Eight years’ work, involving the removal of untold tons of earth and the recovery of hundreds of thousands of artifacts, has established the archeological significance of Ocmulgee. It has demonstrated the existence here in one small area of material remains from almost every major period of Indian prehistory in the Southeast. Being one of the first large Indian sites in the South to be scientifically excavated, Ocmulgee provided many of the important details in our expanding knowledge of that story.
It is the middle-Georgia chapter of this story we shall tell here. In it we can follow the Indian almost from the time of his earliest recognition on this continent to that of his final defeat and later dispossession by the white man. The period covered may be close to 10,000 years; and while the evidence is often scanty, we can detect in it the unmistakable signs of steady cultural progress. During that time the Indian passed from the simple life of the nomadic hunter to the complex culture of tribes which, enjoying the products of an advanced agriculture, could devote their surplus energy to the development of religious or political systems. In the final pages we can study the effects of the increasing impact of European civilization on the alien culture of a self-sufficient people.
The American Indian
Every school boy knows that at the time of its discovery North America was the Red Man’s continent. He knows that white people, equipped with the weapons and knowledge of an advanced civilization, took this land by persuasion or by force. For most of us our knowledge of the American Indian begins and ends with the brief interval in time where these two races were involved in a bitter struggle.
Our knowledge is limited because until recently no one really knew the answers to such questions as “Where did the Indian come from?” Many thought that he had been preceded by another race of superior intelligence, the “Mound Builders”; and in general our information about him had rested on a great deal of ingenious speculation with very little actual knowledge to back it up. The people most actively interested in the problem are the archeologists. They have been studying it intensively for about 75 years; and, while their work was at first mostly descriptive, the last 25 years have seen tremendous strides in both the techniques of their research and the soundness of their interpretations. Now we know a good deal about the Indian and have traced his career on this continent back to a time when our own past becomes almost equally dim and shadowy. But this information is still mostly to be found in big books, or in special studies that are hard to obtain; so it may be helpful to outline briefly here what we know today of the origins and early career of this particular branch of the human race.
In the Old World, human history has been traced to its beginnings through fossil remains suggesting a stage of development earlier than man. In the Western Hemisphere, however, no such remains have been found, which indicates that the American Indian must have immigrated here from another continent. In searching for his closest relatives, therefore, scientists are now agreed that certain physical peculiarities show the modern as well as the prehistoric Indian to be most closely linked to the peoples of eastern Asia.
Museum exhibit panel. Arrangement of cultural features idealized.
WORKING OUT THE PUZZLE
The archeologist determines the chronology of events by location of materials buried in the earth. Since early material lies below that of more recent times he can learn what happened, when it happened, and why. To fill in the gaps he studies changes in styles of pottery, tools and buildings.