Satellite image from Google Maps, showing outlines of abandoned rice fields in marsh area.

Peter A. Coclanis, in the online New Georgia Encyclopedia, writes:

Rice cultivation began in South Carolina in the late seventeenth century but did not become deeply entrenched until the second or third decade of the eighteenth century. Recent scholars have demonstrated that Africans and African Americans contributed much more than brute labor to the development of the rice industry that developed along coastal South Carolina and, later, coastal Georgia. More specifically, most scholars now believe that much of the technology involved in rice cultivation in this area originated in rice-producing regions in West Africa and was transferred across the Atlantic by slaves.

Coclanis, in his book The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670-1920 (1989, Oxford University Press), argues that low-country plantations were less self-sufficient in foodstuffs than contemporaneous plantations. This meant they needed access to foodstuffs imported from other areas. Thus, Coclanis says, the antebellum low-country transportation system linked production areas with interior and coastal ports, which inhibited the development of nearby market towns and of a broad network of transportation routes (pages 146 and 147).

Rice (Oryza sativa), then, is an Old World crop, which became quite important in the economy of antebellum coastal Georgia. In the satellite image from Google Maps captured from along coastal Georgia and shown above, you can see the outlines of old rice fields. Seen from the edge of the marsh, the fields are less visible, unless you happen to be sighting down the field edge or along a drainage canal.

Nowdays, rice is not grown commercially along the Georgia coast, although the states of Arkansas, California, Louisiana, and Texas have substantial commercial rice agriculture. Rice farms in the modern USA use little hand labor, instead employing specialized equipment to adjust the elevation of the fields to improve conditions for flooding, prepare the seedbeds, and cut and thresh the rice.

So, why not is rice not now grown commercially here in Georgia? You might want to consider such factors as soil fertility, cost of labor (for example, the absence of the plantation economy and slavery), and productivity in pondering this…. Also, most of the rice grown in antebellum days was exported from North America, while much of the rice grown in the USA currently is used here. What effect might this have? Can you compare export costs between Georgia of, say, the early 1800s and today?

The next meeting of the Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society, a chapter of the SGA, will be March 9th, 2010, at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History (Clifton Road, just north of Ponce de Leon), at 7:30 PM.

The speaker will be GAAS’s own Allen Vegotsky. Allen will discuss Dr. Lindsey Durham (1789-1859), a physician who worked in the Scull Shoals community, south of Athens. Allen’s innovative presentation will take the form of a one-act play, and Allen will play both the Doctor and a narrator. He explains:

Many GAAS members have participated in excavations at Scull Shoals in the Oconee National Forest with Dr. Jack Wynn. What was once Creek and Cherokee hunting grounds, later a frontier village occasionally at war with the Creeks, and still later, part of Georgia’s industrial revolution, is now a ghost town on the Oconee River with only traces of brick structures remaining. During the rapid rise of Scull Shoals to a busy factory town, there were a few individuals who were bigger than life, who became very well known in Georgia and the Southeast.

One of these was Dr. Lindsey Durham (1789-1859), who became one of Georgia’s most successful and popular physicians as well as one of the town’s wealthiest plantation owners. As a doctor, he was known for his complex receipts (formulas for medicines) and Scull Shoals became a magnet for sick people from Georgia and even distant states.

The Durham Family papers are housed at the University of Georgia and I have been studying Durham’s more than 200 medical receipts for the last year. The formulas range from cures for familiar diseases like malaria and consumption (tuberculosis) to cures for esoteric conditions like the effects of witchcraft. The medical receipts provide a rare glimpse into medicine and pharmacy of the early 19th century. I would like to tell you about several of these medical formulas and explain how they were viewed 150 years ago.

The format of the talk will be a one-act play in which I will sometimes be Dr. Durham, himself, in 1850, telling you about his medicines, and sometimes I will be a narrator in the present providing more modern insights into Dr. Durham’s remedies. The talk is in the tradition of historical archaeology, which blends archaeological and archival approaches to understanding a site and its people.

There were few aspects of early 19th century life in frontier communities as important as health and disease.

The meeting is free and the public is invited.

Picture from Frontispiece of Riparian Lands of the Mississippi River: Past—Present—Prospective, by Frank H. Thompkins (1901, published in New Orleans, available as a free download from Google Books). Picture post-dates de Tocqueville’s trip.

