Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park |
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IUCN Category V (Protected Landscape/Seascape)
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The Great Temple Mound (right) and the Lesser Mound (left)
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 Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park
Location in Georgia (U.S. state)
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park
Location in the United States
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| Location | Macon, Georgia, USA |
| Area | 701.54 acres (283.90 ha) |
| Established | December 23, 1936 |
| Visitors | 122,722 (in 2011) |
| Governing body | National Park Service |
| Website | Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park |
| NRHP reference No. | 66000099 |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
The Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park is a special place in Macon, Georgia, USA. It protects amazing traces of Native American cultures that lived here for over 10,000 years! The most famous parts are the huge earthworks (mounds made of earth) built before the year 1000 CE. These were created by the South Appalachian Mississippian culture.
These earthworks include the Great Temple Mound, other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches. Building them showed incredible engineering skills and teamwork. This park has signs of people living here for 17,000 years straight! The park covers about 702-acre (2.84 km2) and is located by the Ocmulgee River. The city of Macon grew up around this area after Fort Benjamin Hawkins was built nearby in 1806. This fort helped with trading between the United States and Native Americans.
For thousands of years, different groups of prehistoric people lived on the Macon Plateau. This area is at the Fall Line, where rolling hills meet the flat coastal plain. The park also includes the Lamar Mounds and Village Site, which is about three miles (4.8 km) downriver from Macon. The US government decided to protect this site in 1934. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966 and became a national historical park in 2019.
Contents
Discovering the Mounds: A National Historical Park
Even though some travelers had seen the mounds, serious archeological digs didn't start until the 1930s. This was during the Great Depression, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's government helped fund the work. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) led big archeological digs here from 1933 to 1942.
Workers dug up parts of eight mounds. They found many important artifacts (old objects) that showed a wide trading network and a complex, advanced culture. On June 14, 1934, the US Congress made the site a national monument. It was officially opened on December 23, 1936, and is managed by the National Park Service.
The national monument was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966. Later, on March 12, 2019, it was renamed a national historical park.
In the 1990s, the National Park Service updated the park's buildings. In 1997, Ocmulgee National Monument was recognized as a Traditional Cultural Property. It was the first site east of the Mississippi River to get this special title.
Exploring the Park Today
The park's visitor center has an archeology museum. Here, you can see artifacts and learn about the different Native American cultures that lived here for thousands of years. You can also learn about the historic Muscogee Creek tribe and other groups who settled nearby during the colonial era. The visitor center also has a short film about the site and a gift shop with crafts and books.
The park is large, covering about 702 acres (2.84 km2), and has 5+1⁄2 miles (8.9 km) of walking trails. Near the visitor center, you can see a rebuilt ceremonial earth lodge. This lodge is based on a 1,000-year-old structure that archeologists found. You can walk about half a mile or drive to reach the Great Temple Mound. Other old features in the park include a burial mound, platform mounds, and earthwork trenches. The historic site of an English colonial trading post is also part of the park.
You can get to the main part of Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park from U.S. Route 80, near Interstate 16. The park is open every day except Christmas Day and New Year's Day.
The Lamar Mounds and Village Site is a separate part of the park. It's located in the swamps about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Macon. The Lamar Site is open only at certain times.
A Look Back: Ocmulgee's Rich History
Ocmulgee (pronounced "oak-mull-ghee") honors the ancient people of Southeastern North America. From Ice Age hunters to the Muscogee Creek tribe of more recent times, this site shows 17,000 years of people living here. The Macon plateau was home to people during the Paleoindian, Archaic, and Woodland periods.
The Macon Plateau Culture: Mound Builders
The main period of activity was around 950-1150 CE, during the Early Mississippian culture. These people had a complex society and built the huge earthworks you see today. Archeologists call this group the Macon Plateau culture. They were part of the larger South Appalachian Mississippian culture. During this time, a powerful society grew, supported by skilled farmers. Their leaders organized the building of large, earthen platform mounds, which were central to their town.
Thousands of workers carried earth by hand in baskets to build the 55 ft (17 m)-high Great Temple Mound. It sits on a high bluff overlooking the Ocmulgee River. Scans show that this mound had a unique spiraling staircase facing the river. Other earthworks include at least one burial mound.
The people built rectangular wooden buildings on top of the platform mounds for important religious ceremonies. The mounds at Ocmulgee are special because they were built further apart than in other Mississippian sites. This might have created more public space and areas for homes around the mounds.
Circular earth lodges were built for meetings and ceremonies. One earth lodge found by archeologists was dated to 1050 CE. This discovery helped them rebuild the lodge you can visit at the park today. Inside, there's a raised earth platform shaped like an eagle. Leaders would sit on molded seats on this platform. The eagle was a symbol shared by many Mississippian cultures.
