By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Southwest Georgia > Quitman > Omaha

Native Americans often constructed various styles of earthen mounds for burial, residential and ceremonial purposes. 

I took a walk through the Rood Creek Indian Mounds about ten years ago with a private group traveling down the Chattahoochee River from Columbus to Apalachicola, Florida. Our guide, Frank Schnell, was a member of the group and an historian and archaeologist for the Columbus Museum. It was one of the most interesting and informative tours I’ve ever taken.

The mysterious Rood Creek Indian Mounds are from a prehistoric Indian settlement occupied by Creek Indians from around 900 AD to about 1540 AD. During its time, it was the largest Indian settlement in the Chattahoochee River Basin. This 35-acre site has lost about 5 acres by erosion from the lake. It served as a political, business and religions center for the area and was not used as a burial center.

The mound site consists of a large multiple mound Mississippian ceremonial center with nine temple mounds fortified by two moats. What is so magnificent about them is that they have remained virtually untouched except for the brush and forest that have grown around them. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Northwest Georgia Mountains > Bartow County > Cartersville

The Booth Western Art Museum exhibits one of the most important collections of contemporary Western art in the country, including this painting, “Crazy Mountain Saddle Slickers” by Carrie Fell. 

Basically, this is a museum of Western art, but it is also a wonderful place to learn about the West — its people, both Native Americans and cowboys, their culture, and their way of life. In fact, their slogan is “Explore the West without Leaving the South.”

The only museum of its kind in the Southeast and the second largest art museum in Georgia, galleries of Booth Western Art Museum feature primarily Western artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. More than 200 Western artists display work here. Permanent collections include the American West Gallery, the Mythic West Gallery, the Reel West Gallery, and the Cowboy Gallery. Now through October 25 is “Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography” and “Painting the Canyon: Works from Grand Canyon Collections” in the Special Exhibition Gallery and through November 8 is “Route 66 Meets Highway 41: Roadside Impressions by Chuck Middlekauff” in the Theatre Lobby Gallery.

It’s easy to get your child actively involved with the museum’s art by picking up a Saddlebag upon your arrival that is filled with family activities that you can do during your visit. You will also want to spend time in SageBrush Range, a hands-on play area, where they can touch and interact with exhibits. Children can climb in a ¾-scale stagecoach; recreate Native American beadwork; learn about people who explored and settled the West; listen to cowboy songs, poetry and jokes; weave on a real loom; watch vintage Western television programs; or learn to draw a horse or buffalo. They can even experience being a Chuck Wagon cook at a replica of a chuck wagon. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Northwest Georgia Mountains > Bartow County > Cartersville

Amazing stone effigies found during excavation at the Etowah Indian Mounds are on display in the historic site’s museum. 

There are several places in Georgia where you can explore Native American Indian Mounds, but Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site in Bartow County is one of the most interesting.

This is the most intact Mississippian Culture site in the Southeastern United States. From about 1000 A.D. to 1550 A.D., it was home to several thousand Indians. There are six earthen mounds, which were used for a variety of purposes: platforms for buildings, stages for ceremonial events, and cemeteries for the community’s elite. There is also a village area, a plaza, borrow pits, and a defensive ditch on the 54-acre site.

Only nine percent of this site has been excavated, but that excavation has been astounding in the artifacts that have been discovered and what they have revealed about the people who once lived here. Over the years, excavations have unearthed thousands of artifacts, including feathered headdresses, ceremonial axes, pipes and copper plates. The Museum at the site is well worth the trip. There are well-preserved stone effigies and objects made of shells, stone and wood among many other artifacts. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Northwest Georgia Mountains > Murray County > Chatsworth

Who built the ancient stone wall at Fort Mountain has been a mystery that archeologists, historians and visitors have been trying to solve for years.

There are numerous ways to spend the day at Fort Mountain State Park – hiking, biking and horseback riding to name a few. But certainly, a highlight of the park and the landmark from which it derives its name is the mysterious wall that sits at the highest point of Fort Mountain.

