The Americas Revealed explains why you should urge your senators and representatives to support this bill that creates a +/- 40 mile long conservation corridor along the Ocmulgee River. Yes, the Ocmulgee Megapolis stretched that far along the river.
Succinctly . . . Two major reasons are . . . (1) In 1805, the United States government in the First Treaty of Washington, promised the Muskogee-Creek Confederacy that it would have stewardship over the ancient town sites for all time in a six square mile Creek Reserve. Soon after the ink dried on the treaty, federal and state officials allowed real estate speculators and squatter to take complete possession of the reserve.
(2) Not only was Ocmulgee a multi-ethnic incubator for advanced indigenous cultures, but Ocmulgee and Altamaha River Basins appears to be the locale where crops that now feed the world were adapted to a temperate climate. This is what Creek leaders, living in present-day Georgia, told explorer Richard Brigstock in 1653. Thus, it will be a unit of the National Park System that is relevant to every American citizen, plus everyone else in the world, who eats American corn, sun flower seeds, beans, green beans, pumpkins, strawberries*, sweet potatoes, ** purple plums. Jerusalem artichokes, white potatoes, peppers and squash.
Editorial by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner
*Most commercially-grown strawberries in the world are at least partially descended from the Muskogee Strawberry, which is indigenous to the Georgia Piedmont and Mountains. I have succeeded in domesticating again these plants and they are thriving in my terrace garden without pesticides.
**I have assembled absolute proof that an indigenous Southeastern sweet potato was domesticated by the Creek and Uchee Peoples long before the arrival of European colonists. This idea was first proposed by Dr. Arthur Kelly over 50 years ago, when as a Georgia Tech architecture student, I was preparing ink line graphics for him.
A Promise is a Promise
The general public, plus all Creeks and Seminoles should be aware that in the 1805 Treaty of Washington, DC the Muskogee-Creek Confederacy ceded all lands between the Oconee and Ocmulgee River, with the exception of a six square mile tract on the east side of the Ocmulgee opposite the vicinity of the future city of Macon. This tract was retained under their permanent ownership and included all of the ancient architecture and town sites in Ocmulgee Bottoms.
It was assumed that this reserve would be something like a Creek District of Columbia . . . not only a locale of sacred sites, but also a living community. However, the federal and Georgia governments did not honor their part of the treaty. Soldiers and federal officials at Fort Hawkins, which was within the reserve, allowed real estate speculators and squatters to swarm over the Ocmulgee Reserve in a matter of days.
The involvement of the Creek People in the management of the proposed Ocmulgee National Park is in fact, an implementation of what was the intent of Creek leaders and United States Congress about 220 years ago.
Ocmulgee Bottoms is of international significance
During the five years that most of my professional time was devoted to research and town model-building for the Muscogee-Creek Nation, I was given an interesting question. MCN officials and Oklahoma academicians were frustrated by the available academic research associated with the Ocmulgee and Altamaha Rivers. It was awash with arguments about the names and chronology of potsherds, but never discussed, who actually lived there. Judge Patrick Moore advised me to look at primary Colonial Period documents such as maps and eye-witness accounts.
I found in 18th century book by such authors as John Lawson, James Adair and William Bartram descriptions of a very different climate than we have today in the Lower Southeast. Until the early 1800s, the Georgia Mountains received very heavy snow packs each winter, which melted in the spring and caused the rivers to flood. The Ocmulgee River was essentially a lake with islands in it during the springtime. This made an ideal situation for introduction of plants, originally domesticated in the tropics.
The De Soto Chronicles, Colonial Period maps and the descriptions by archaeologists of the architecture that they unearthed told me that many ethnic groups from tropical regions of the Americas had settled in the Ocmulgee and Altamaha Basins. The town names, visited by Hernando de Soto in 1540 in this region could be easily translated by Itza Maya, Tamulte (Chontal) Maya, Soque/Zoque/Sokee, Paino (eastern Peru), Arawak and Taino dictionaries. The large rectangular houses, near the Great Temple Mound at Ocmulgee, are identical to the houses built by the Soque in Tabasco State, Mexico and in Northeast Georgia.