The Lamar Period: A New Culture Emerges
As the Mississippian culture at the main center slowly changed, a new culture appeared around 1350 CE. These people lived in the swamps downstream. This was the Late Mississippian period (1350 - 1600 CE), also known as the Lamar Period. They built two mounds that are still there today, including a unique spiral mound. The Lamar period had four different stages from 1375 to 1670. Archeologists identify it by special pottery designs.
The Lamar people had a village near their mounds. They protected it with a palisade (a fence made of tall logs). They built rectangular houses with roofs made of thatch or sod and walls covered in clay. These homes were built around the mounds. This ancient village site is now protected as the Lamar Mounds and Village Site.
Lamar pottery was very distinct, with complex designs stamped into it, similar to older Woodland peoples' pottery. It was different from the pottery of the Macon Plateau culture. Many archeologists think the Lamar culture was connected to the earlier Woodland people. These people, after being moved by the new Mississippian culture, might have created a mix of cultures.
Spanish Explorers Arrive
In 1540, the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and his expedition traveled through a Native American area called Ichisi. Historians and archeologists believe this was likely the Lamar site. The Spanish left a path of destruction as they explored the Southeastern U.S. looking for gold.
Their most deadly impact was probably from the pigs they brought for food. Some pigs escaped and became wild, harming the local environment and spreading European infectious diseases. Native Americans had no natural immunity to these new diseases, so many died. This caused huge problems for their societies and likely led to the decline of the Mississippian cultures.
After De Soto's expedition, the Mississippian cultures faded away. Their powerful chiefdoms broke apart. They were replaced by looser groups of clans and the rise of historic tribes. These new groups didn't produce as much food as the earlier societies. This meant fewer people could live together, and the complex culture that built the great mounds slowly disappeared.
The Muscogee in Colonial Times
By the late 1700s, the largest Native American group in Georgia and Alabama was the Muscogee confederacy, also known as the Muscogee Creek tribe. They spoke a language called Muskogean.
The Muscogee considered the ancient Mississippian mounds at Ocmulgee to be sacred. They would make special journeys there. According to Muscogee stories, the mounds area was "the place where we first sat down" after their ancestors finished a long journey from the West.
In 1690, Scottish fur traders from Carolina built a trading post on Ochese Creek (the Ocmulgee River) near the Macon Plateau mounds. Some Muscogee settled nearby, creating a village along the river to easily trade goods. They resisted efforts by Spanish authorities to bring them into Spanish missions.
The traders called both the river and the people living along it "Ochese Creek." Later, this was shortened to "Creek," and traders and colonists used it for all Muskogean-speaking people. The Muscogee called their village near the trading post Ocmulgee (meaning "bubbling waters") in their local language. The British colonists then named the river after it.
The Muscogee traded white-tailed deer skins and Native American slaves (captured from other tribes in traditional raids). In return, they received rum, European cloth, glass beads, hatchets, swords, and flintlock rifles from the colonists. Carolinian fur traders often married Muscogee women, especially daughters of chiefs. This helped create alliances between the two cultures. The fur traders encouraged the Muscogee to raid Spanish missions for slaves. British colonists were few in number and relied on Native American alliances for safety.
In 1702, South Carolina Governor Col. James Moore led a group of 50 colonists and 1,000 Yamasee and Ochese Creek warriors. From 1704 to 1706, they attacked and destroyed many Spanish missions in Georgia and Florida. They captured many people from the Mission tribes, like the Timucua and Apalachee, and sold them into slavery. Along with many deaths from infectious disease epidemics, this warfare caused Florida's Native American population to drop sharply.
As Florida's population decreased, the English-allied tribes owed money to slave traders. They paid other tribes to attack and enslave Native Americans. This led to the Yamasee War in 1715. The Ochese Creek joined the fight against the colonists and burned the Ocmulgee trading post. In response, South Carolina started giving weapons to the Cherokee. The Cherokee attacks forced the Ochese Creek to leave the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers and move west to the Chattahoochee River. The Yamasee found safety in Spanish Florida.
After the Yamasee were defeated, the English created the new colony of Georgia, founding Savannah in 1733. The colony didn't become profitable until it allowed slavery. They began importing African slaves to work on plantations growing rice, cotton, and indigo. These crops, worked by enslaved people, created wealth for the rich planters in South Carolina.
