Coweta County GaArchives History - Books .....Chapter I Coweta And The Coweta Indians 1928
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Book Title: Coweta County Chronicles

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CHAPTER I.
Coweta and the Coweta Indians. Their Ways, Manners and Ideas.

  A good deal of history is suggested by the maps accompanying Bulletin 73,
American Ethnology, by Swanton. An old French map of 1733 has a very great
territory labeled "Caouita", that covered much more of the country than Coweta
county includes; another map of the same year has the name spelled Couita; one
of 1818 has it spelled Cowetau and another of about the same time, Kawita, but
the Legislature of 1825, that had so much to say about it, spelled it Cowetaw.
(1) There are many of those queer old maps and writings that tell of the
observations, experiences, coming and going of students, travelers,
missionaries, traders; that at different periods the Coweta Indians were located
in different parts of what is now North Georgia, that much that is interesting
happened, in the years between DeSoto's coming in 1540 and its organization as
Coweta county in 1825, when traders and adventurers, Spanish, French, English
came up the various rivers in such numbers that it might be said they swarmed in.

  The competition and conflicts between the white nations and between the
various traders of the same nation were so fierce and demoralizing that the
Indians, as early in the history of Georgia as the time of Oglethorpe, when some
of them accompanied him to London, requested the Trustees that nobody be
permitted to trade with the Indians without a license, that, only one trader to
each town be licensed, that, the measures, prices, and qualities of goods, and
weights, be standardized by law to protect the Indians from the dishonesty,
animosities and cupidity of the white men.

  But so vast was the country, so competitive the nations, so greedy the
traders, that no laws or treaties were obeyed.

  Much of interest attaches to the traders, (2) but it will have to be left to
the attention of future writers  except  for the mention of Grier-


(1) Over the pigeon holes of the filing cabinet at the State Capitol, Atlanta,
Ga., containing the original plats of the first survey of the county, the name
is spelled, Cowetta.
(2) In volume IX of the Library of Southern Literature, page 4027, is an
interesting account of the Indian Traders.

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son, or Grayson, whose name survives coupled with the dim traditions of Indian
trails across this and neighboring counties, and the record of Grierson's
Landing, a crossing place on the Chattahoochee just below the mouth of New
river. This man, a Scotchman, came into the country sometime in 1700 and
established his trading posts won the high regard of the Indians, grew very
rich, married an Indian woman and died at a good old age. Another trader,
McQueen by name, lived sixty years in the Creek country. The magnitude of the
commerce with the Indians is slightly indicated by a statement that one shipload
of deer skins numbered 40,000.

  Along the trails, (before the coming of the first white men the Spaniards, who
brought horses into the country) in single file the Indians, passed, the purpose
of the trip governing its appearance and equipment; for seasonal migration with
burdens to carry, a leather band fitted to the forehead, was lashed to a litter
borne upon the back. In many tribes this, the hardest work of their lives, was
imposed upon the women, but Indian customs were as varied as those of the
different races of white men, and the well-informed Col. Benjamin Hawkins, so
long Indian Agent to the Creeks, tells that with a remnant of the Uchees, on one
of the rivers in Creek territory, it was customary for the men to share all the
work with their women, but this may have resulted from contact with the white
men as, he tells in another place, the Indians were much impressed with the
consideration the white men showed women, and that the Indian women loved the
white men because they treated them with respect and chivalry. This may explain
several very interesting manifestations in connection with the affairs between
the whites and Indians: On so many different occasions white men, as in the case
of Captain John Smith, were saved at the instant of execution, by chiefs'
daughters; and the death-disregarding devotion of the half-breeds to the
interests of the whites, as in the case of Gen. William McIntosh.

  In the migrations, as in the war expeditions, the column went in single file,
so silently, in their soft moccasins, that the word "stealthy," linked with the
name Indian, is used to this day in describing quiet movement.

