Appearance of Creek Indians

by Denise Weimer

Creek Chief Ledagie wearing popular silver gorgot

While researching for the third novel in my Restoration trilogy, Witch: 1790, which will have a modern main story and a Colonial-period back story uncovered during the restoration of a log cabin, learning more about the Creek Indians who occupied my area of Middle Georgia fascinated me. Today’s article focuses on the physical appearance of these native peoples as described first hand by naturalist William Bartram and Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins.

 

Bartram was present at the 1773 Augusta, Georgia, land cessation meeting where Creek and Cherokee Indians ceded land to white settlers in repayment of debt. He also followed the surveying party through the wilderness. On this journey he described the Creek Indians as armed with guns in their left hand and tomahawks in their right, loud speakers, evening pipe smokers, and late sleepers. He later visited many of their villages, where he found them to welcome visitors and the men to be tender toward their women and children. Bartram said the Creek men were nearly as tall as the Cherokee, with fine features and aquiline noses. However, the women, with their large, high-arched brows, were sometimes little more than half the size of the men. The chests and muscular arms of the ancient chiefs (micos) were blue with puncture-based, lead or indigo paintings depicting the sun, moon and planets on the chest with scrolling or belts around the trunk, arms, thighs and legs. Sometimes sections were divided up for artwork of animals, landscapes and battle scenes. Settlers and soldiers under attack by Creek braves reported that the braves painted their faces half-and-half in black and red war paint.

 

In 1795, Benjamin Hawkins arrived in Crawford County, Central Georgia, as U.S. Indian Agent to the Creek Nation. His diaries provide even more details of how these people looked. He described the clothing of Cherokee women as possibly consisting of stillapica (moccasins) without stockings, a hoonau (short petticoat), iocoofcuttau (shift), and hutscotalcau (ear bobs).  Women did not cut their hair and wore it braided and bound, either clubbed with tucullowau (red binding) or, on ceremonial days, with silver broaches or silk ribbons hanging down to the ground. Men shaved their entire head or else left portions with strips to grow in tails which could be braided and decorated with feathers, beads, pendant silver quills, and leather. This strip was often a narrow crest beginning at the crown of the head and widening to the back. Copper, shells, gems and teeth were signs of leadership. For long trips, especially during the winter, they stuffed their tall deerskin moccasins, a single deerskin wrapped with throngs, with hair or dry leaves. For treaties and talks with white men, the Creek Indians were known to mix native traditional and European clothing. They loved military jackets with brass buttons and would pair them with blousy shirts and Indian leggings. For common activities on warm weather days, the men might wear only a loincloth.

 

Hawkins expanded on the face painting rituals by stating that chiefs would circle both eyes in red with two-inch bars of alternating blue and yellow. Deer hunters dabbed red ocher from the red root plant on their cheeks. No doubt the early white settlers greatly preferred that type of red to the half-red, half-black war paint, which many of them did indeed encounter during the hair-raising Oconee Wars, which I’ll address in my next post.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colonial Period Creek Indian Towns

 

The research for what will be the final novel of my Restoration Chronicles Trilogy, Witch: 1790 has included learning about the Creek Indians. My Georgia Gold Series featured some late Cherokee history, but until I moved out of the foothills to the Georgia Piedmont, I knew little about that area of the state's early residents. In a series of articles I'm sharing my findings; today's will relate something of the structure of a Creek Indian town during the Colonial period.


Naturalist William Bartram was an observer at the land cessation meeting that occurred in 1773 in Augusta between the white colonists and the Creek and Cherokee Indians. His journal of his travels from the coast to middle Georgia provide much of the information about the Creek Indians during that period. He described 60 towns, 30 of which spoke the Muscogulge tongue and could converse with Natchez, Chickasaws and Choctaws with the aid of white interpreters. The five clans were Panther, Bear, Wind, Bird and Snake.


In each town, white clay, paste or chalk was used to draw plants, flowers, trees on the red clay houses, especially those creating the Public Square. On white walls, colored chalks were used. Each family would have a round winter or a rectangular summer house. In 1790, Caleb Swan described these as being between 12 and 20 feet long and 10 to 15 feet wide constructed with poles stuck in the ground, walls lathed with canes and filled with clay, roofs pitched from a ridge pole and covered with large tufts of bark and four to five layers of shingles. The huts had one door and a chimney and would last only a couple of years.

A - Rotunda, B - Square, C - Chunky Yard

The town council was held every forenoon in the Public Square, presided over by the Mico, with the war chief on his left and the second head-man on the right. The Mico or king received great respect at the Great Rotunda or winter council-house, but outside important meetings, he dressed and was treated the same as the others, hunting and working the fields with his family. He was, however, entitled to the first fruits of harvest and use of the national granary.  Should a king or Mico also be war chief or high priest (in charge of guarding the eternal fire in the Great Rotunda) he would indeed have great power.

The game of "Tchung-kee" or Chunky

Between the public square and rotunda of each town was the chunky-yard, chunky being a game which involved rolling a small disk and shooting arrows or spears at the spot it would land. The yard itself was a large, sunken ground with what was known as the chunky-pole, four square pine pillars rising to an obtuse point. At the top the Indians could fasten an object to shoot at with bows and arrows and rifles. Near each corner of the lower and further end of yard was a lesser, 12-foot high pole, but a more fearful sight than the chunky pole, as it was decorated with the scalps of enemies and crowned by a grinning enemy skull.  Here in the days before Bartram’s arrival captives could have been forced to run the gauntlet or tortured by fire to their deaths. Thankfully for him, that practice had been abandoned by then, and Bartram was full of praise for the hospitality of his hosts.

 

 

Bartram indicated some Lower Creek towns may not have been composed of rotunda, square and chunky yard, but by this many suppose he meant the towns of the Hitchiti-speaking Creeks.

