in deep south FLA.

The only mention of cherokee white conflict in GA I can find was in what is now Hall county towards the end of the american revolution which resulted in a treaty in 1783....the same year the revolution was officially over even though fighting in north america had officially ceased close to two years before then.


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## Joe of Dirt

redneck_billcollector said:


> I imagine many who have native blood in them in the southeast claim cherokee simply because being a creek indian or claiming creek indian blood could get you killed up through the mid-19th century and many of the family traditions were started around that time. Almost every indian war fought in GA was against creeks, not cherokee and the last fighting was again against creeks and not cherokee.  Most of the so called massacres of whites in GA was by the creek too.  One of those massacres being right outside of Albany GA, at Pretoria. If you read some of my earlier links in this thread, just being thought to have creek blood would get you killed at times by over zealous militias. Remember, from early on all the truely desirable land for settlement in GA was creek land, it had the longleaf pine, savanna's for grazing,  the fertile soil, the wide river bottoms, all of the things a person wanted.  Living in the mountains was hard and it did not attract much in the way of settlers so cherokee/white conflict was actually rare as opposed to creek/white conflict. Not many others than traders and outlaws were attracted to the mountains until gold was found.
> 
> Add to the fact that the last indian wars in the eastern US took place close to GA, in FLA and at times in south GA against the seminoles and creek holdouts who allied with them, you had a continued white "hatred" for the creek indians.  If you even looked like you had indian blood I imagine you would say cherokee just to keep alive during times of warfare.  I mean, the cherokee were seen as not being hostile and civilized more so than the creeks and once the revolution was finished we never really fought against them.  I can not think of a single white settlement attacked or a white community massacred by the cherokee in the state of Ga., yet where I live the roads are lined with historic markers of battles with the creek indians, just ride around in sowega, places like terrell co., randoph co., stewart co., clay co, etc... and read the historical markers, you find numerous ones pointing out battles between militia and creeks or settlers and creeks...never seen any in the n. GA mountains. Of course this is just speculation as to why folks said cherokee as opposed to the creeks, even though it is well known that the creeks assimilated into the white population of sowega, southeast alabama and north fla.  more so than just about any other native population in the US.  What I really find interesting is that people from all over the eastern US tend to claim cherokee blood more so than any other native blood.....never understood that, they were the most isolated indians in the southeast during the early 19th century other than maybe some seminole and creek holdouts in deep south FLA.
> 
> The only mention of cherokee white conflict in GA I can find was in what is now Hall county towards the end of the american revolution which resulted in a treaty in 1783....the same year the revolution was officially over even though fighting in north america had officially ceased close to two years before then.



Good info there.  And, I hear tell that the phrase, "God willin' and the creek don't rise" has nothing at all to do with streams, and should read, "God willin' and the Creek don't rise".

The Cherokee most certainly did become too "white".  That was a big cause of their downfall.  Their major chiefs were very, very wealthy plantation owners and businessmen...who sold out their regular folk...in the name of...greed.  Most were half-white too, by the way.  And many were (rightfully) assassinated after they had sold out their common folk.

Oh, and most anyone who lives on a big chunk of "old family land" in north GA is living on stolen land - stolen from the Cherokee and given away to whites in the Land Lottery, right after they were herded up and genocided off to Oklahoma, after lies, double-crossing and reneged treaties.

Andrew Jackson got the Cherokee to help him defeat the Creek, with a promise...err...lie to let them remain on their land.  Then when the Creek were defeated, he (and a few others) showed their true character and dragged them out west.  

I am sho' nuf' glad to be an Amurikan, but I dang sho' ain't proud of that fact.  This country has done some extremely despicable things, and most in the name of...greed.


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## triton

I have been to the Etawah(spelling)Indian mounds around 20 years ago.I cant remember a whole lot about it wish I could.Around Calhoon Ga.There is a lot about Indians. There was one that was Cherokee he came came up with the Cherokee alphabet.This whole post was great. Someone keep it up.


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## Cullen Bohannon

triton said:


> I have been to the Etawah(spelling)Indian mounds around 20 years ago.I cant remember a whole lot about it wish I could.Around Calhoon Ga.There is a lot about Indians. There was one that was Cherokee he came came up with the Cherokee alphabet.This whole post was great. Someone keep it up.



The Etowah mounds are a neat place, but the Cherokee didn't make those.  I think the place around Calhoun you mention is New Echota, which was their main place, once they became "too white".  Another neat place to visit.

As a child, I got to dig with my parents where the huge Coosawattee village was, which is now under the re-regulation reservoir, just below the Carter's Lake dam.  We got shoeboxes full of very cool artifacts there.  There were lots of people digging holes and sifting dirt.

Sequoyah invented their alphabet.


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## triton

Cullen you are right I just couldnt remember.Thanks!!


