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THE AMERICAN INDIAN 2
MAN COMES TO GEORGIA 7
FOOD FROM THE WATERS 12
POTMAKING BECOMES AN ART 19
TEMPLE MOUNDS AND AGRICULTURE 28
EARLY CREEKS 40
OCMULGEE OLD FIELDS 48
GUIDE TO THE AREA 55
HOW TO REACH THE MONUMENT 57
ABOUT YOUR VISIT 58
ADMINISTRATION 58
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 58
[Illustration: Ancient Life at Ocmulgee. Artist’s conception of temple
mound village of about A. D. 1000, seen from the riverside.]
[Illustration: Men at work building a mound.]
From the middle of the 18th century until 1934 the Indian mounds near
the present city of Macon, Ga., had been a subject for speculation to
all who saw them. A ranger journeying with Oglethorpe, founder of the
Georgia Colony, mentions “three Mounts raised by the Indians over three
of their Great Kings who were killed in the Wars.” A more discerning
traveler in the same century could learn that contemporary Indians and
generations of their ancestors knew nothing of the origin of these
mounds, where ghostly singing was said to mark the early morning hours.
As late as 1930, however, even specialists could only add that the large
pyramidal mound showed connections with the cultures of the Mississippi
Valley and that a second mound had served as a burial mound.
In 1933, it was possible, with labor furnished by the Civil Works
Administration, to begin a systematic exploration of the Ocmulgee mounds
and adjoining sites. This work continued until 1941, most of it being
performed by the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian
Conservation Corps. In 1933, also, the citizens of Macon purchased the
land and gave it to the Nation. Ocmulgee National Monument was
authorized by Congress in June 1934 and established by Presidential
proclamation in December 1936.
Eight years’ work, involving the removal of untold tons of earth and the
recovery of hundreds of thousands of artifacts, has established the
archeological significance of Ocmulgee. It has demonstrated the
existence here in one small area of material remains from almost every
major period of Indian prehistory in the Southeast. Being one of the
first large Indian sites in the South to be scientifically excavated,
Ocmulgee provided many of the important details in our expanding
knowledge of that story.
It is the middle-Georgia chapter of this story we shall tell here. In it
we can follow the Indian almost from the time of his earliest
recognition on this continent to that of his final defeat and later
dispossession by the white man. The period covered may be close to
10,000 years; and while the evidence is often scanty, we can detect in
it the unmistakable signs of steady cultural progress. During that time
the Indian passed from the simple life of the nomadic hunter to the
complex culture of tribes which, enjoying the products of an advanced
agriculture, could devote their surplus energy to the development of
religious or political systems. In the final pages we can study the
effects of the increasing impact of European civilization on the alien
culture of a self-sufficient people.