At last, at last, my dear Mama, the signal is given and here we are cruising down the Mississippi, as rapidly as possible under the combined influence of steam and a strong current. We were beginning to despair of ever escaping the wilderness. If you take the trouble to examine your map, you will see that we had reached a pretty pass. In front of us, the Mississippi half frozen and no boats launching; overhead, a Russian sky, pure and frozen. We could have retraced our steps, you say. But that option was fast disappearing. During our sojourn in Memphis, the Tennessee had frozen, and carriages could no longer cross. So there we were, in the middle of a triangle formed by the Mississippi, the Tennessee, and impenetrable backwoods to the south. We might as well have been marooned on a rock in mid-ocean, inhabiting a world made expressly for us, without papers, without news of the rest of mankind, and facing the prospect of a long winter. That is how we spent a week. I must say, however, that except for our anxiety, those days were not disagreeable. We were staying with good people, who did their utmost to ingratiate themselves. Only twenty paces from our house was the edge of the world’s most beautiful forest, a sublime place, picturesque even under snow. We had rifles and plenty of powder and lead. A few miles from the village lived an Indian nation, the Chikasaws; once on their land, we always found a few natives happy to join us in the hunt. Hunting and warring are the sole occupations of the Indian, his pleasures as well. For large game we would have had to go too far afield. Instead, we killed a great many pretty birds of a species unknown in France. We found this highly diverting, though it didn’t do us much credit in the eyes of our allies. I killed red, blue, yellow birds, including parrots with plumage more brilliant than any I had ever seen. That’s how time passed, lightly at any given moment, but with the future weighing upon us.

So wrote the French historian known as Alexis de Tocqueville, in a letter dated 25 December 1831, while he was staying along the Mississippi River waiting for winter to let up so he could continue his trip. He had landed in New York City in May 1831, and had been traveling ever since researching American prisons, along with his supervisor, Gustave de Beaumont. Both worked for as prosecutors for the French government. (This letter has been excerpted in The Hudson Review, volume LXII, no. 3, translated by Frederick Brown, and available here on the web.) De Tocqueville is best known for the two volumes of De la démocratie en Amérique (usually translated as Democracy in America) that were published in 1835 and in 1840.

Toward the end of this excerpt, de Tocqueville describes Native Americans of the Chickasaw tribe (one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, which also included the Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole groups; all were officially removed from southeastern North America beginning in 1832, just after de Tocqueville’s visit, but that’s a story for another time/place), and their enjoyment of going hunting. What does he mean? Do all Chickasaws like to hunt? Perhaps de Tocqueville really means that MALE Chickasaws liked to hunt?

There’s another good clue for an archaeologist in this letter that would be difficult to document archaeologically. De Tocqueville writes that large game had been extirpated from around the community where he was trapped by the winter weather. Why was this? Do you think it was due to overhunting? Instead of hunting large game, when he went out nearby, de Tocqueville killed birds. He also describes those birds as very colorful, probably suggesting particular species to any ornithologists knowledgable about this area.

Historical archaeologists have the distinct advantage over their peers who work primarily with prehistoric peoples in that they have historical records that may illuminate the archaeological record. Sometimes, however, the historical archival materials are at odds with archaeological remains.

For example, written records may indicate that a family abstained from alcohol, yet among the foundations of their house, archaeologists may find a trove of bourbon bottles. What is the best way to interpret them? Does their location beneath the house necessarily mean that the family inhabiting the house above consumed their contents? Or, does their location, hidden in the basement, instead suggest secret consumption of alcohol? What additional archaeological data would help refine interpretation of the buried booze bottles?

Portrayal of Native American life on Jekyll Island (original painting by Melissa Crawford, Art Major at the University of West Georgia).

People have called the small barrier island now known as Jekyll home for many centuries, but only the most obvious and recent reminders of that history are usually recognized today. Each year thousands of visitors are introduced to the splendid “cottages” and manicured landscapes of the Jekyll Island Club and their connection with the rich and famous industry giants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many also see the ruins of tabby structures that stand as silent memorials to English colonization of the Georgia coast during the 18th century and to the later plantation endeavors of the French owners of the island, the DuBignon family.

As important as these historic resources are, they represent only part of the total cultural heritage of Jekyll Island. What now stands above the ground is a fraction of the fragile evidence that marks this island’s remarkable past. Much more survives below the ground as archaeological evidence—the buried structural elements, landscape features, artifacts and food remains from the day to day lives of people over the millennia. At least 95 percent of the total patrimony of the island preceded British interests here. This place was the home of Native Americans for more than 4000 years before the first European arrived. Their history is Jekyll Island’s hidden cultural heritage, a past marked by traces of oyster shell on the ground surface and the buried archaeological remains left behind by countless generations.

