Examples of Proto-Creek Art

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

These images provide an overview of styles of art found in Pre-Columbian towns that were definitely ancestral to the Creek Indians. More accurate ethnic names would be Apalache or Apalachete, which is what the Creeks called themselves until the mid-18th century. The term, “Muskogee” did not appear until Malachi became High King in the early 1750s.

The Florida Apalachee never called themselves by that name until the Spanish began incorrectly telling them that was their name. The Florida Apalachee were actually Southern Arawaks from Peru. A Peruvian Arawak dictionary will translate most of the Florida Apalachee town and village names.

The indigenous cultures of northwestern Alabama were not ancestral to the Creek Indians. The site plan of Moundville seems to be a supersized version of early proto-Choctaw towns in Mississippi. Dr. Román Piña Chán of the Institutio Nacional de Antropologia E Historia de Mexico identified many artifacts unearthed at Moundville, which were identical or very similar to artifacts unearthed in Tula, the capital of the Toltecs. He hypothesized that after the ransacking of Tula by Chichimec barbarians around 1150 AD, a small band of Toltec priests and commoners established themselves on the Black Warrior River in NW Alabama. A large religious and education complex grew up around their settlement, which we now call Moundville.

Sculpture

Copper artifacts from Etowah Mounds

Artifacts from the Nacoochee Mound