The ancient stone Wall at Fort Mountain has been the subject of much speculation for centuries. Measuring 875 feet in length, it ranges in height from two to seven feet, although it was probably considerably higher in the past. Remains of circular depressions made of various sized stones and measuring about 10 feet across, occur in the wall at about 30-foot intervals.

Archeologists and historians have been unable to solve the puzzle of who, if anyone, built the wall or why or when it was built. There are many theories. A favorite explanation is that Woodland Indians built the wall around CE 500. The east-west orientation of its end points would result in alignment at sunrise and sunset at the solar equinox in both spring and fall. The dramatic setting of the wall, offering expansive vistas to the east and west, would add to its religious significance. Ceremonial centers similar to this were built by the Woodland Indians at Old Stone Fort, Tennessee, and Rock Eagle Mound in Putnam County, Georgia. The Woodland Indians occupied the Southeast from several centuries BCE to about CE 900. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Northeast Georgia Mountains > Hall County > Gainesville

Located to the Northeast Georgia History Center, the cabin where Cherokee Chief White Path was born and raised pays tribute to an Indian leader who was betrayed by his friend, President Andrew Jackson. 

The history of Native Americans who once roamed the rolling piedmont of Georgia is one that ends sorrowfully. One story that only adds to the poignancy is that of Cherokee Indian Chief White Path. White Path was born in 1761 near present day Ellijay and grew up in a cabin. His Cherokee name, Nunna-tsune-ga, translates literally as “I dwell on the peaceful (or white) path.”

In 1814, White Path joined General Andrew Jackson to fight the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. It is said that White Path and Chief John Ross swam across the Tallapoosa River and stole the Creek canoes prior to the battle, cutting off their escape by water, and ensuring a victory for Andrew Jackson.

Over the next two decades, White Path, who was a skillful orator, protested the influence of white settlers and spoke out against it in fiery oratory at the Cherokee capitol of New Echota. A strict follower of the traditional ways, he railed against the new Cherokee constitution as well as the introduction of Christianity by the missionaries. Eventually, he had to yield to the new ways. His new focus became fighting the removal policies of his old comrade and now president, Andrew Jackson. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > West Central Georgia > Muscogee County > Columbus

“Sacred Fire,” a sculpture by Kathy Hamrick, symbolizes the ceremonial flame and the last fires burned on original Creek lands at the Chattahoochee Indian Heritage Center.

There is a lot of Native American history to explore in the Chattahoochee River Valley—on both sides of the river. An interesting place to visit in Alabama is directly across the river from Columbus. Here, the Chattahoochee Indian Heritage Center sits atop a high hill overlooking the river adjacent to the Fort Russell Historic Site in Russell County about 10 miles south of Phenix City on Highway 165.

Fort Mitchell, an early 19th century federal garrison, was built to provide defense for the area during the Creek Indian War of 1813-1814 and the Creek War of 1836. It also was one of the principal gathering points for the forced removal of Creek Indians following the complete collapse of the Indian Nation after the Creek War of 1836. Some Creeks refused to go, hiding in the Alabama interior or joining Seminole Indians on the Apalachicola River in Florida. But most – starving and stripped of their land and possessions – began the walk, known as the Trail of Tears, to a resettlement reservation in Oklahoma. Many died along the way.

The Chattahoochee Indian Heritage Center memorializes the tragic removal of the Creeks. The center sits on land adjacent to Fort Mitchell where thousands of Indian families camped before starting west.

The purpose of the Chattahoochee Indian Heritage Center is to celebrate the culture and accomplishments of the Indians who inhabited the Chattahoochee River Valley for at least 12,000 years before their removal by the U. S. Government. The names of all the Indian heads of household who passed through Fort Mitchell on the journey are inscribed on metal tablets surrounding a symbolic recreation of a square ground in a Creek village. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Coastal Georgia > Camden County > St. Marys

Learn about the history of Dungeness, (pictured above) the home of Thomas and Lucy Carnegie on Cumberland Island, at the Cumberland Island National Seashore Museum in St. Marys.