  The most important matter connected with the region now Coweta county happened
in 1715. Many things combined to arouse the

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Indians against the whites; the increasing number of the whites, misconduct on
the part of the traders, the taking of the Indians and selling them into slavery
in the West Indies by the Carolinians, precipitated a general conspiracy among
all the Indian tribes and they began to attack and destroy the outlying
settlements, The whites, in the battles that followed, were so invincible and so
cruel in revenge that the Indians, abandoning the idea of their conspiracy, left
their towns in many places-some about Indian Springs, along Line Creek and
elsewhere that there is record of-for the farther away banks of the
Chattahoochee and Coosa rivers, where they established the towns they occupied
down to 1825-26. But the territory was still theirs; they loved it and hunted
over it.

  Some confusion results from the several names used of the Indians of this
region. The name Creek they received from the English "on account of the
numerous streams in their country," is one reason given, but it seems a poor
one. They called themselves "The Nation" and "Muskogees" from the leading tribe
of those banded together into "The Nation," which was made up of a number of
tribes-one of which was the Coweta. Baron de Crenay, Commandant of the Post of
Mobile in March, 1733, compiled that map with "Empire des Caouita" printed on
the part representing the region along the middle reaches of the Chattahoochee,
and the sources of the Flint rivers, with dots to indicate the Indian towns, but
in 1825, when McIntosh signed away these lands-and for many years previously-no
Indian towns are shown on any maps, though remains of the mounds and terraces
were found along Line Creek and about where the old post-office Kedron was,
later, when the whites settled there.   The union of tribes into nations or
confederacies and the dominance of one or another tribe had little of permanence
so, it is quite likely, that in 1733 the Cowetas may have been the leading
tribe-at least in 1825 McIntosh, the chief of that tribe, had much authority
over a great territory (now Coweta, Heard, Troup, Meriwether and Muskogee
counties) and Swanton's account of them in, "Early History of the Creeks and
Their Neighbors" seems to indicate it:

  "The Coweta were the second great Muskogee tribe among the Lower Creeks, and
they headed the war side as Kasihta headed the peace side. Their honorary title
in the confederacy was Kawita ma' ma' yi, 'tall Coweta' . . . . Coweta are
commonly accounted the

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leaders of the Lower Creeks and often of the entire nation. By many early
writers all of the Lower Creeks are called Coweta, and the Spaniards and French
both speak of the Coweta chief as 'emperor' of the Creeks. 'He is thus described
by an anonymous French writer of the eighteenth century, quoted by Swanton, 'He
is a man of a good appearance and good character. He has numbers of slaves who
are busy night and day cooking food for those going and coming to visit him. He
seldom goes on foot, always (riding on) well harnessed (1) horses, and followed
by many of his village. He is absolute in his nation. He has a quantity of
cattle and kills them sometimes to feast his friends. No one has been able to
make him take sides with one of the three European nations who know him, he
alleging that he wishes to see everyone, to be neutral, and not to espouse any
of the quarrels which the French, English and Spaniards have with one 
another.' "

  It is due those Indians who owned that noble "Empire des Caouita" that a
record be made of them, that those who possess the lands, once theirs, should
know what character they had, what their manners and customs were; that
barbarity, cruelty, and ignorance were not their only qualities; that they
practiced a beautiful kind of hospitality, appreciated--in fact, never forgot-a
kindness, that they had great qualities of head and heart unsurpassed by any of
those appertaining to the whites-a much more acute and extended power of vision,
and the ability to reflect, weigh, and consider, but which were outdone by
quickness, and the accumulated and concentrated knowledge and power of the
latter. It is due them that the truth of their signing away their lands be told.
Our age has denounced the ruthlessness of the forced evacuations in Greece and
Turkey, but, forced on by an insatiable land greed that animated the settlers,
the politicians of Georgia did the same thing by the Creeks and Cherokees-and as
late as the administration of President Roosevelt, the White Foot Indians were
practically exterminated because they insisted on returning to the hunting
grounds that they felt belonged to them. From "Bartram's Travels," a book
written in the years 1777-78, is taken an account of them before their ways had
been modified by contact with the bad whites who fled to their country during
the Revolutionary war- Tories and renegades, criminals of many kinds.   Bartram
was a scien-

(1) This means saddle-fittings, bridle^-there were no vehicles to which horses
were harnessed in those days, among the Indians.