In addition, the Bullard Landing town site near Warner Robbins contained the oldest known example of “earth lodge” construction. The Creek name for this town was Otasi, which means “Offspring of the Oto People.” The Oto People eventually moved west and in the 1800s were known as one of the Western Plains “Earth Lodge” peoples.
The final answer to Judge Moore’s request did not come until 2013, when I was introduced to l‘Histoire Naturelle et Morale des isles Antilles de l’Amérique, originally published in 1658 by Charles de Rochefort. It contains ten chapters on what is now the State of Georgia, based on the 1653 Richard Brigstock Expedition. The book is still considered in Europe to be the primary reference on the 17th century in the Caribbean Basin and Lower Southeastern United States. It is virtually unknown in North America.
In this book, the Paracusa (High King) of the Kingdom of Apalache (immediate predecessor of the Creek Confederacy) told Richard Brigstock that although their capital was now in the Nacoochee Valley in the mountains, the Apalachete (Creeks) became a distinct in the Ocmulgee Basin. Most of the tribal components came from across the Great Water to the south, then intermarried with the indigenous people. They learned how to grow their traditional crops here then adapted them to dryer land elsewhere in Paran (their name for Georgia). They also learned how to build large towns here and took that concept elsewhere.
As part of my research for the Muscogee-Creek Nation, I explored the Bond Swamp, which will be part of the proposed Ocmulgee National Park. I immediately noticed that it was almost identical to the Aquas Dulces region of Tabasco, where Mesoamericans first domesticated indigenous plants. In both locales cold water from the mountains comes out of the ground to a swampy terrain that has warm, humid air. The cold water streams flow around islands of deep, very fertile, riverine top soil.
The Bond Swamp is also very similar to the Lago Chalco section of the Valley of Mexico, where the Mexica (Aztecs) adapted tropical plants to the much cooler temperatures of their realm. This has to be the place, “where it all began.”
About the Author
Richard Thornton was born in Waycross, GA near the Okefenokee Swamp. He is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University. He was the Architect of the Trail of Tears Memorial at Council Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma and has served on the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program Advisory Council. Well over a thousand building plans and urban plans around the Southeastern United States bear his name. However, nowadays, his professional attention is focused on using state-of-art technology to document the hundreds of mysterious stone ruins and earthen structures underneath the dense forests of northern Georgia. Former National Park Service Director, Roger Kennedy, was subsidizing his research, when Richard encountered the first site, the Track Rock Terrace Complex.
Life is a box of chocolates
Dr. Arthur Kelly, Supervising Archaeologist of the excavation of Ocmulgee Mounds in the 1930s, played a critical role in Richard’s unique professional career. Two years after Richard prepared graphics for him, Kelly’s endorsement was a key factor in Richard receiving the first Barrett Fellowship from Georgia Tech, which enabled him to study on-site all of the major Pre-Columbian archaeological zones in Mexican and many minor ones. The famous archaeologist, Román Piña Chan, was Richard’s Mexican fellowship coordinator. At that time, Piña Chan was Curator of the Museo Nacional de Antropologia de Mexico.
While on this fellowship, Richard toured several Maya cities with David and Linda Schele. It is was the first time for all of them. Linda went on to become of the “key players” in the translation of the Maya writing system.
While studying the Maya city of Palenque, David, Linda and Richard first met National Geographic Society archaeologist, George Stuart. In the 1980s, Richard became friends with George and his wife, Gene . . . also an archaeologist and Maya expert with National Geo. In the 1980s, their son, David, teamed up with Linda Schele in the translation of the Maya writing system.
Drs. Arthur Kelly and Piña Chan were the first two people to mention to Richard about their evidence that Mesoamericans had immigrated to the Southeastern United States. In 2012, scientists at the University of Minnesota found a 100% match between Maya Blue stucco from Palenque and attapulgite, mined in the State of Georgia.
The Americas Revealed 