We know that our county was occupied by the Creeks and
Cherokees when the first settlers came into what was to become Madison county. Their
life style was much different than what I had imagined. Many years ago I found a Georgia
History book at my grandfather's home that had belonged to my uncle. It had a red cover on
it but has since sadly disappeared. I was intrieged with the section on Indian life.
I was surprised to learn that the Creeks lived in houses and that they lived in
a commune. The book said they lived in a one room house with a dirt floor. There were
usually ten or twelve houses in a community according to the book. The men did the hunting
and fishing, but it was up to the women to do the gardening. All the women would cultivate
the garden site and plant the seed. When that was completed the garden was divided up and
staked off into as many portions as there were families. Each family tended and harvested
their own garden plot.
The other interesting thing was the way they buried their dead. They were
buried inside the house. They dug up the floor and the deceased person was place in a
sitting position and then covered. I assume this practice was done to keep the wild
animals from digging up the body.
The Indian Skeleton
Many years ago "Aunt Mamie" Williams, a lovely black lady, told me
about the day her husband, Ike, plowed up some bones. It was not long after they moved to
their Fort Lamar home that Ike was breaking up ground for a garden. The area was full of
rocks which he would give a sling to the rock pile as he continued to plow. Then he
noticed what looked like a bone and then another bone and fimally a skull was unearthed.
At this point Ike stoped plowing and started diging. He unearthed a skeleton in an upright
seated position with the legs crossed. It was his determination that he had unearthed an
Indian body.
Was this a Creek Indian? I believe it was. Their home was located not far from
the Fort and it seems feasible that they now occupied what was once a Creek Community.
The Ball Game
I’ve been told that the Creeks lost their fertile hunting ground to
the Cherokees in a ball game similar to our soft ball game. It supposedly was a huge
affair that both tribes attended each year. It was similar to a yearly convention and
ended with a ball game with high stakes. I’m sure the Creeks never believed they
would lose their homeland when they make their wager, but lose it they did. They were
evidently poor losers because they continued to fight with the Cherokee for many years.
They were angry with them for accepting the white settlers as their friends and neighbors.
There was much intermarriage between the Cherokees and the white settlers. By the time of
the removal [The Trail of Tears], there were very few full blooded Indians in Georgia.
Most all the Cherokees had English names which makes it almost impossible to trace our
Indian heritage unless you also knew their Indian name. A great many of the Madison County
families that I have traced have an oral history passed down to them through the years of
an Indian great or great-great grandmother. I have never heard of an Indian great
grandfather.
The ball game was held at a place known today as "BallGround".
It is in the Black’s Creek area.
The Massacre
The James Spring area, near the Hudson River, is also said to be an
Indian community. It was told to me by an older cousin, John H. James, that when he was a
child the hill on the west side of the spring was dotted with one room houses. He said
there must have been at least ten of them. They were falling in at the time, he said, and
that was about 1915. What is known for sure is that at the top of the hill was two
cemeteries with only field stones for markers. It was told by John’s grandfather that
one cemetery was Indian and the other was white settlers. Is it possible that this was a
Creek settlement at one time and the white’s came in later?
John’s mother, my Aunt Cora, took him with her one day across the Hudson
River, near their home, over on the Franklin County side of the River to gather broom
straw to make house brooms. Near the field was an old abandoned house that was falling in.
Aunt Cora told John the story that had come down through the years about that house and
it’s occupants. This is the story:
The Creeks were on the war path with the white settlers. They raided the family
that lived in the house and killed and scalped everyone except a teen-age boy. He had been
badly injured and had suffered a broken back but he had managed to pull himself into some
low shrubs and lay out of sigh until the Indians left. He dragged himself along the ground
until he got to the river and somehow got across to the Madison County side and got help
from the white settlers.
