 Antiquity of Man
Ocmulgee National Monument in Georgia features physical evidence of the distinct and rich cultures that existed there over a 12,000-year period.
BY RYAN DOUGHERTY
When a city declines and a culture fades, oral history and written record is often the essential evidence with which historians learn about ancient people.
With no such history interpreted at Ocmulgee National Monument, however, artifacts unearthed by archaeologists—
ranging from pottery to hunting tools to ceremonial items—are key for teaching visitors about the people that occupied the land long ago, ancestors of the thriving Creek Nations.
"This site is unique in that we found artifacts for every single cultural face of the Southeast—early, middle, and late," said Superintendent Jim David, "an entire 12,000-year continuum."
That continuum stretches from Ice-Age hunters to Creek Indians, but one period of the site's history stands out. Between 900 and 1200, a farming people known as the Mississippians occupied the site. Their distinctive, rich culture took shape around the year 750 in the Mississippi Valley and spread through the central and eastern United States. Many archaeologists believe the Mississippians displaced the native Woodland Indians on the Macon Plateau at Ocmulgee.
The Mississippians hunted, fished, and grew crops such as beans, squash, pumpkins, corn, and tobacco. They built what the Park Service calls "a compact town of thatched huts on the bluff overlooking the river," where more than 2,000 people lived. They built at least eight earth mounds for public ceremonies important to their politics and religion, and as burial places for the elite. They occasionally added layers of earth to the mounds, perhaps when new leaders arose.
The plaza side of Great Temple Mound, likely a major hub of the society, rises 50 feet above the plateau. Leaders probably lived atop the mound and held ceremonies there.
Mississippian culture at Ocmulgee also centered on the earth lodge, several of which they built. The best-preserved one, likely a formal council house, has been reconstructed over the original clay floor, with a large fire pit in the center.
Although the mounds and lodges shed significant light on Mississippian culture, mysteries remain. Why did the town decline, and what happened to its inhabitants?
As the Mississippian ceremonial center faded, a new Lamar culture rose in the surrounding areas, blending Mississippian and Woodland elements. In 1540, Hernando de Soto encountered Lamar people on the first European expedition into the inner Southeast, which signaled disaster for the culture.
Disease killed many, and the natives were soon drawn into Spanish, English, and French politics and trade. The English forged a trading post at Ocmulgee around 1690 and Muscogee (Creek) people, descendants of earlier cultures at the site, settled there. During the Yamassee War in 1715, the English burned the town, and the Creeks moved closer to the Spanish. The Creeks refused to part with the Ocmulgee Old Fields until they ceded their last remaining lands before being forcibly removed on the Trail of Tears. They carried their history to Oklahoma, honoring their ancestors by choosing Okmulgee as the name of the capital of Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
In 1999, the Old Fields and adjacent lands became the first traditional cultural property east of the Mississippi. The tribal nation and park supporters continue to fight for preservation of the site by opposing a looming threat: a proposal for a highway that would run through the Ocmulgee Old Fields.
Key responded to that notion modestly: "Let the praise, then, if any be due, be given, not to me, who only did what I could not help doing, but to the inspirers of the song!"
Ryan Dougherty is news editor.
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