Cumberland Island – one of Georgia’s beautiful barrier islands and a designated national seashore – is a 45-minute ferry ride from St. Marys on the Georgia coast. Before making the trip to Cumberland, plan to visit the Cumberland Island National Seashore Museum in St. Marys to learn about the island’s history, which includes history about the Native Americans, African Americans, and white Americans who have inhabited it.

There are exhibits on the Timucua, which refers to all the Native Americans in Southeastern Georgia and Northeastern Florida who spoke the Timucua language. The story is also told of Revolutionary War hero General Nathaniel Greene and his wife Catherine, who settled on Cumberland and built a home, the first Dungeness. You will also see exhibits at the Cumberland Island National Seashore Museum about the African American slaves who worked the extensive cotton plantations on the island in the early 1800s. In the 1890s after emancipation, The Settlement was established for African American workers on the island. The First African Baptist Church was established in 1893 and then rebuilt in the 1930s. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Southwest Georgia > Quitman > Omaha

Indian points, like these, are just some of the Paleo Indian artifacts on display at the Kirbo Interpretive Center at Florence Marina State Park.

If you are visiting Florence Marina State Park on Lake Walter F. George, an excellent place to learn more about the Native Americans who once lived in the area is the Kirbo Interpretive Center, an educational museum located on the park grounds.

Displays here depict the removal of the Creek Indians from the Florence area from 1715 to 1836 as well as artifacts from the prehistoric Paleo-Indian period through the early 1900s. There are also displays about the influence of cotton on the development of towns along the Chattahoochee River and the story of the steamboats which traveled the river from 1828 to the 1930s. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Northwest Georgia Mountains > Murray County > Chatsworth

The Chief Vann House in the Northwest Georgia Mountains was once owned by one of the wealthiest families in the Cherokee Indian Nation.

A “floating staircase,” 12-foot mantle, and fine antiques — somehow I never imagine something like this as the home of a Cherokee Indian leader. But the Chief Vann House Historic Site is just that. This two-and-a-half story brick home built in 1804 belonged to James Vann, a wealthy businessman whose 1,000-acre plantation near Chatsworth in what is now Murray County was the largest and most prosperous in the Cherokee nation.

Vann was murdered in 1809, but his son Joseph went on to inherit the property and add to the family fortune until the tragic Indian Removal of the 1830s. The family lost their home and was forced to move west to the Cherokee Territory of Oklahoma along with the rest of the Cherokees in the infamous Trail of Tears. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Numerous exhibits and dioramas depicting the timeline of Southeastern Indians can be viewed at the Funk Heritage Center.

Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, the Funk Heritage Center at Reinhardt College in Waleska is Georgia’s “Official Frontier and Southeastern Indian Interpretive Center,” and it lives up to its designation.

The Center consists of the Bennett History Museum – a 7,000-square-foot exhibit space with a theater and museum store – and an Appalachian Settlement with relocated authentic log cabins and other 19th century farm buildings. All total, the Center houses more than 6,000 artifacts donated by area collectors, most of them illustrative of the area’s many Indian cultures.

In the area of the museum known as the Long House, there are artifacts and text panels telling the story of the earliest encounters between Europeans and the people of the Southeast. You can also view a 15-minute film on the Southeastern Indians. In the Hall of Ancients exhibit area, you will see dioramas depicting the Paleo, Archaic, Woodland, Mississippian and Historic periods as well as a timeline, maps and information about the Cherokee Indian removal from Georgia during the 1830s known as the Trail of Tears. The centerpiece of this area is a granite petroglyph that is 11 feet long, 5 feel wide and 1.5 feet thick. This ancient and mysterious carved rock was found years ago on a farm in the Hickory Log area of Cherokee County near the Etowah River about four miles north of Canton. (more…)