The Eastern Creek frontier: History and archaeology of the Flint River towns, ca. 1750-1826

This paper presents a current overview of documentary and archaeological evidence for aboriginal occupation associated with the Creek confederacy in the Flint River drainage of western Georgia, correlating specific archaeological sites with named towns where possible, and predicting locations for as-yet unrecorded sites. Largely depopulated soon after the 1540 DeSoto expedition, the Flint was resettled after 1750 by satellite communities of the core Lower Creek towns of Kasihta, Yuchi, Chiaha, and Hichiti. Comparatively well-populated during Benjamin Hawkin's tenure at the Flint River Creek Agency, occupation dwindled after the Creek War and the expansion of Georgia's border between 1814 and 1826.Paper presented in the symposium "Recent Advances in Lower Creek Archaeology" at the annual conference of the Society for American Archaeology, Nashville, April 4, 1997. John E. Worth Fernbank Museum of Natural History, AtlantaConference Pape