REMEMBERING ALTAMAHA   

Altamaha - Carved wood mask depicts a warrior realizing the fate of the Peoples. His eyes are closing in the big sleep. A flood of tears emits to a final emission. He has seen and knows the emotions of time. Corn reflects the final giving of this life that it helped sustain. The snake 'citto,' a brother creature on this earth, shows the changing world of his life had unforeseen dangers. Teeth are clinched in death approaching.                    

                  Bobby Johns Bearheart -  October 1992

This historical account and a model of Altamaha were lovingly created for Perdido Bay Tribe in 2006 by architect and student of Creek culture and history, Richard L.Thornton, as a way for us to better imagine how life might have been.

The year is 1585.  At least 90% of the indigenous population of what is now the State of Georgia have died from Spanish diseases and weapons. Spanish colonies have been planted along the coast line - the first being on Sapelo Island, Georgia near the mouth of the Altamaha River.  Spanish soldiers and friars are plying up and down the Altamaha looking for gold and mikos willing to allow missions.  The Altamaha River is the boundary between the Arawak speaking Timucua to the south side and the Hitchiti speaking Tama, Wahali and Okute to the north.  (Hitchiti is a Muskogean dialect).   There is chaos everywhere in the Southeast where powerful nations have collapsed due to the Spanish holocaust.

Survivors of the Holocaust in small villages find that there are too few able bodied adults to maintain their communities,  so the villages are abandoned and the refugees flock to the major mother towns,  where there are many empty houses and building lots due to repeated waves of plagues.  These refugees speak similar dialects and maintain similar traditions,  but they are not exactly the same. There are differences in beliefs, ceremonies and architecture, which are yet to blend.  The mother towns took on the character of chaotic refugee camps.  The ancient tradition of careful town planning and spacious plazas and avenues gave way to necessity. Too many elders and leaders had died to continue a society run by an elite as had existed before.

Since the populations of the mother towns were still not what they were before the Spanish, there is no need for the large plazas, so the construction of new houses encroached on what was once public space.  The most important building became the tcokofa - or public rotunda.  The heterogeneous populations found that they had to meet together frequently to reach a consensus on issues.  There was no longer any Miko Hese' or Great Sun to make decisions for them.

Standing at the entrance to the Hitchiti and Kusa speaking provinces north of the forks of the Altamaha River was Altamaha - which means "Gateway to Tama" in Hitchiti.  The people living within the palisades of Altamaha refused to allow Spanish missionaries to stay there and warned Spanish explorers that they would be killed if they ventured any further north.  Altamaha stayed a bastion of Native American sovereignty until the late 1700s.  By then most of the indigenous people of eastern Georgia had either died of European diseases, been carried off into slavery by English or Spanish slave-raiders, or dispersed into the countryside to live on independent farmsteads like their European neighbors. 

 Once the Muskogean peoples had adjusted to the socio-economic changes brought by European invaders, they went back to building planned towns with large avenues, large square lots for households and spacious plazas. The wood palisades proved to be of little defense against heavy firearms and so the towns spread out.  No longer did they build mounds or even maintain the mounds of the old towns.  The egalitarian society represented by the tcokofa and the Sacred Square proved to be the most resilient one in those times of rapid change.

It is a Time of Confusion and Sadness
This was Altamaha, an example of many ancient towns in the Southeast

This model of Altamaha currently resides in Perdido Bay Tribe's Mobile Museum where it has sparked the imaginations of thousands of children and adults.

We must never forget