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## joedublin

Red, your posts are fascinating and very informative. I am trying to verify my family history ( on my father's side ) by being DNA tested to , once and for all, find out if his mother, my grandmother) was really full-blooded Cherokee.  My father was born and raised in NC in a tiny town named Molly, NC. I'll let you know what the DNA has to say about the whole story. All the old aunts , who are now gone, swore it was the truth.


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## redneck_billcollector

When you look at the Census records from the 19th century for various South West and central regions of the state, you see people popping up with no prior record in the census and no background, it is kind of interesting. I imagine alot of these people are of native decent and assimilating and getting recorded for the first time. Especially in the 1840 census I noticed this.  I imagine the census takers were willing to turn a blind eye to ones ethnicity due to the debate on slavery in congress that was really picking up steam about then.  There was a huge influx of europeans settling in the north east at the time along with the upper midwest and the number of representatives was really moving away from the "slave states" so.........


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## BubbaFett

Another fun note is a lot of people who were "native"  are actually products of the "Massa" taking a trip to the "free help" cabins.  Not saying all but a lot more than most people want to admit and I'm willing to bet there are a lot more of those running around than Indians in the South.


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## Scrapy

redneck_billcollector said:


> When you look at the Census records from the 19th century for various South West and central regions of the state, you see people popping up with no prior record in the census and no background, it is kind of interesting. I imagine alot of these people are of native decent and assimilating and getting recorded for the first time. Especially in the 1840 census I noticed this.  I imagine the census takers were willing to turn a blind eye to ones ethnicity due to the debate on slavery in congress that was really picking up steam about then.  There was a huge influx of europeans settling in the north east at the time along with the upper midwest and the number of representatives was really moving away from the "slave states" so.........



From what I am trying to remember, so correct me if I am wrong, the Lumbee were from North Carolina at Burnt Swamp. Many followed the turpentine trade south and many settled  in Bullock County GA. They eventually  formed a community with church and school here. Many returned to NC when the turpentine played out but many stayed and farmed. Some talk is that they originated from the "Lost Colony" so the story might get wild.


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## redneck_billcollector

Scrapy said:


> From what I am trying to remember, so correct me if I am wrong, the Lumbee were from North Carolina at Burnt Swamp. Many followed the turpentine trade south and many settled  in Bullock County GA. They eventually  formed a community with church and school here. Many returned to NC when the turpentine played out but many stayed and farmed. Some talk is that they originated from the "Lost Colony" so the story might get wild.



I have not looked into them in any depth.  I have been looking in central and southwest GA more than anything else, my family was over this way by the 1840 census, I reckon they jumped on the last of the creek lands taken by the government.  If I am not mistaken the Lumbee were unionist and fought as union partisans during the war between the states.  That they were as much run a way slaves as they were indians.......


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## NCHillbilly

The Lumbee are not really a traditional tribe per se, but more like a mishmash of descendants of remnants of several local tribes that were mostly wiped out, escaped slaves, and white swampers. They evolved as a group mostly in Robeson County, NC, where all these folks had retreated to the swamps and woods back in the day. That part of NC was peopled by dozens of small tribes of Siouan, Iroquoian, and Algonkian descent. After years of disease and war, the few survivors of these tribes banded together and took to the swamps along with escaped slaves and local backwoods whites who weren't too big on society, and eventually evolved into a large group or tribe. The Lost Colony/Croatan Indian legend is out there, but I don't put much stock in it. The Lumbee have a pretty interesting history. Google Henry B. Lowry sometime.


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## Scrapy

http://bcove.me/w6iadk29

That kind of explains the population shift.


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## Scrapy

http://bcove.me/fj4ado1u

I stumbled onto this one also.


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## Scrapy

So, imagine me and you are hunting in the backwoods of GA in the late 1700's.  I got a gun and you got a bow. Your dog jumps a deer and brings it straight to us. We shoot together. Who's deer is it?


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## Gary Mercer

Don't know what this has to do with it, but the question is moot.  You are going to have to reload that there thunderstick and I have another arrow already nocked and ready to plug yourself!
End of argument!


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## Scrapy

Gary Mercer said:


> Don't know what this has to do with it, but the question is moot.  You are going to have to reload that there thunderstick and I have another arrow already nocked and ready to plug yourself!
> End of argument!


 The question was never intended to be an argument.  There is a chapter about that situation in the book "The Yemassee" by William Gilmore Simms Circa 1888. The book was called a Romantic Novel by Simms himself because many "liberties"  were taken in the writing. The book is about the issues that led up to the Yemassee War of 1715near Pocotaligo and Coosawhatchie SC. 30 miles N of Savannah.  After much bloodshed from attacks by the Indians to Beaufort the uprising was quelshed  and the Yemassee departed for Georgia and Fla. Supposedly they incorporated into other tribes in West Ga.


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