The Archaeology of Ocmulgee Old Fields, Macon, Georgia

6. Identification of the Creek Town

Plate XXV . Walnut Roughened bowl. Plate XXVI. Walnut Roughened bowl (restored). Plate XXVII. Historic vessel of unknown type. Plate XXVIII. Inverted bowl from house site III. Plate XXIX. Ocmulgee Fields Incised scrolls. Plate XXX. Ocmulgee Fields Incised scrolls. Plate XXXI. Ocmulgee Fields Incised linked lines. Plate XXXII. Ocmulgee Fields Incised nested geometric ¤gures. Plate XXXIII. Figure 1, Walnut Roughened designs. Figure 2, miscellaneous designs. PART TWO Archaeological and Historical Implications [224]There are two lines of evidence bearing on the identi¤cation of the speci¤c Lower Creek town that occupied the Macon site during the tenure of the Lower Creeks on the Ocmulgee River. The ¤rst of these indicates that the town was Hitchiti Town, the head (and probably mother) town of a number of Hitchiti-speaking settlements. In later years, at least, this group included Hitchiti, Sawokli, Ocmulgee, Oconee, Apalachicola, and perhaps Chiaha (Swanton 1922:172).The other line of evidence identi¤es the site at Macon as Ocmulgee Town, one of this group of Hitchiti-speaking peoples, but quite distinct as a town from the separate town of Hitchiti. Identi¤cation of the town as Hitchiti was ¤rst made by Swanton (1922: 176) and is usually accepted by most of those who have occasion to mention the site at all. A number of factors led Swanton to make this identi¤cation : (1) the Mitchell map of 1755 identi¤es the site as Hitchiti Old Fields, the presumed former site of the Hitchiti town; (2) Hitchiti, which¤rst appeared under this spelling after the 1690 period, was considered by him to be de¤nitely recorded as one of the Ochese [225]Creek settlements —in other words, it was in the right place at the right time; (3) Swanton had absolutely no evidence of the existence of a town called Ocmulgee before the Yamassee War in 1715 and the retreat to the Chattahoochee River; (4) native tradition, as recorded by Gatschet, supported these facts by asserting that the Hitchiti were the “¤rst to settle at the site of Okmulgi town” (Gatschet 1884: 78), a statement that Swanton understood to mean that Hitchiti Town itself was ¤rst located at the conspicuous mound group at Macon. The most important of this evidence, and the part upon which most of Swanton’s other evidence depends, is that obtained from the Mitchell map of 1755, “A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America” (Cummings 1958: Pl. 59; Swanton 1922: Pl. 6). This map locates the Lower Creeks in their post-1715 sites on the Chattahoochee River but cites their  Identi¤cation of the Creek Town former presence on the Ocmulgee and Oconee Rivers:“on these Rivers the lower Creek Indians formerly dwelt, before the war with Carolina in 1715, when they moved to Chattahoochee River.”The trading path from Augusta crosses the Ocmulgee River at a point labeled on the map as “Echete Old Town” and the Oconee River at “Ocone Old Town,” thus anchoring the identi¤cation to the well traced and familiar trade path.“Echete,”of course, is simply another spelling of “Hitchiti” and certainly points to the juncture of the Ocmulgee River with the trade path as the former site of the Lower Creek town of Hitchiti. [226]The Mitchell map might be objected to on the basis of its late date,some forty years after the last residence of the Lower Creeks on the Ocmulgee River, but it was itself based upon several other earlier maps and used the Barnwell map of about 1722 as its chief source for the Carolina back country. The Barnwell map has a very respectable reputation for accuracy since it was based on the ¤ndings of John Barnwell, touted by contemporary observers as one of the most well informed persons on conditions, and presumably also locations, in the interior (Cummings 1958: 47). It is unfortunate that extant copies of the Barnwell map (Cummings 1958: Pl. 48) are too indistinct to provide any additional information and too blurred to even second the Mitchell map’s identi¤cation of the Macon site as old Hitchiti Town. The second line of evidence,which points to the identi¤cation of the site as Ocmulgee Town, was supported...