Archaeological research has been undertaken from time to time on Jekyll Island for over 50 years, providing a basic sketch of the island’s cultural history. Dozens of archaeological sites have been recorded through survey efforts and limited excavations on the island and its nearby hammocks. The best-known historic sites—Horton House and Millionaire’s Village—were also the locations of major prehistoric sites, indicating that these high-ground areas that are easily accessible by water have remained prime real estate for many centuries. Other, mostly smaller, prehistoric settlements are located elsewhere on the island where good access was offered to important food resources.

The earliest known Native American occupation of Jekyll Island was by an early foraging culture associated with the St. Simons phase. Dating to as early as 2400 B.C., these people may have lived in permanent settlements used as central bases for collecting estuarine, riverine, and oak-forest food resources during a time of rising sea levels and evolving ecosystems. Overall population density was low all along the coast, with groups living on the barrier islands in settlements atop and around shell rings (large ring-shaped mounds of oyster shells and other food refuse) and along freshwater rivers on top of large shell mounds (which also were deposits shell and other refuse). Occupation was concentrated on the northern end of Jekyll Island at this time, perhaps the result of short-term visits by foraging groups from large nearby sites on St. Simons Island. However, the possibility exists that a shell ring may have been located along the northern edge of Jekyll Island in an area that now has been submerged by rising sea level and eroded by tidal actions and currents.

When sea level dropped to a temporary low-stand around 1,000 B.C., there were dramatic changes in the coastal ecosystem and St. Simons phase settlements were disrupted and their populations dispersed. An archaeological culture known as the Refuge phase then developed along the coast, perhaps representing descendents of the St. Simons phase groups, but no sites of this period have been recorded on Jekyll Island.

Occupation resumed on Jekyll Island sometime between roughly 500 B.C. and A.D. 700. Probably the first to resettle the island were small bands of semi-nomadic hunters-fishers-gatherers who were seasonal visitors to the island during the Deptford phase. These people overlapped with others of a different cultural tradition known as Swift Creek, marked by groups who immigrated to the coast from inland areas of Georgia. The largest identified Swift Creek settlement was located in the interior of the island and contained an earthen burial mound.

Sporadic occupation on the island occurred during the following Wilmington phase, beginning about A.D. 700 and continuing for some 300 years. Very little is known about the genesis of this culture and its adaptive patterns anywhere along the Georgia coast. It is suspected that small residential groups visited the island intermittently during this time for hunting, fishing, and gathering purposes.

Intensive Native American settlement occurred on Jekyll Island during the Savannah phase, beginning about A.D. 1000 and perhaps continuing until Spanish contact. This was associated with large populations who lived in permanent villages and had a mixed economy based upon horticulture (growing maize, beans, and squash) along with substantial reliance on estuarine and oak forest resources. A central adaptive characteristic of this socially and politically complex culture was the periodic movement of family groups from their villages during the year to harvest seasonally available resources in other areas. The prehistoric archaeological sites at the Horton House and Millionaires Village date primarily to the Savannah phase and, although severely disturbed in places by historical construction activities, they are two of the largest and most complex Native American settlements on Jekyll Island.

Little information is available about Native American occupation on Jekyll Island during the early historic period. The island was known to the Spaniards as the Isla de Ballenas (Island of Whales) and while 17th-century Franciscan missions among the Mocama natives evidently were located to the north on St. Simons Island and to the south on Cumberland Island, none were reported on Jekyll Island. However, archaeological evidence indicates there was a native presence on the island during the 16th and 17th centuries. Irene phase and Mission period native pottery types, more common at sites associated with the Guale in areas north of Jekyll Island, are rare but present at some of Jekyll’s archaeological sites. Pottery vessels associated with the Mocama in more southern areas of the Georgia coast appear to be very similar to earlier Savannah phase wares, suggesting the possibility that some sites on Jekyll Island now assigned to the late prehistoric period may contain materials that actually reflect Native American occupations during the Spanish Mission period.

