Fried Chicken was invented by the Creek Indians of Georgia!

It is another example of how the refusal of Southeastern anthropologists and archaeologists to translate Indigenous words and place names has resulted in an inaccurate portrayal of America’s Pre-Columbian past.

It is generally accepted now that the Creeks developed batter-fried fish and turkey by dipping these meats into hushpuppy corn batter, then deep-fat frying them in hickory nut oil, which contains no cholesterol .

However, anthropological texts in the United States unanimously state that there were no chickens in the Americas until they were transported to the New World by 16th century Europeans.

Nope! Genetics and linguistics tell us a different history.

NATIONAL NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH

The Many Peoples of the South Atlantic Coast series

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

Indigenous domesticated poultry of the Americas, other than turkeys

In 2015, the Americas Revealed astounded readers with the results of DNA testing the chickens traditionally raised by the indigenous peoples of the Andes Mountain region and Amazon Basin. North American and European academicians insisted that all of the chickens in South America were brought over by the Spanish. A few “fringe” archaeologists, who were shunned by their peers, theorized that these chickens were introduced by Polynesian explorers.

The first crack in the egg occurred when Agricultural Scientists at the University of Georgia Poultry Research Center discovered that the modern white commercial chicken grown at an industrial scale in North America and Europe today, was genetically an indigenous American chicken bred to the Pre-Columbian Leghorn chickens of Italy. It was much more American than Italian.

The other modern breeds of chicken are also the result of other scrawny medieval European breeds crossing with varying percentages with the much larger chickens in the Americas. Improved British breeds would have originated in Georgia or southern South Carolina.

None of the 20th century Eurocentric orthodoxy jived with eyewitness accounts of early European explorers . . . which archaeologists also like to ignore. Both French and Spanish 16th century explorers reported seeing chickens in what is now Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Georgia and southern South Carolina. Richard Brigstock (1653) reported seeing chickens being raised in Northeast Georgia, which bills itself as the “Poultry Capital of the World.”

Tired of being ignored by North American academicians Peruvian scientists conducted comprehensive DNA testing of their three indigenous breeds of chickens along with chickens from several parts of Polynesia and India, plus surviving flocks of Pre-Columbian chicken breeds in Europe. It was found that the South American chickens were most closely related to the Wild Chicken of India. They were not closely related to Polynesian chickens or Medieval European chickens. Furthermore, the Indigenous Chickens of the Andean region were larger, plus laid more eggs than Medieval European breeds.

Indigenous American chickens lay brown and blue eggs – most breeds brown. European Leghorn chickens lay white eggs. Selective breeding in the 19th and 20th centuries eliminated all egg colors, but white, in commercial poultry operations, but some breeds in the United States still lay brown or blue eggs.

A closer look at Georgia

The settlers of Savannah observed that the local Uchee Indians had domesticated indigenous Heathcocks (Marsh Hens) into a bird as large as most British chickens, but with larger breast meat. These birds were either smoked like venison or battered then deep-fat fried . . . Fried Heathcock.

When smallpox and malaria epidemics either killed or drove away most of the local Uchee, the domesticated Heathcocks became feral. Thus, today the Georgia Heathcock is much larger than relatives farther north on the Atlantic Coast.

In the research for my current book under construction, I was astonished to find on a 16th century map a tribe named the Totolose or Tutolosi. It is the Panoan (Peru) word for their indigenous chicken. The Southern Arawak word for this indigenous chicken is Totolo or Tutolo. My family carries substantial Panoan DNA markers.

This tribe’s principal town was in the vicinity of present-day Baxley, GA. They specialized in the raising and selling of chickens! They later moved west to the Chattahoochee River and joined the Creek Confederacy.

The Georgia Creek, Miccosukee and Itsate Creek word for chicken is totolose. The Muskogee Creek (Oklahoma) word for chicken is tolose. The modern commercial chicken is the result of European chickens brought to the Southeast by colonists, then interbreeding with the much larger Native American chickens.

Now you know!