 

Each family in town had a lot bounded by poles and including a garden spot where corn, rice, squash, etc. were raised. A portion of everything went to the aforementioned public granary, which was for the use of guests of the tribe or families which fell on hard times. Bartram observed that the Creek were very given to sharing and loaning. A man could clear and settle as much land as desired within his tribe. Occasionally, a Creek Indian would own an independent plantation and would live like princes in their villas, wealthy from trade with whites.

Denise Weimer is one of our newest CQ contributors. Her website is www.deniseweimerbooks.webs.com

Natural Colonial Piedmont Georgia

Recreating the setting of the Colonial Georgia Piedmont (essentially Middle Georgia) during the late 1700s means one must imagine a wilderness little spoiled by settlement. Many pioneers of this region were Scots-Irish generally unwelcome in the staid British communities of New England who had followed the Great Wagon Road south as lands increasingly opened up. Government officials were happy for these tough and fiery immigrants to provide a barrier to the Indian nations. By 1765, the land west of Augusta, Georgia began to look attractive. In 1773, naturalist William Bartram described Augusta as being located on a rich and fertile plain on the Savannah River, with buildings near the banks extending nearly two miles. In this location Georgia Governor Wright and Indian Superintendent John Stuart conducted a treaty with Creek and Cherokee Indians that opened 1.5 million acres east of the Oconee River to British Settlement due to Indian debt to white traders. The Upper Creek Trading Path ran due west of Augusta to Greensboro (est. 1786). From Augusta’s southwest corner, the Lower Creek Path traced the fall line west across the lower Oconee River to a trading post which would later become Milledgeville, then to Macon.

Bartram himself describes taking the old Cherokee Trading Path through forests and cane swamps to the Quaker settlement at Wrightsborough. Here residents raised wheat, barley, flax, oats, corn, indigo, cattle, sheep, apples, pears, peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries and raspberries. Proceeding in the direction of present-day Oglethorpe County outside Athens (where my next series will be set), he noted many flora and fauna off of which Native Americans lived. The leaves of the plantain plant could be boiled and its seed pods eaten like spinach. Some natives called it “white man’s foot” for its profusion. It was also good for bee strings or brown recluse bites, if the patient would both chew its leaves and place them on the sting. Walnut, chestnut and hickory trees were in abundance, often planted in groves surrounding abandoned settlements. Grape and pea vines grew waist high. Creek hunters would carry the ripe yellow fruit of the “Physic-nut” or Indian Olive with them to supposedly lure deer. Bartram also wrote that the Creeks, who called themselves Muscoges, created an infusion of leaves and the tops of the cassine (“the beloved tree”) to make their black drink, a diuretic. They prevented worms by including a lixivium prepared from the ashes of bean stalks and vegetables in all their corn foods. Ginseng and white or “belly ache” root was used for the stomach and intestines by either chewing the root and swallowing the juice or smoking it in tobacco form. Grape roots dug while fresh, chopped and mashed, then drained and the thick part mixed with water, honey and sugar made a fine jelly.

Settlers learned from the Indians and discovered the practical purposes of other native herbs and plants. Cleavers, or “bedstraw,” could be used to stuff mattresses until the hay came in. Made into a tea it was helpful to the kidney, bladder, gout and with water retention problems. Mullein could grow taller than a person and had multiple purposes: the Cherokee used its fluffy leaf for toilet paper, its bottom leaves made good cigars for respiratory problems, and its yellow flowers on top when mixed with olive oil and placed in the ear could cure infection. Kidney stones were often treated by hydrangea root tea or Queen of the Meadow/Joe Pye Weed/”gravel root.” Elderberries, often made into a pleasing jam or jelly, offered protection against viruses, while goldenseal root powdered then boiled with water and cooled could be taken for a couple weeks at a time as an antibiotic.

Another natural phenomenon was the Buffalo Lick located in what it now Southeastern Oglethorpe County, near what would become the antebellum town of Philomath. At the head of White’s Creek was a 1.5-acre section where the earth was white, red, yellow, or “fattish” clay. In the late 1700s, some holes where cattle and previous buffalo had licked up the sodium sulphate were 5-6’ deep. Years later as excavations for railroads occurred in rural Georgia, poor residents were known to stop to eat and take home in sacks chunks of exposed white minerals. The grit particles were said to be the main downside of the almost-pure calcium carbonate.

In 1783, Virginia families settled on the Broad River in current Eastern Oglethorpe County. Ever wonder how they drove their wagons to their new communities without established roads? These settlers described no underbrush beneath the trees! Primeval forests with massive canopies and wagon-wide spacing! They picked land with springs with no overlooking high ground Indians could make use of for attacks and proceeded to establish farms where they grew corn (a portion was always used for distilling), beans, squash, and sweet potatoes. Cattle, hogs and sheep had to be penned nightly against wolves and thieving Indian “pony clubs.” River cane and native bamboo provided year-round cattle forage.

With miles of wilderness between farms and settlements, frequent attacks by Creek Indians, and smallpox epidemics, one can imagine the high premium placed on doctors. While most were trained in the allopathic school of medicine featuring blood letting and the use of mercury and minerals, wise physicians also became students of Indian cures and herbal remedies. One such gentleman was Lindsey Durham, who moved to the mill community of Scull Shoals in 1817. He had received formal training at the University of Pennsylvania and studied botanicals in Bartram Garden but also gave credence to Indian and African healing methods. In the 1820s, he joined the liberal-minded “American Eclectics” of the new Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia who believed a remedy could be found in nature for every human ailment. Durham grew thousands of medicinal herbs and plants on his estate, and his sanatorium was visited by people from all over the state of Georgia.