Only the barest of details about Jekyll Island’s Native American past are known and much remains to be learned about this heritage. Archaeologists now have many more questions than they do answers. Buried beneath the feet of visitors to Jekyll Island is a complex and multidimensional puzzle of archaeological evidence, each piece an irreplaceable clue about the lives of people in the distant past who once called this island their home. As archaeological methods and scientific techniques advance, more and more will be learned about this hidden past and our lives in the present will be enriched by a better understanding of that heritage. However, the pieces of our puzzle are fragile and once destroyed are forever lost. In recognition of their importance to current and future generations, archaeological sites of Jekyll Island are protected under Georgia laws and Federal statutes, with civil and criminal penalties for their destruction or disturbance.

An artifact of Jekyll Island’s history of tourism.

Jekyll Island, owned by the people of Georgia and managed on their behalf by the Jekyll Island Authority, is a natural and cultural treasure to be both enjoyed and protected. Visitors to our remarkable island should be aware of the past hidden beneath their feet, marvel at its mysteries and untold stories, always act to sustain rather than disturb it, and walk away as advocates for archaeological preservation. The past is present on Jekyll Island and its legacies precious.

In the 1820s, a syllabary of the Cherokee language became widely used. It’s inventor had a birth name of George Gist (or Guess), but by this time went by a Cherokee name pronounced something like Sikwayi or Sogwali, although it is commonly spelled Sequoyah.

John Noble Wilford, in the 22 June New York Times, reports that archaeologist Kenneth B. Tankersley, of the University of Cincinnati, has found fifteen identifiable characters from the syllabary carved into the wall of a cave in southeast Kentucky. Apparently, Sequoyah made several visits to the region, and spent time in the caves seeking inspiration.

These may be the earliest known examples of the syllabary, which Sequoyah may still have been developing. This written language is known as a syllabary because the symbols (analogous to the letters we use in English) represent syllables, not individual sounds. Sequoyah’s Cherokee syllabary has 85 characters.

Read Wilford’s New York Times article “Carvings From Cherokee Script’s Dawn” here.

Read Ted Wadley’s article on Sequoyah in the New Georgia Encyclopedia online here.

Read the Wikipedia entry on the Cherokee syllabary here.

Sequoyah image courtesy WikiMedia Commons, here.

Editor’s Note

Back in late March 2009, GAAS and SGA member Dick Brunelle issued a challenge to thesga.org readers. He had read a January Weekly Ponder on a Copeland-Inglis brick found in an Atlanta brick street, and responded by asking who made the brick he had photographed at Hills and Dales, the Callaway family home in LaGrange, which had “LACLEDE KING” stamped on it. As a tease, he noted: The brick is more closely related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition than it is to covered bridges in Georgia. Member Jim D’Angelo was the only one to log in and comment on these brick controversies, among other things noting that he has a biography of John Randolph Copeland (1863-1935), partner in Copeland-Inglis Brick company. Now, Mr. Brunelle reveals the whoe story behind that enigmatic brick….

The answer…

Laclede Fire Brick Company as it appeared in 1854. On the hill behind the plant, can be seen the old Sublette mansion and nearby buildings of the sulphur springs resort. Clay was mined between the plant and the mansion.

The Birthplace of the Laclede King Brick

Bridge builder Horace King practiced his craft up and down the Chattahoochee River before and after his emancipation from slavery. The Townsend Truss structures he specialized in building required solid piers of durable material. Knowing he headed a family enterprise, brick making did not seem beyond possibility for this one time resident of LaGrange, Georgia.

At least, this is what I thought when I spotted the Laclede King brick at the beautiful estate of Hills and Dales in LaGrange. However, a search of Horace King family members did not come up with anyone named Laclede. Casting my net over the Internet, I fished up one Pierre Laclede Liquest.

We find that this enterprising man, a native of France, came to New Orleans in 1755. Soon, he dropped the Pierre from his name and his associates dropped the Liquest. This sort of name dropping was common among the early French in Louisiana. Laclede married an unattached woman in New Orleans, who was also enterprising and had accumulated money trading furs and other goods. She had previously been married to Auguste Rene Chouteau, and her son Auguste was now Laclede’s stepson. To further complicate an already confusing family relationship, stepson Auguste Chouteau had a half brother named Pierre. Some surmise he was a son of Laclede, but he was called Pierre Chouteau.