There were four families of settlers living near the Big Bend of the Hudson
River down below Carruths Mill. One of the families took the young injured boy in and
raised him as their own son. It isn’t known what happened to these early settlers or
who they were. Did they move on west as many others did ? Or did they die of the fever
that was so prominent back then or were they also murdered by the Creeks??? Were they
buried in the cemeteries across from the Earl James House?? Was there another battle or
another massacre later?? We’ll never really know what happened, but it had to be
something tragic to result in so many deaths. Those who remember the two cemeteries said
there were a great many graves in each one.
John found the four houses on the river when he was a boy. He said they were
large two room houses. The roofs had caved in but the houses were still standing. He said
the yards were full of china and pottery chards.
I never found an official record of this massacre. I’ve never made a
complete search of all the Indian massacres, but I did find one that is interesting. I t
follows:
The Crockett Massacre
Owen Bowen wrote a letter to the Governor of Georgia telling the sad
story of the Crockett family. I think the year was 1790 but I’ m not sure.
I’ve searched, but I can’t find my copy of the report, so I‘m going to try
to rely on memory. The Crockett family had been warned that the Indians were going to raid
and that they should go immediately to the Fort. The adult son was busy with some chore. I
think he was repairing his shoes, and he told the man who warned him [I think it was Owen
Bowen] that since there had been so many false alarms the would wait a while before they
left for the Fort.
The next day the entire Crockett family was found dead in their yard. They had
all been scalped. According to local ledgen, the family was buried in a mass grave and
covered under a rock mound to keep the animals away. This massacre happened in Banks
County but it was also on the Hudson River.
The Red Clay Eagle
In between the afore mentioned White and Indian cemeteries and the four
abandoned houses lay the Cherokee Ceremonial Worship Center. It was a very large area and
in the center was a red clay eagle
It had a wing spread of about 60 feet. It was similar to the Rock Eagle at the
4-H Center. The total range from the cemeteries to the abandoned houses was estimated to
be about one-half to three-fourths mile.
Kline Fowler told me of going to see the clay eagle with his grandfather,
Mayfield Fowler, when he was a child. John H. James, my cousin, was also taken to see the
eagle by his grandfather, John Taylor James. They were both told the same story about the
Ceremonial Ground by both their grandfathers as it had been passed on to them.
Both men were told that the reason the Indians didn‘t settle around James
Spring was because the Indians didn‘t like the yellow water. It is full of iron and
minerals.
The red clay eagle was inadvertently destroyed about 25 or 30 years by the new
land owner. The area had grown up and few people knew of the existence of the eagle mound
and it was bulldozed.
There is still evidence of Indian life just below where the eagle mound was.
I’ve never seen it but I’ve talked to many who have. A canoe is imbedded in the
bank of the Hudson River. I called Dr. Charles Hudson, the author of many books on Indian
life and he said it would not be cost effective to remove the canoe because it would dry
rot unless it was placed back in water and he didn’t know of any museum that was
equipped to handle it.
Fort Lamar
There was a story told by many about an Indian raid on Fort Lamar. It‘s a
very short story, but one worth telling. I don’t know the background of the story. I
don’t know if there were many families that had gone to the fort for protection
because of being warned of impending raids or just an isolated incident. I don’t know
the name of the family that lived in the log cabin inside the fort. What I do know, is
that a young mother was breast feeding her baby and an arrow came through the open window
before they could close the shutters. The mother was killed, but the baby lived. End of
story.
Evidently there was much activity in that location resulting in a very large
collection of arrow heads and other Indian paraphernalia that was collected by one of the
local residents many years ago. The story goes that the lady of the house, tired of seeing
the mounds of "junk" in her yard threw the whole collection in the well.
OH WELL!!
Conclusion
There is much evidence of Indian life all along the Hudson River. Larry Kirk
has an extensive collection of Indian artifacts he has collected through the years.
Sometimes all it took was to step out his door after a rain the arrow heads would just
shine. My brother, Charles Collins, garnered a large collection of arrow heads off our
family’s property near the Hudson River back in the 1950‘s. He also
unearthed a near complete clay bowl that was decorated in Indian style. He found
this as he was digging a hole to line with wet leaves with which he planed to cook his
wild game.
Charlotte Collins Bond
September 19, 2003