Whenever it happened the result was exactly the same. A decimation
of manpower and a huge contraction in the area under control. All
this threw the land open for aggressive colonization by any newcomers
and that turned out to be Europeans.
It also remains plausible that the insertion of a powerful Viking
population that started in the thousands a couple hundred years
earlier may also have introduced a disease vector able to reduce the
population as did the Spanish. One or two flus would be sufficient.
Above is an engraving by Teodor De Bry of the seven feet tall king
of the Satibo or Sati-le People near the Satilla River in Southeast
Georgia, meeting Captain René de Laudonnière. The French called
him Satouriwa. That is undoubtedly derived from the Satibo words,
Sati Orawa, which means Sati Leader. Satipo Province in eastern Peru
gets its name from the Spanish derivation of Satibo.
“Bo” is the Panoan Language (South American) word
for “people.” There were Native towns, named Satibo, Satikoa,
Satipa and Satike in both Southeast Georgia and the Smoky Mountains.
Did you know that the Native Peoples of eastern Peru have long
drunk a highly caffeinated tea made from a close relative of the
Yaupon Holly? Their ritual life also includes use of several herbs
that when mixed with this tea cause them to vomit. Caffeine and
ritual purging are considered a necessary step before making
important decisions. Now whose culture in the Southeastern USA does
that sound like? The original name for Ossabaw Island, GA was
Ase-bo or Yaupon Tea People in hybrid Creek-Panoan. OMG
First let me emphasize that the existence of seven feet tall
leaders in the Southeast is NOT in the realm of speculation or
purple, extraterrestrial spiders building the Maya pyramids. There
are numerous eyewitness accounts of seven feet tall Native American
leaders in the Southeast. Those accounts include the king of the
most powerful province on the coast of Georgia in the late 1500s and
the 93 year old, seven feet tall commander of those Creek factions in
the American Revolution, who were allied with the British. Royal
burials, containing seven feet tall men were found at Ocmulgee and
Etowah in Georgia, plus several other locations in the Southeast,
including Fort Loudon in Winchester, VA. As we mentioned in a news
brief earlier this week, the Anthropology Department of
Florida Atlantic University has identified an indigenous people
around Lake Okeechobee, who had super-sized skeletons and massive
skulls.
Firearms had a selective impact on the Native American gene pool.
Being seven feet tall was a major advantage in hand-to-hand combat,
but made the super-sized warrior kings inviting targets for marksmen,
armed with rifled muskets. Although Creek men from the Piedmont and
Appalachians tend to be substantially taller than Caucasian men, one
no longer sees many seven feet tall Muskogeans.
Tama is the Totonac verb for “to trade or buy.” Totonac
was the language of the elite of Tula (Teotihuacan in Aztec) the
great city in the Valley of Mexico. It is currently believed that
the commoners of that great city spoke several languages, but were
predominantly from the Otomi People.
Tamahiti means “merchant people” in both Itza Maya and Itsate
(Hitchiti) Creek. “Koa” is a Caribbean and northern South
American word for “tribe or clan.” Tamahiti and Tama-koa have the
same meaning in English. Tama is the word for maize among
several southern branches of the Shawnee.
According to Mexican tradition, between around 250 BC
and 600 AD, Teotihuacan sent out merchant-missionaries to all known
parts of their world to introduce civilization and make a profit.
It is interesting that the existence of towns with platform
mounds on the Chattahoochee and Etowah Rivers exactly corresponds
with the life span of Teotihuacan. However, this
chronological similarity may be the result of climate, not contacts
from traveling merchants. It should be added, though, that the real
name of Etowah Mounds was E-tula, which means “Great Town”
in Itza Maya. It could be that the traders that made it into the
interior of the Southeast were the mixed-heritage descendants of
Totonac tamahiti, who carried only vague knowledge of Tula,
passed down from generation to generation.
For about seven years, People of One Fire researchers have learned
more and more about the Native merchants, who paddled up the
Southeast’s rivers in Pre-European times, spreading cultural
knowledge and Mesoamerican crops. Those who first arrived at the
mouths of the Mississippi, Mobile and Chattahoochee Rivers, spoke
trade jargons that mixed in varying proportions, Totonac, Itza Maya,
Huastec, Tunica and proto-Muskogean. Those who arrived on the
peninsular Gulf Coast of Florida spoke the languages of the northern
Yucatan Peninsula and eastern Peru. Those who arrived on the South
Atlantic coast spoke languages that mixed southern Maya, eastern
Peruvian languages and Arawak.
Timucua is the Late Medieval Castilian way of saying Tama-koa.
Ironically, although now the ethnic name given by Florida
anthropologists for a cluster of provinces in the northeastern
section of their state, the only tribe that called itself, Tamakoa,
was on the Altamaha River about 35 miles upstream from the
Atlantic. Its last know location, during the late 1700s,
was on the headwaters of the Oconee River, a tributary of the
Altamaha, in the Upper Piedmont of Georgia. By that time,
it was a member of the Creek Confederacy. The original name of
Jefferson, GA in Jackson County was Thamagoa – as in the word used
by De Laudonnière in his memoir.
