Atlanta creates statue of a Savannah Native leader with an Itza Maya name!

The statue is to sit atop a 70 feet (21.3 m) pedestal in the Honorable Rodney Cook Sr. Peace Park, near its downtown.

To be completely accurate, Tamachichi should have been wearing a turban and something like a Roman legionnaire’s kilt in the summer or a cloth tunic in the winter . . . but at a distance, no one will notice.

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

Thirteen years ago, rightwing extremists were frantically passing out flyers to Southern Baptist congregations and mega-churches in North Georgia, telling them that if they allowed the Mayas to have immigrated to Georgia over a thousand years ago, they soon would be overrun by millions of illegal Maya immigrants.

This was part of the “Maya Myth-Busting in the Mountains” program, sponsored and funded by the Chattahoochee National Forest office in Gainesville, GA. They were politically supported, for unknown reasons, by Cherokee tribes in North Carolina and Oklahoma . . . Yes, really! That sizable expenditure of taxpayers’ money by the U. S. Forest Service was obviously in vain and very much on the stupid side.

Did we mention that “Chattahoochee” is derived from the Itza Maya words, “Cha’ta Hawche” which mean “Carved Stone (a Maya stela) – Shallow River?”

Now, Atlanta proudly displays the bronze statue on a shorter, temporary pedestal at Pershing Park on Peachtree Street, but it will soon be moved to its permanent location. It is an Indigenous leader of Savannah almost 300 years ago, with an Maya name. Tamachichi means “Trade Dog” in English. That was an Itza term for a “itinerate trader.”

Better known to locals by his Anglicized name of Tomochichi, this former king of the Creek towns in the vicinity of present-day Macon, GA was banished by the Creek Confederacy in 1717. He then moved to Palachikora on the Savannah River, about 25 miles north of present-day Savannah. I definitely had Creek ancestors living there at the time.

In 1732, Tamachichi moved his followers to Yamacraw Bluff, after learning that the British planned to found a new colony there. James Edward Oglethorpe arrived five months later and paid Tamachichi for the land, which Savannah sits on.

Although Tamachichi was somewhat of a con artist, there was genuine affection between him and General Oglethorpe. Relations between the Creeks and the new British settlers were excellent during the Colonial Period. Leaders of both peoples encouraged extensive intermarriage. I am a product of that policy.

Like Tamachichi, all of my Native American DNA, derived from both my parents, is from southern Mexico. That is typical of the many Creek descendants in Georgia, who nominally in the past might have been labeled of European or African ancestry. Coretta Scott King had substantial Creek ancestry.

We now know, from examining U. S. Census records, that at least 22,000 Creeks never left Georgia to live in Alabama or Oklahoma. They got along just fine with their neighbors of other races. Their genes have now spread throughout the state’s population. So, perhaps you could say that this statue is long overdue and should stand, tall and proud.