Laclede supposedly obtained trading rights from the last French governor for all the territory along the Missouri River. He and his stepson Auguste Chouteau established a trading post that Laclede named St Louis in April 1764 in honor of King Louis IX. Between the time he first set foot there, at the end of 1763, and the time of his death in 1788, Laclede had built up his name enough to bequeath it to things both material and political. As we now suspect, this includes bricks.

But, how can the name on our brick be close to Lewis and Clark? This clue was mainly intended to get the ponderer in the correct geographical area. However, both Chouteaus could not get any closer to William Clark than they did in September of 1797. Clark had been across the river trying to gather information to help out his older brother George Rogers Clark, who was in deep doo-doo for spending too much government money embarrassing the British while venturing into their territory.

Feeling the urge to party, William went to St Louis to scope out the town. There, he had a ball (literally) at Pierre Chouteau’s place with “all the fine girls and buckish Gentleman.” Now that they were drinking buddies, Clark would not forget his new friends when he came back across the river years later with Meriwether Lewis. The Spanish governor would not allow the Corps of Discovery to come ashore, but did accept a courtesy visit from Clark, who used the occasion to affirm his friendship in an aside with Auguste Chouteau. Meriwether Lewis used what influence he had to get Pierre Chouteau appointed Agent of Indian Affairs for Upper Louisiana in 1804.

The Chouteau brothers had considerable economic and political clout to go with their immense knowledge of the country and inhabitants of the Missouri and points west. It would take all of this to compete with the companies and political entities trying to control trade with the Indian nations. In turn, the Chouteau brothers made alliances with groups and individuals they deemed most capable to meet the challenges. One of these was William L. Sublette, previously a competitor. He became “their man on the ground” to deal with the most dangerous situations. Bill Sublette used shrewd strategy and good business ability, along with superior frontier skills, to stay alive and come out ahead.

After he gave up mountain man life, it would be Bill who would become owner of the ground that would one day yield the clay for our Laclede brick. Surprisingly, Bill aspired to create his own little utopia close to the city of St Louis, rather than live in Big Sky country. He chose a pleasing valley with a sulphur spring and “a river runs through it.” The “clear crystal stream” was called “River Des Peres”. This piece of property just happened to once belong to the husband of Auguste and Pierre’s sister Victoire Chouteau, Charles Gratiot, who had received it in a Spanish land grant of about 8000 acres.

In 1835, Bill had several log cabins and a large stone manor built on his 779 acre arcadia sanctuary. Sublette immediately put into play a gentleman farmer economy; exploiting natural resources of the property. Along with agricultural, livestock, and lumbering operations, mining of coal and clay was started. As it turned out, the clay was found to be the best in the country for making firebrick.

Gratiot’s son Paul had a fire brick kiln as early as 1837. We do not know, however, if Bill Sublette himself did anything but mine the clay. Soon, Bill’s arcadia had a menagerie of Wild West animals and a sulphur springs health resort for 60 boarders. Sadly, the healing waters did not restore health to Bill during an illness; so, he sought help in the East, but died in a Pittsburg, Pennsylvania hotel during his travels, on July 23, 1845.

William L. Sublette’s earthly remains were brought from Pittsburg and interred on his estate.

Soon, another utopia seeker was on the move in the person of Etienne Cabet. A French experimenter in communal living, he coined the word communisme; which became communism. Called the Icarian Movement, he lead his followers to found a colony in America; first in the Texas Red River Valley, then to the recently vacated haven of Brigham Young in Nauvoo, Illinois. Alas, Arcadia was not found there. The fragmented Icarians that still followed Cabet moved on to St Louis; but Cabet died at the end of 1856.

The remaining Icarians struggled on and in two years bought Sublette’s place, which was then on the block. Ironically, unhealthy conditions at the health resort were one reason that the colony to disbanded. Even more ironic, Bill Sublette’s mortal remains could not stay because of the demand for clay around the cemetery that contained them. Forced out at the point of a shovel, Bill’s remains were moved to Bellefontaine Cemetery in St Louis city in 1868.

Resting on 80 acres of land close by, Laclede Fire Brick Manufacturing Company was inhaling clay from the old Sublette Estate and exhaling an array of brick products. Thus, neither William Sublette nor Etienne Cabet found a final resting place in that place first called Sulphur Springs, then Cheltenham, and finally Dogtown.

However, one brick made from the clay of that place rests in the garden walk of a little arcadia created by the Callaway family in LaGrange, Georgia, where it proclaims to all that take notice: Laclede Brick is King!