Throughout the past seven years, we assumed that the introduction
of Mesoamerican and South American crops into Eastern North America
could be explained by these traveling merchants. However,
the irrefutable evidence of a regional trade in “kings” provides
another dimension to cultural diffusion.
Paracus-te kings
Several 16th and 17th century eyewitness accounts by
European visitors to Lower Southeast gave the name of the High King
of confederated Native provinces as Paracus-te. All
of these Paracus-te were giant men, who were about seven feet
tall. The word is hybrid Peruvian-Itza Maya for Paracus
People. The Paracus constructed the famous animal effigies
on the Nazca Plain in eastern Peru. The Nazca People, who
followed the Paracus, constructed the simpler Nazca Lines. The
Paracus are best known for their giant skulls that were intentionally
deformed to create extraterrestrial like forms. [See photo
above-left.]
The details of the Paracus-te in Apalache are described
in the book that Marilyn Rae and I wrote last fall, The Apalache
Chronicles. I still some left at the bargain price of
$10. Normally, they are $18 at Ancient Cypress Press
and Amazon.com.
I was very surprised by the use of this South American title in
South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The Paracus-te ruled
over several provincial kings, who themselves used the Itza Maya
title of hene ahau (henehau) or mako (now mikko.) The
Itza Maya titles have survived into modern Creek as the derived names
for the Principal Chief and Second Chief of the Muscogee –Creek
Nation. The South American title of the High King has
disappeared.
In several eyewitness accounts from the late 1600s and 1700s, we
read European accounts of non-Muskogean tribes in the northern
regions of the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic states and Midwest, BUYING a
chief from the Creek Wind Clan, when their old chief died. This seems
to have been a way that the Shawnees, Algonquians and Siouans avoided
inter-clan feuds. According to a tradition that I read while living
in the Shenandoah Valley, the famous Virginia high king, Powhattan
and his brother, were purchased from a Muskogean province. They were
said to be much taller than most of their Algonquin subjects.
This system of
acquiring supreme leaders from culturally advanced peoples would
explain how many customs that originated in the Upper Amazon Basin or
Maya Highlands spread across the landscape of eastern North America.
According to 17th century French ethnologist, Charles de
Rochefort, the Paracus-te was also the High Priest [See The
Apalache Chronicles.] Religious practices apparently spread via the
“king trade.” New and improved vegetable seeds apparently spread
across North America via the tamahiti.
Right now in our research process, it looks like Conibo immigrants
and customs first arrived during the Woodland Period. The Conibo
brought tobacco, drinking a caffeinated beverage made from certain
holly leaves, the sweet potato and Swift Creek Style stamped pottery.
There was a wave of Shippibo immigrants around 600 to 800 AD, who
brought Napier Style stamped pottery and the bow & arrow.
Bands of Itza refugees arrived in the period between 800 AD and
1000 AD. They introduced the chiki style prefabricated
house. The Totonacs, Itza Mayas and Eastern Creeks all use the
word chiki, for house. They also introduced five-side
mounds and formal town planning.
My current speculation is that elites, descended from Itza
immigrants or immigrants from Tamaulipas around 1250 AD, dominated
the Southeast during the period from 900 AD to 1375 AD. There
are four Itza glyphs on Boulder Six of the Track Rock petroglyphs,
which read Mako Hene Ahau Kukulkan = Great Sun Lord
Quetzal-Serpent. After 1375 AD no more five-side Itza
mounds are built and the calendar shifted to beginning on the Summer
Solstice.
Artifacts of the Lamar Culture after 1375 AD can be found in the
exact region that Charles de Rochefort described as the Kingdom of
Apalache. The Georgia Apalache maintained many South
American customs. He said that the kingdom was really a
confederacy of many ethnic groups. The Florida Apalache
were originally colonists from the Georgia Apalache. Tallahassee
is the Anglicization of the Itsate Creek words for
“Offspring of highland towns.”
Your Muskogee, Hitchiti, Seminole, Chickasaw, Yuchi,
Proto-Cherokee, Shawnee, Alabama, Koasati and Florida Apalachee
ancestors were making similar versions of Lamar Pottery and under the
Paracus-te (High Priest-King) of Apalache, but also
remembered their own traditions. De Rochefort stated that
when the Paracus-te was converted to Protestant Christianity by a
small group of Fort Caroline survivors, the commoners stopped
observing the elite’s South American style invisible sun god
religion and went back to their traditional religions. They also
began seeing themselves as separate tribes again.
The last known Paracus-te of Apalache was King
Mahdo. That today is the pronunciation of the Creek word
for thank you, mvto. The Eastern Cherokee word for thank
you is, wahdo.
Richard Thornton
Architect and City
Planner
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