Part 1

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Fred A. Seaton, _Secretary_

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Conrad L. Wirth, _Director_

_HISTORICAL HANDBOOK NUMBER TWENTY-FOUR_

This publication is one of a series of handbooks describing the historical and archeological areas in the National Park System administered by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior. It is printed by the Government Printing Office and may be purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, Washington 25, D. C. Price 25 cents.

OCMULGEE National Monument · Georgia

_by_ G. D. Pope, Jr.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HISTORICAL HANDBOOK SERIES No. 24 Washington, D. C., 1956

_The National Park System, of which Ocmulgee National Monument is a unit, is dedicated to conserving the scenic, scientific, and historic heritage of the United States for the benefit and enjoyment of its people._

Preface

In presenting this reconstruction, based in a large measure upon interpretations which took their origins from the work conducted at Ocmulgee, the National Park Service would like to acknowledge the debt of archeology to three gentlemen of Macon, Ga. Charles C. Harrold, Walter A. Harris, and Linton M. Solomon were aware of the importance of the large mound and village site close to their community and deeply interested in its thorough study and ultimate preservation. It was through their devoted efforts that the large-scale excavations were undertaken, and the site of this important work preserved as Ocmulgee National Monument.

Contents

_Page_ 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

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.

The American Indian

Every school boy knows that at the time of its discovery North America was the Red Man’s continent. He knows that white people, equipped with the weapons and knowledge of an advanced civilization, took this land by persuasion or by force. For most of us our knowledge of the American Indian begins and ends with the brief interval in time where these two races were involved in a bitter struggle.

Our knowledge is limited because until recently no one really knew the answers to such questions as “Where did the Indian come from?” Many thought that he had been preceded by another race of superior intelligence, the “Mound Builders”; and in general our information about him had rested on a great deal of ingenious speculation with very little actual knowledge to back it up. The people most actively interested in the problem are the archeologists. They have been studying it intensively for about 75 years; and, while their work was at first mostly descriptive, the last 25 years have seen tremendous strides in both the techniques of their research and the soundness of their interpretations. Now we know a good deal about the Indian and have traced his career on this continent back to a time when our own past becomes almost equally dim and shadowy. But this information is still mostly to be found in big books, or in special studies that are hard to obtain; so it may be helpful to outline briefly here what we know today of the origins and early career of this particular branch of the human race.

In the Old World, human history has been traced to its beginnings through fossil remains suggesting a stage of development earlier than man. In the Western Hemisphere, however, no such remains have been found, which indicates that the American Indian must have immigrated here from another continent. In searching for his closest relatives, therefore, scientists are now agreed that certain physical peculiarities show the modern as well as the prehistoric Indian to be most closely linked to the peoples of eastern Asia.

WORKING OUT THE PUZZLE

The archeologist determines the chronology of events by location of materials buried in the earth. Since early material lies below that of more recent times he can learn what happened, when it happened, and why. To fill in the gaps he studies changes in styles of pottery, tools and buildings.

HOW CHRONOLOGY IS DETERMINED

—By Geology: dating through study of rock formations and fossils found with human remains. (Not very accurate)

—By Tree Rings: dating through study of annual rings which indicate climate changes. (Accurate only in dry areas)

—By Carbon Fourteen: dating through checking amounts of radio-active carbon in charcoal, shell and wood remains. (Accurate but difficult)

Most living American Indians share with the east Asians a group of features which are considered to be distinctive of the great Mongoloid division of mankind. These include: straight dark hair, dark eyes, light yellow-brown to red-brown skin, sparse beard and body hair, prominent cheekbones, moderately protruding jaws, rather subdued chin, and large face. Since the question of race determination, however, is one of extreme complexity, it should also be pointed out that while the majority of modern Indians as well as prehistoric skeletal remains in America share enough of these features in common to be regarded as predominantly Mongoloid, they as well as the east Asians themselves, possess other physical traits like stature and head form which vary widely from group to group. Some of these other traits may be explained by the influence of different environments acting over long periods of time, but others point to an admixture of non-Mongoloid features in some of the earliest migrants to these areas. It is just the meaning of this mixture of apparently diverse elements which makes the problem of ultimate origins so difficult; and we shall have to be content for now with the general relationship which seems to have been established. If the earliest wanderers to the Americas were primarily a blend of other racial elements, their influence on the physical type of later American Indians has been largely submerged by the Mongoloid features of the vast majority of later arrivals.