Usually when you hear the phrase “old money,” the speaker is referring to people and families with established, long-held, inherited wealth.

Some old money, however, is just that, money from long ago.

I spotted this nineteenth-century five-dollar bill in a display of old money in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The long-extinct Ocmulgee Bank issued this $5 note in what looks to me like 1859.

The picture in the middle, above the word Ocmulgee, shows a wagon-load of cotton being delivered to a dock. In the background is a steamboat. I assume the artist was thinking of the Ocmulgee River, which flows through Macon. Area farms shipped cotton downriver, so this vignette reflects what truly happened in Macon.

In mid-1857, the US suffered a downturn in the economy that is often described as a panic. The South, however, suffered less than other regions of the country, because the cotton crop provided sufficient revenue to stabilize the regional economy, although there was considerable commercial distress. Nevertheless, four of nineteen Georgia banks failed during the panic.

Now, of course, banks in the USA do not issue their own currency. A federal banking act that took effect in July 1866 made it too costly for banks to continue to use non-federal currency in the USA, making bills like this historical documents.

Read more about the Panic of 1857 in Wikipedia here, or about currency in general here.

Beginning in May 2008, members of the Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society have participated in a project complete with a sense of historic preservation and civic responsibility. Dedicating time and tools, members of GAAS have teamed up with the Flat Rock Archive in Lithonia, Georgia, to help in the restoration and documentation of the historic Flat Rock cemetery.

The African-American community of Flat Rock, Georgia, was established in the first half of the 1800s as a product of three large plantations. Although it has not appeared on a map since the end of the Civil War, the community persists in the area to this day. Overgrown and surrounded by new development, the Flat Rock cemetery is the resting place of members of the community dating back to the era of slavery and into the 1950s, including African-American veterans from the Civil War through World War II.

GAAS members have enthusiastically joined the President of the Flat Rock Archive, Johnny Waits, and documentary filmmakers, Eddy Anderson and Michael Face, in the on-going effort to restore and protect the Flat Rock cemetery. To date, we have removed barbed wire, cut trees, pulled vines and raked leaves that have hidden the cemetery for years. Over one third of the cemetery has been completely cleared of undergrowth but the project is still in progress. Aided by students and professors from the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Georgia State University, goals for the cemetery project include digital mapping, photo-documentation, and historical research.

For information regarding the Flat Rock Archive and cemetery, please visit www.flatrockarchive.org. For more information regarding the GAAS involvement in the cemetery project, please contact Kate Jackson at kathryn.jackson@fernbankmuseum.org or at (404) 929-6414.

The Society for Georgia Archaeology’s 2007 lesson plan focused on Fort Hawkins. As the lesson plan notes:

Fort Hawkins is located near the Ocmulgee River and served as an important center for the frontier of Georgia from 1806-1819. It was named after Benjamin Hawkins, a white man appointed by President Washington to be an Indian Agent. Hawkins determined the fort’s location and served the nation as a liaison between the U.S. government and the Creek Nation. Hawkins was given the title Principal Temporary Agent for Indian Affairs South of the Ohio River. His 21-year career was spent monitoring and working to maintain peace. Tensions between the Creeks and the settlers increased, as settlers continued to arrive illegally on Indian land. Frustrations soon boiled over to the event known as the Red Stick War. These events ultimately led to the signing of the Treaty of Washington in which the Creek Nation was forced to cede its remaining lands in Georgia. By 1827 the Creek no longer lived in Georgia.

The lesson plan describes the Fort and provides historic details about life at the fort and the archaeological and archival (especially military records) data on the Fort. Many “further reading” titles are also listed.

Click here to download a copy of this lesson plan.

Archaeology Month events in 2007 focused on the theme “Conflict: Georgia’s Expanding Boundaries, 1733-1833.”

Click here to download a copy of SGA’s 2007 poster commemorating this theme.

The topic of the 2005 lesson plan, which meets CRCT Domains for 8th Grade History, is the Indian Removal of the early 1800s. The lesson plan details this period in Georgia’s history, suggests writing assignments, and explains how to make a puzzle called “Go Figure!” Click here to access the PDF of this lesson plan.

Euroamericans sought to remove Native Americans from southeastern North America in order to claim their lands, both for settlement and to prospect for minerals. The Native Americans had already ceded lands in what became eastern Georgia, and were occupying lands farther from the Atlantic coastline. The US government forcibly marched the Cherokees north and west to Oklahoma in 1838.