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The first appearance of the Hitchiti

Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121

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The first appearance of the Hitchiti under the name by which we know them best is after South Carolina had been settled, when it occurs in documents as that of a Lower Creek town, and on the maps of that period it is laid down on Ocmulgee River below the town of the Coweta. From the Mitchell map this site is identifiable as the "Ocmulgee old fields" on the site of the present Macon, which is in agreement with a legend reported by Gatschet to the effect that the Hitchiti were "the first to settle at the site of Okmulgee town, an ancient capital of the confederacy." 5

William Bartram thus describes the Ocmulgee old fields as they appeared in his time:
"About seventy or eighty miles above the confluence of the Oakmulge and Ocone, the trading path, from Augusta to the Creek Nation, crosses these fine rivers, which are there forty miles apart. On the east bank of the Oakmulge this trading road runs nearly two miles through ancient Indian fields, which are called the Oakmulge fields; they are the rich low lands of the river. On the heights of these low lands are yet visible monuments, or traces, of an ancient town, such as artificial mounds or terraces, squares and banks, encircling considerable areas. Their old fields and planting land extended up and down the river, fifteen or twenty miles from this site."

As Bartram states that the Creeks had stopped here after their immigration from the west, the Hitchiti may not have been in occupancy always. On the other hand, Bartram may have inferred a Creek occupancy from the tradition that the confederacy had there been founded, but this may really have had reference to a compact of some kind between the Hitchiti and the invading Creeks, irrespective of the land actually held by each tribe.
(Swanton)