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The environmental context of the Maskókalkî is relevant to understanding the people and their heritage. Creek Country, as Robbie Ethridge (2003) has called it, was a dynamic environment that responded to the native and foreign settlers . The environment shaped the decisions of the people and the people shaped the environment. Recent archaeological, geological, and ethnohistoric research has begun to allow us to characterize that environment and how it changed over time in response to the Southeastern Indians. In her book on Creek Country , Ethridge (2003:32–53) reviewed the landscape of all of the Maskókalkî as described by Benjamin Hawkins in the late eighteenth century. The Maskókalkî lived along the Lower Chattahoochee and central Flint River watersheds (Figure 1.1). The Chattahoochee was named after a town of the same name. According to Benjamin Hawkins, it means marked or ®owered stones (Foster 2003a:52s). Rivers were frequently named for a prominent physiographic feature or town. The Chattahoochee River was called the “Rio del Spiritu Santo”and the “Apalachicola River”by the Spanish, who viewed it from the south and were more familiar with the Apalachicola people who were settled to the south (Cumming and De Vorsey 1998:plate 24; Hann and McEwan 1998:33). In the early eighteenth century, it was also referred to as the “River Cusitie” on an English map. In this case the river is named after the Maskókî town of Cussetuh (Utley and Hemperly 1975:336). John Goff’s article on the town of Chattahoochee contains other names (Utley and Hemperly 1975:338). Those watersheds formed the settlement patterns and biophysical environment of the people who lived there. The headwaters of the Chattahoochee River start in the mountains of what is now Georgia. They ®ow almost due southward and join with the Flint River to make the Apalachicola River and empty into the Gulf of Mexico. The Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers form a north-to-south orientation of the towns. The headwaters of the Flint River 2 Environmental Context Thomas Foster and Mary Theresa Bonhage-Freund start in the Piedmont of Georgia and ®ow south and southwest. These watersheds formed the habitat of the Lower Creek Indians as usually de¤ned. The habitat forms the subject of this book, but the Maskókalkî lived far beyond these watersheds. ThecentralChattahoocheeRiverwas120yardswidein1796(Foster 2003a:53s). It ®owed out of the mountains, over the Piedmont, over the fall line, and down through the Coastal Plain. The Piedmont is a gently rolling hillside with hardwoods and pines. It ends at the fall line hills, which begin the Coastal Plain (Figure 1.1). These hills are a transition zone in several ways: between the hilly topography of the Piedmont and the relatively ®at Coastal Plain region; between elevations; and between plant and animal communities. It is not a coincidence that the majority of the Maskókalkî towns along the Chattahoochee River were situated along this ecotone. In 1796, Benjamin Hawkins described the falls, called the Cowetuh Falls because the town of Cowetuh was nearby: [T]hese are over a rough, coarse rock, forming some islands of rock, which force the water into two narrow channels, in time of low water. . . . ¤sh may ascend in this channel, but it is too swift and strong for boats; here are two ¤sheries; one on the right belongs to this town [Cowetuh]; that on the left, to the Cussetuhs; they are at the termination of the falls; and the ¤sh are taken with scoop nets; the ¤sh taken here are the hickory shad, rock, trout, perch, cat ¤sh, and suckers. . . . The land on the right [western ] bank of the river at the falls, is a poor pine barren, to the water’s edge the pines are small; the falls continue three or four miles nearly of the same width, about one hundred and twenty yards; the river then expands to thrice that width, the bottom being gravelly, shoal and rocky. (Foster 2003a:53s) In this quote, Hawkins relates many features of the fall line ecotone that are important to the people who lived there and still live there. Plant and animal resources abound at this con®uence. Travel up the river was limited by the falls. In the early 1800s, the U.S. government studied and surveyed these falls as a place to put an armory, but they decided that travel up the Chattahoochee was too prohibitive (Willoughby 1999:67). The land about the Cowetuh Falls was described by Hawkins as a...

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