In preparation for the upcoming release of the next book in my Creek Country Saga, Warring Spirits, I decided to take a tour of ancient Creek Country and hope you'll jump on the tram. There's plenty of room on the bench, right here, next to me. :-)
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Suggested Outing: Twenty minutes past my house going north on I75 is the Ocmulgee National Park, an area set aside to remember the Mississippian people and preserve one of the remnants of their culture—the Ocmulgee Mounds. If you live near the Macon, Georgia area, you should visit the Ocmulgee mounds to get a thorough sense of who these people were and how they impacted the land around them. Similar mounds can be found all over the Southeast and even up into the Great Lakes region. Have a look at this map to see if you live near one of the sites.
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If there’s any place my heart calls home, it’s the American Southeast. Life doesn’t get much better than sweet tea, country music, and southern hospitality. I was born on the other side of the world, but I’ll happily die right here in Georgia.
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| Artists impression of ceremony inside a Mississippian mound |
It’s an idyllic place to live, but most of who live in the South are completely unaware of the cultures that ruled this land before us. As recently as 180 years ago, the Muskogee (Creek) Indians called "home" the land my house sits on. This was Creek Country.
Creek Country was bordered by the Cherokee to the north, the Choctaw to the west, and the Seminole to the south. For the most part, they got along relatively well, and because of their complex political and trade systems, they were considered by whites to be "civilized."
Until I began the research for my Creek Country Saga, I thought that the Five Civilized Tribes (Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw) had ruled the Southeast since the beginning of time, but, in the grand scheme of things, these tribes are relatively new—not much older than America herself. So where did they come from and who was here before them?
Creek Country once belonged to a vast people group called the Mississippians.
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| Mound Builder from museum in Ocmulgee NP |
There isn’t much evidence of them left, but from about 1200AD to 1700AD the Mississippians dominated this area. (Before them? The people of Woodland Period, but we won’t go there, today.) They were quite different from the more recognizable Natives of the Historic Period (1700-Removal). They built mounds (for temples, burials, dwellings), had a chiefdom society (complete with an emperor they carried around high on a litter), and set in place social inequality. I imagine them to be a less dramatic/romanticized version of the Mayans as portrayed in the movie Apocalypto. Could be I’m completely wrong on that, but it’s the way I picture them with their mounds, religious ceremonies, and maize based-agriculture.
When DeSoto toured the area in the 1540s, it was the Mississippians he encountered. And it was this contact that forever changed them. Next up in the Explore Creek Country series--Contact with the New World.
Want to learn more about the Mississippians?
Suggested Outing: Twenty minutes past my house going north on I75 is the Ocmulgee National Park, an area set aside to remember the Mississippian people and preserve one of the remnants of their culture—the Ocmulgee Mounds. If you live near the Macon, Georgia area, you should visit the Ocmulgee mounds to get a thorough sense of who these people were and how they impacted the land around them. Similar mounds can be found all over the Southeast and even up into the Great Lakes region. Have a look at this map to see if you live near one of the sites. 
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