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170 Williams and Shapiro Animal Depletion The potential exhaustion of animals used for food does not seem to be a major reason for moving a town a distance of only 8 to 16 kilometers. This is true even though the most important of these animals, the deer, has a limited individual home range. Deer also have tremendous reproductive potential. The Indians are known routinely to have gone long distances on deer hunts, undoubtedly farther than 16 kilometers. Other animals were less important sources of meat, and while they were perhaps more prone to localized depletion, it seems unlikely, for example, that a town would have to move for lack of opossum close at hand. Fish are basically a constantly renewable resource at the level of environmental disturbance of which these societies were capable. Short-term decreases in fish populations adjacent to sites may have occurred, particularly if poisoning or fish weirs were used, but this does not appear to have been a likely source of pressure for moving a town. Likewise, shellfish might have been overexploited, but it does not appear likely that these were important as food sources in the Georgia Piedmont until the late prehistoric period anyway (Rudolph 1983). Although it represents the opposite of exhaustion, Heidenreich (197l, 214-15) suggests another possible cause for the movement of Huron villages based upon a single group of animals-rats and mice. Of the Huron, he states: /I After six to ten years of continuous occupation the villages must have accumulated a substantial population of mice. Except for their dogs, the Huron had no way of ridding themselves of these rodents. In some Central American countries rodents and other pests have been cited as causes for land abandonment and there is reason to suppose that the situation in Huronia was no different./I Mississippian towns, with their stored corn and openly discarded food remains, must have had many such pests, not to mention infestations of insects for which the region is famous today. To paraphrase Heidenreich, there is no reason to suppose that the situation in the Southeast was any different from that in Central America. Wild Plant Depletion Wild plants used for food included many kinds of nuts, herbs, Paired Towns 171 greens, and berries. Complete exhaustion of these resources seems unlikely, and even if they were, the lack of these would not seem to have been sufficient reason for moving an entire town. In all this, however, it must be admitted that we presently do not have adequate data to weigh the relative importance of wild plants or their potential for local depletion. Military Conquest This is intended to include within-valley military conquest of one town by another nearby town (approximately 16 kilometers or less). The conquered town might have been abandoned and then later, after a hiatus of unknown length, been reoccupied. Such a situation must have occurred in the Southeast at one time or another when two chiefdom centers were, for whatever historical reasons , this close together. To postulate this as a widespread and recurrent process, however, is less than satisfying. Chiefly Succession Another possible explanation for the pattern involves the concept of chiefly succession. Historical accounts make it clear that chiefly power within a region did not always reside at the same town. There is much evidence to this effect in the De Soto narratives, even from the Oconee Valley. As Garcilaso de la Vega relates, when De Soto's army was in central Georgia at the town of the powerful chief Cofa (Ocute in the other accounts), the expedition left "for a province called Cofaqui which belonged to the Cacique Cofa's elder brother, a man who was richer and more powerful than his kinsman" (Varner and Varner 1962, 273). The original Spanish words make it clear that Cofaqui was actually a sibling of the chief of Cofa (Ocute). We learn from the account of Ranjel that" ... chief Cofaqui was an old man, with a full beard, and his nephew ruled for him ... " (Bourne 1904, 91). While on the road from Cofa (Ocute) to Cofaqui, Cofa "commanded an Indian nobleman to go in advance and inform his brother Cofaqui that the Spaniards were coming to his land and that since they deserved favorable treatment, he begged his brother to accept them peacefully and serve them as he himself had done" (Varner and Varner 1962, 274). De Soto and his army 172 Williams and Shapiro stayed a few days at Cofaqui before heading east...

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