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tist, a naturalist gathering specimens of plant and animal life of the
country-not a greedy trader seeking to make something off them*. He went among
them unarmed and alone, trustful and interested in their ways and met with
kindness, help, generosity and a hospitality as fine as any could be. They
attended him as guides and provided for all his wants.

  Many of his observations explain the causes of their cruelty and treachery.
The land-greed of the whites was one, the disregard of treaty boundaries by them
was another. After the Indians had ceded certain territory, white hunters and
land-grabbers (squatters) would incroach beyond it. Protests to the authorities
of the whites failing to protect them, the resentful among them would attack the
intruders, killing them and their families and burning their cabins. The whites
would come out in force, subdue them and make them cede more land as punishment.

cill
Bartram tells that each habitation consisted of two houses 30 x 12 x ___
feet, each divided into two rooms, one a cook and living room, the other, the
sleeping room; the other house of the same size was about tw_____ yards distant,
its end to the door of the other, two-stories _______ end open-porches, below
and above, reached by a ladder-______ a closed room used as a storehouse for
grain and potatoes- ______ in the upper room. These houses were built with
strong corner-poles supporting beams to carry the roof with smaller poles
between the corner-posts plastered over. This dwelling occupied the middle of a
square yard about half an acre in size with a bank of earth excavated from the
yard forming a fence about it. The yards were kept carefully swept and the towns
quite clean-all filth being deposited at a proper distance from the dwellings to
insure health.

  A small conical earth-covered house in the yard, called the hothouse was a
place of refuge for the children and old people in the winter.

  Each town had two public buildings: One, a rotunda, was a place for
entertainments, constructed by raising a great mound of earth with a central
pillar made of the trunk of a large tree from which beams were laid to the tops
of smaller pillars forming a circle around it; around this circle was another
circle; around this another, the number of circles governed by the population of
the town. The beams supported the roof made of layers of bark. The outer circle
had walls made of poles 

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fastened between the pillars and plastered over. Only one opening was left for
entrance; opposite it were three tiers of seats arranged for the chiefs and
warriors. All the seats were covered with mats made of splints woven together
and gaily colored.

  The other building was the council house where all public business was
considered and conversations with visitors held. It consisted of four houses of
the same size so placed as to leave a hollow square in the center and a passage
between at the corners-the whole occupying about half-an-acre of space, more or
less, according to the size of the town. All the houses were open toward the
center; the three outer walls of each were made of comer posts connected by
beams at the top and the space between with branches neatly plastered over with
clay- except a space from the eaves down of two feet was left for light and air.
One of these houses for the mico (chief) and head men was divided by a partition
into two rooms; the back one a dark closet-like place held as very sacred, only
the mico and chief priest-medicine-man-might enter it; the physic-pot, rattles,
chaplets of deer  hoofs for con____  ____tion were kept there along with the
royal standard, curiously ___ed of feathers of the white eagle's tail, placed
like an open fan on a ______.

  ___s standard when displayed for peace was as white and clean as it could be
made, but for war it was painted or stained with vermillion. The open recess of
the front room was divided from front to back in three compartments, like boxes
in a theater all with three tiers of seats, the back row higher than the next in
front-which arrangement was repeated in the open parts of the other three houses
of the group, but without the box-forming partitions, for provision for all the
men of the town to assemble at the banquets, pow-wows and councils. The women
and children were seldom if ever seen in the place.

  The pillars and walls of these houses were decorated with paintings and
carvings of animals, birds, flowers and men.

  Bartram describes a meeting in the rotunda: "Under a shed near the door of the
rotunda vessels of the black drink are brewed about nightfall, while bundles of
canes, split and cut into two-foot lengths, are taken into the building and
dropped so that each cane extends diagonally from the central pillar outward,
one distributor going to the right and the other to the left interlaces the
canes until the row upon row of them form a bank a foot or more high, sloping
out ten
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or more feet. This bank of canes is ignited at dark in some mysterious way that
the observer was never able to discover, and burned as long as their light was
desired. Shortly after the canes are lighted, the chiefs and warriors enter and
take seats opposite the door in three classes or ranks, the mico in the middle
of the front seat, the war-chief on the same seat at the mico's left, the most
venerable head-men and warriors on his right, the regular warriors back of
these, the young warriors on the third seat; the whole tier of seats being
separated from those adjoining by walls of plastered columns. The left tier of
seats was occupied by the whites and visiting Indians, seated according to their
importance, the most honorable in front.