Because of ongoing conflicts with European settlers and other Muscogee groups, many Ochese Creek moved from Georgia to Spanish Florida in the late 1700s. There, they joined other refugees and escaped African slaves to form a new tribe called the Seminole. They mostly spoke Muscogee.
Relations with the United States
The Ocmulgee mounds amazed travelers in the 1700s. The naturalist William Bartram visited Ocmulgee in 1774 and 1776. He wrote about the "wonderful remains of the power and grandeur of the ancients in this part of America." Bartram was the first to write down the Muscogee stories about how the mounds began.
The Lower Creek of Georgia first had good relations with the US government. This was thanks to Benjamin Hawkins, President George Washington's Indian agent, and the Muscogee Principal Chief Alexander McGillivray. McGillivray was important both within his matrilineal tribe (because of his mother's family) and among Americans (because of his father's position). He helped the US recognize Muscogee and Seminole sovereignty (self-rule) through the Treaty of New York (1790).
However, after the cotton gin was invented in 1794, growing short-staple cotton became very profitable. Georgians wanted the Muscogee's fertile lands to create cotton plantations. They started moving onto Native American territory.
In 1805, under government pressure, the Lower Creek gave up their lands east of the Ocmulgee River to Georgia. But they refused to give up the sacred mounds. They kept a 3x5-mile area on the east bank called the Ocmulgee Old Fields Reserve. This included both the mounds on the Macon Plateau and the Lamar mounds.
In 1806, President Thomas Jefferson ordered Fort Benjamin Hawkins to be built on a hill overlooking the mounds. This fort was important for the military until 1821. It was a US Army headquarters and a supply base for wars like the War of 1812. It was also an important trading post for deerskins and a meeting place for the Creek Nation, the US, and Georgia.
Tensions grew between the Upper Creek and Lower Creek as European-American settlers moved into Georgia. Many Upper Creek wanted to return to traditional ways. A group of young men, the Red Sticks, formed around their prophets. The US and Georgia used the fort during the Creek War of 1813–1814. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, General Andrew Jackson defeated the Red Stick group of the Upper Creek. The Red Sticks had been influenced by the Shawnee chief Tecumseh and wanted to drive the Americans out. The Lower Creek fought with the US against the Red Sticks.
Led by Chief William McIntosh, the Lower Creek also allied with the United States in the First Seminole War in Florida. McIntosh had influence because of his family ties to Georgia's planter elite through his wealthy Scottish father.
In 1819, the Lower Creek gathered for the last time at Ocmulgee Old Fields. In 1821, Chief McIntosh agreed to the first Treaty of Indian Springs. In this treaty, the Lower Creek gave up their lands east of the Flint River, including Ocmulgee Old Fields, to the United States. In 1822, Bibb County was created, and the town of Macon was founded the next year.
The Creek National Council tried to stop land cessions by making it a capital offense (punishable by death). But in 1825, Chief McIntosh and his cousin, Georgia Governor George Troup, made an agreement with the US. McIntosh and other Lower Creek chiefs signed the second Treaty of Indian Springs in 1825. McIntosh gave away the remaining Lower Creek lands to the United States. The US Senate approved the treaty by just one vote, even though the Muscogee Principal Chief had not signed it. Soon after, Chief Menama and 200 warriors attacked McIntosh's home. They killed him and burned his mansion because he had given away communal lands.
A Muscogee group went to Washington to protest the treaty to President John Quincy Adams. The US government and the Creek negotiated a new treaty, called the Treaty of New York (1826). However, the Georgia state government continued to remove Creek people from lands under the 1825 treaty.
In 1828, Andrew Jackson became president. He supported Indian removal, signing a law in 1830. Later, he used the US Army to remove the remaining Southeastern Indian tribes in the 1830s. The Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and most of the Seminole (known as the Five Civilized Tribes) were all forced to move from the Southeast to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
After this Indian Removal, the Muscogee reorganized in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). In 1867, they founded a new capital, which they called Okmulgee to honor their sacred mounds in Georgia.
Images for kids
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Ocmulgee National Monument, Funeral mound, c. 1876
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Park entrance sign
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Looking upward to the Great Temple Mound from the bluff above the Ocmulgee River
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View from top of Great Temple Mound
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The Great Temple Mound
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Map on display at Fort Hawkins
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Pipes, necklaces, and a pottery vessel with a lid the shape of a human head, found at Ocmulgee
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Col. Moore's raiding party passes the Ocmulgee trading-post
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Earth Lodge Display
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Detail of museum
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Entrance to earth lodge
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Interior of earth lodge
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Interior of earth lodge
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Earthlodge fireplace. Nearby were 47 molded seats where the high chiefs or priests sat on the eagle platform
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