Asia, too, is the closest great land mass to this continent, and from it there are more practicable means of access than from any other area. Even today the Bering Strait could be crossed by rafts, for islands at the middle cut the open water journey into two 25-mile stretches. Eskimos make the trip in their skin boats, or in winter by dog sled over the frozen surface of the strait. In the past, the journey must have been even simpler. During the several worldwide glaciations of the Pleistocene Epoch, a geological period which began more than 600,000 and ended about 10,000 years ago, great masses of ice spread across the surface of the continents in the higher latitudes. Since the growth of these ice sheets was nourished by falling snow, the seas, which supplied the necessary moisture, were reduced in volume as the ice expanded. The maximum drop in sea level has been calculated as between 200 and 400 feet, but the floor of Bering Strait is so shallow that a drop of as little as 120 feet would have been sufficient to create a dry land bridge between the continents. Further lowering must have increased the area and elevation of this passage, but the main effect of this was simply to extend the length of the interval during which the bridge remained open. This may have continued well into the period of milder climate after the time of maximum ice advance.

Another peculiar condition in this region at this time was the presence of considerable areas untouched by glacial ice. These included the foothills and coastal plain along Alaska’s northern coast as well as the great central Yukon Valley. This surprising situation was probably due to the small amount of moisture left in the winds which had passed over the high and cold mountain chains bordering the southern coast and the second great mass of the Brooks Range to the north. Furthermore, the broad Mackenzie Valley, leading south along the eastern slopes of the Rockies, was the area latest to be covered by glacial ice and first to open up with the return of warmer conditions. It may even be that the ice failed to cover this region during the last one or more of the minor advances which together make up the latest, or Wisconsin, glacial period.

Taken all together, therefore, the conditions described provided man with a chilly but relatively dry and passable route from the Asiatic mainland to Alaska and thence to the warmer interior sections of North America. For a considerable period this route must have been flanked with glacial ice lying only a few miles away on one side or both through a total distance of some 2,000 miles. It is one of man’s distinctive qualities, however, that he is able to adapt himself to extremes; and it is probable that the game he lived on was itself acclimated to living close to the edges of the ice sheets. We are less certain about the conditions under which this journey was begun at its Asiatic end; but it seems likely that there, too, ice would have formed in the high mountain masses, but that the valleys and lowland would have remained open as they did farther east.

We are confident in our knowledge of where man came from to the New World and how he was able to make the trip. We are on less certain ground, however, when we try to determine when he arrived. Estimates have varied widely, changing with every increase in our knowledge. From the first enthusiastic attempts to fit the Indian into the Old Stone Age chronology which was just then unfolding for the Old World, the cold reasoning of skeptical scientists brought down the maximum age of human occupation of this hemisphere to something like 3,000 years. Beginning in 1925, however, a series of finds has provided unquestionable evidence that men using very distinctive weapons were living on this continent, largely by hunting the mammoth and a great bison, both now extinct, during the period when the ice was receding for the last time. The typical channeled or fluted spear point of this people has even been found lately along the northern Alaska coast. So, while we still cannot say that this characteristic artifact was brought from Asia rather than being developed here in America, it is at least an interesting coincidence that man hunted large and now extinct game in Alaska in areas where conditions were at times particularly well suited to his immigration.

Other evidence shows that the users of this telltale point were not the first to live in the region of the western plains; at least some of their numbers had been preceded by men whose stone work was almost as unusual and equally easy to identify. Recently developed methods of dating by the use of radioactive carbon-14 show that the span of time when the channeled point users, Folsom man, roamed the Plains included one date of about 8000 B. C. For his predecessors, we feel justified in pushing this date a good 2,000 or 3,000 years further back; and there are even hints taken quite seriously by leading archeologists that man was here many thousands of years before that. We know that the great climatic swings marking the principal stages of the Pleistocene Epoch were actually composed of repeated lesser pulsations. Like a mighty pump, the changing climate worked upon all life within thousands of miles of the shifting ice fronts, driving it southward with icy winds and then sucking it back toward the north as cold and damp were replaced by heat and drought. Man followed the game; and this, rather than any planned migration, probably accounts for the wide spread of his earliest remains.

American Indians, then, are most closely related to the present inhabitants of eastern Asia, where they, too, had their origin. They came to this country as its first human inhabitants some 12,000 to 15,000 years ago at the very least. They did not come all at once, or even in one limited period of time, but probably in a fairly continuous succession of small hunting bands following the game. Their earliest migrations hither were doubtless the indirect result of great fluctuations in climate which marked the coming and going of the ice during the glacial age; and it was the peculiar conditions existing about the present region of Bering Strait that encouraged them to explore the now accessible region to the east. Once they had reached the New World, their hunting travels probably carried them back and forth in both directions so that a knowledge of the seemingly limitless territory beyond became fairly general.