  "The assembly seated in order, the building well lighted from the burning
canes, two middle-aged-for the time-serving-men enter bearing each a large conch
shell full of the black drink (really just a tea made from cassina yupon) with
slow stately steps advancing, looking up reverently as if praying, but singing
in low sweet voices till within a few paces of the mico they stop, resting their
shells on three-legged tables for a few minutes, then crossing obliquely, the
one on the right passing to the left, the one on the left passing to the right,
they present the shells, one to the mico, the other to the most honorable of the
whites or visitors with extreme reverence of manner. As it is raised to the
mouth the bearer sings two notes holding them as long as the breath lasts, the
drinker being expected to quaff as long as the note sounds. These long notes are
very solemn, impressing one with a religious awe or homage to the supreme Being,
sounding like a-h-o-o- ojah, a-lu-yah. In this manner all the assembly are
served so long as the drink and light last."

  "Following the drink bearers, tobacco and pipes are brought in; a large
wildcat skin stuffed with tobacco being placed with the royal pipe-which is
beautifully adorned-in front of the mico. The skin is usually that of the animal
symbolic of the mico's family. Another skin of tobacco is placed before the
chief visitor, then passed from one to another until all pipes are filled-though
each has his own private skin of the weed. The mico draws a few whiffs from the
great pipe blowing them out ceremoniously, first toward the sun, then toward the
points of the compass, next toward the visitors after which the pipe is passed
to the chief visitor, next to the head warrior and to other head men and
warriors in turn, finally being returned to the mico, all pipes,
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are again filled from private or neighbor's skins, the smoking continuing until
the canes are all burned when the ceremony of the black drink ends."

  "In the rotunda there were entertainments nearly every night, exercises and
dances; at these the maidens march in in gala dress, an apron-like skirt, a
short shirt or waist, buskins half-way the legs, plaited hair with silver pins
in it and many ribbons; the boys with the very short loin-cloth made by passing
a strip of cloth between the thighs with the ends, brought up and pulled over a
belt, swinging, a tab front and back, silver bracelets, gargets and moccasins
made of soft dressed deerskins decorated with wampum, diadems set with waving
plumes, march opposite the maidens with dancing steps very intricate with a
waving motion on heels and toes, the rhythm of motion and the singing and
responses very perfect and harmonious; they move round and round, the two lines
weaving out and in in fascinating figures. The men have the head, neck, and
breast painted, but none of the women, but the prostitutes, paint. They are fond
of dancing and vary it to express many different moods-as they do their
singing-as moral, martial, bacchanalian and amorous. One of their songs is thus
translated:

'All men must surely die 
Though no one knows how soon, 
Yet when the time shall come 
The event may be joyful.'

  "They have many games; some for men alone, others for women alone, others for
both sexes; of these they regard ball play as the noblest. Their festivals
(feasts) are of monthly occurrence-beginning with that of first fruits about the
time of our August, which was the beginning of their New Year when they have a
clean-up time, burning all the old provisions, extinguishing the fires, taking
purgative medicine, fasting three days, releasing and absolving all malefactors."

  "During a season of fasting and prayer to avert a grievous sickness," he
continues, "they took a decoction of iris versicolor, a powerful cathartic, and
kept the fast seven or eight days." Again, it is, "The Indians keep the whites'
Sunday with great strickness and solemnity; their homage to the Supreme Being as
the high arbiter of human affairs is most impressive." In another place: "With 
their magnanimity, 
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impartial justice, independence, as moral men they stand in no need of European
civilization."

  "The Muskogees are more volatile, sprightly and talkative than the Cherokees
and, though far more distant from the white settlements, more refined and
civilized-which cannot be attributed to the whites. Their policing and family
economy make them illustrious. Their liberality and friendly intercourse among
themselves indicate that they are free from avarice, ambition or covetousness."

  "One on business from another town announces, 'I am here,' is answered, 'You
are; it is well,' food and drink are given him; after smoking he says, 'I go,'
is answered, 'You do?' as he passes on to other houses or the public assembly
where they have conversation by day and dancing by night"

  "One of their leading chiefs prayed, 'Defend us from the manners, ways and
power of the white people.' "

  "The Creeks deserve the praise of all nations for their wisdom and virtue in
resisting and repelling the greatest enemy of mankind, I mean spirituous
liquors. The first and most cogent article in all their treaties with the whites
is, that there shall not be any kind of spirituous liquors sold or brought to
their towns. Two kegs (ten gallons) were allowed the traders for the road; all
not consumed was to be hidden or poured out-none was to be taken to the Indian
towns."

  "Two traders trying to smuggle forty kegs of liquor to the Nation were
surprised, the kegs tomahawked and the liquor poured out, none of the Indians
drank a drop of it. The smugglers only escaped tomahawking by flight while the
Indians were busy with the kegs."

  Reflecting on the foregoing, Bartram concludes: "Divine wisdom dictates and
they obey. We see and know full well the dire effects of this torrent of evil
which has its source in hell, and we know as well as these savages how to divert
its course and suppress its inundations. Do we want wisdom and virtue? Let our
youth repair to the venerable councils of the Muskogees."

  With the Indians the supreme or executive power resides in a council of
elderly chiefs, warriors and others respected for wisdom, valor and virtue. The
king or mico is highest of all though no one will tell how or when he became
king. Though one of them, they seem to regard him as a representative of the
Great Spirit, but this only so far
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as an adviser, the decision is by the council, out of the council he is as the
others, but has the disposal of the public grain. Next to the mico are the war
chiefs, several in each town, and next to them the medicine man.

  All of them were equal as to possessions and the enjoyment of the common
necessaries of life thus they were protected from two of the worst vices of the
white races-avarice and envy. They did not have luxuries and superfluities.

  They have great confidence in visions and trances and believe they see the
spirits of the dead.

  Bartram testifies that unlike some tribes that put the old and helpless to
death, they did it only when the old asked to be, he saw them show great
courtesy and consideration for their old and sick.

  From another great observer and friend to the Indians, Benjamin Hawkins,
Indian Agent appointed by President Washington and serving many years, traveling
among them, knowing them, recording his observations in diaries that now are
among the priceless possessions of Georgia in her State library, is a list of
products that show how well they lived:

  In 1798 he wrote, of their cornfields that extended for miles along the banks
of the Chattahoochee and other streams, that they raised sweet potatoes,
pumpkins, beans, ground peas, cymlins, gourds, watermelons, muskmelons,
collards, onions, that they had hogs and cattle, lots of poultry, fish from the
streams and great variety of game for those happy hunters, that, keeping bees,
they had plenty of honey to eat with their corn batter cakes-for which they had
also nut-butter or oil made by crushing hickory nuts very fine and putting them
in water, the oil rising to the top was skimmed and strained ready for use. For
this the women and children gathered great stores of nuts, one family gathering
thirty bushels or more. A bushel of nuts made about a pint of oil.

  The fields for their crops belonged to the whole town, but each family had its
own space marked off-though the planting and cultivating was the work of the
whole town combined. At the harvest each family got the portion growing on its
plot of ground (out of which was taken a portion for the public store) to take
home.
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Salt to preserve their meat and game was eagerly desired; they were
willing to pay a great price for it, giving two hens, or they would pick a
basket of cotton for a half-pint of it.

  Benjamin Hawkins praised the housekeeping of many of the squaws, their
spinning and weaving, and enumerates, "good bread, pork, potatoes, ground-peas,
dried peaches, roast turkey and deer," as good things given him to eat.
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Additional Comments:
Citation:

COWETA COUNTY CHRONICLES FOR ONE HUNDRED YEARS WITH

An Account of the Indians from Whom the Land was Acquired

AND
Some Historical Papers Relating to its Acquisition by Georgia, with Lineage Pages.

EDITED AND COMPILED BY MARY G. JONES AND LILY REYNOLDS
FOR
SARAH DICKINSON CHAPTER
DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 
OF NEWNAN, GEORGIA

THE STEIN PRINTING COMPANY
ATLANTA, GA.
1928


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