The disappearance of the land bridge must have been very gradual by human standards. Successive generations would have found the journey increasingly difficult, but this would only have led to the adoption of other measures such as waiting for winter ice or the use of rafts or boats to cross the widening stretches of open water. Once arrived, they began to spread out over the country, moving on as the game became scarce to where it was more abundant, looking for new and unpeopled areas whenever they began to catch sight too often of members of other bands hunting the same territory. Not many years would be needed to cover the vast expanse of the two continents. With movements of only 20 or 30 miles each year, it might have happened in as little as a dozen generations; but we can say for sure that man had reached southern Patagonia by about 6000 B. C., possibly far earlier. By then, we may assume, the new homeland had been explored with some thoroughness; and portions of it had already been inhabited for thousands of years. It was by no means filled up; but many of its potentialities were known, and American Indians were well started on their own peculiar course of development.

Man Comes to Georgia

The roving existence led by these _Wandering Hunters_ brought them into the region which is now Georgia at a relatively early date. We do not know by what route they came here, for it is easier to seek out the geographic limitations which restricted the first migrants to the New World to a single point of entry than it is to trace the wanderings of their descendants over some 8,000,000 square miles of North America. Nevertheless, we are beginning to get a few hints.

Fluted point sites have been found in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; and single fluted points have been found in a number of places in Georgia, though possibly more often north than south of Macon. One fluted specimen, however, was actually excavated from the Macon Plateau, a designation adopted for the hilltop terrain of the Ocmulgee excavations. The recovery here of other tools of the same greatly decomposed flint strengthens the likelihood of a true “paleo-Indian” occupation at Ocmulgee. The inclusion among them of many thumbnail scrapers of a type recently shown to be distinctive of eastern fluted point sites is especially significant.

The fluted point, missing the forward one-third of its length, was a fine specimen of the so-called Clovis type of these artifacts, and so typical of thousands of such implements which have been picked up at random in the eastern United States as well as in the West. The Clovis point is like its Folsom cousin in several ways, particularly in having a long channel flake removed from one or both of its faces, possibly as a means of reducing its total thickness, and in the grinding of the edge along the lower sides and across the base to avoid cutting the lashings which bound it to the shaft. Like the smaller Folsom point, too, it is named for a site in the western High Plains, where its position underlying Folsom on some sites and its association with mammoth bones give us definite clues to its age west of the Mississippi.

Unlike Folsom, however, the Clovis fluted point is not limited to the region on the east flank of the Rockies. Instead, it has been found from Alaska to Costa Rica and from Vermont to Florida. Its use, too, seems to have been less specialized. Folsom man was a bison hunter; and the abundant grasses of the Plains probably account for the rather definite limits of his range. The big Clovis points, on the other hand, were certainly used on mammoth; but we do not know that this over-sized quarry was their only target. Possibly the mammoth was more adaptable than the bison and could seek out other areas as the changing climate made its accustomed haunts unlivable; or it may have been the Clovis hunters who were the more flexible and could shift more readily to other kinds of game when the mammoth disappeared from the scene.

The wide geographic range of the point is matched by the variety of shapes which are included in the type, though all have a family resemblance built around the distinctive channel formed on one or both faces. Until it is found in a context permitting direct dating, however, the real problem in the East hinges on the significance of this family resemblance. The question is whether this resemblance is a result of chance, or whether it indicates contact with the makers of the fluted points in the West whose age is now reasonably well established.

Perhaps the only thing we can say definitely about these early nomadic hunters would be that their unusual fluted type of projectile point occurs in the eastern United States and has been found in clearly defined contexts which suggest a greater age than that known for any other recognized types in these areas. This distinctive weapon is thought to be a variety of the western Clovis fluted point, which has been found in the West beneath Folsom, and therefore antedating 8000 B. C.

Their simple living was obtained with the aid of a few tools and weapons of stone and wood. Being constantly on the move, they could erect no very permanent dwellings; and a rough lean-to shelter was doubtless their only protection from the elements. Hunting was the major activity of the men; for, with fish from the streams, the game which they killed made up the chief element of their diet. The women were not idle, however; for in addition to preparing the food and caring for the children, they spent many hours in gathering the nuts, roots, and berries which made such a necessary and welcome supplement to their daily fare. It is doubtful that the bow and arrow, which to us are almost inseparable from our picture of the Indian, had yet been invented; but the thrusting spear and the thrown javelin were very effective at close range. At greater distances the hunter could bring down his game with the dart propelled by a throwing stick. This increased the effective length of his arm and imparted the resulting greater thrust to the butt of the shaft.

Also missing in their equipment were the pottery cooking vessels of the later Indians, which so simplified the preparation of foods by boiling and thus added variety to the menu. Stone boiling, of course, could be accomplished by means of heated rocks dropped into some suitable container, such as a pit in the ground lined with a skin; but the method was tedious and probably less used for that reason.