| Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park | |
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IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape) | |
 The Great Temple Mound (right) and the Lesser Mound (left) | |
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| Location | Macon, Georgia, USA |
| Coordinates | 32°50′12″N83°36′30″W / 32.83667°N 83.60833°W /32.83667; -83.60833 |
| Area | 3,336 acres (13.50 km2)[1] |
| Established | December 23, 1936 (1936-12-23) |
| Visitors | 122,722 (in 2011)[2] |
| Governing body | National Park Service |
| Website | Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park |
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park | |
| NRHP reference No. | 66000099[3] |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
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| Mound Builders |
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| Polities |
| Archaeology |
| Religion |
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park (formerlyOcmulgee National Monument) inMacon, Georgia, United States preserves traces of over ten millennia of culture from theIndigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. Its chief remains are majorearthworks built before 1000CE by theSouth Appalachian Mississippian culture (a regional variation of theMississippian culture.)[4] These include the Great Temple and other ceremonialmounds, aburial mound, anddefensive trenches. They represented highly skilled engineering techniques and soil knowledge, and the organization of many laborers. The site has evidence of "12,000 years of continuous human habitation."[5] The 3,336-acre (13.50 km2) park is located on the east bank of theOcmulgee River.Macon, Georgia developed around the site after the United States builtFort Benjamin Hawkins nearby in 1806 to support trading with Native Americans.
For thousands of years, succeeding cultures ofprehistoricindigenous peoples had settled on what is called the Macon Plateau at theFall Line, where the rolling hills of thePiedmont met theAtlantic coastal plain. The monument designation included theLamar Mounds and Village Site, located downriver about three miles (4.8 km) from Macon. The site was designated for federal protection by theNational Park Service (NPS) in 1934, listed on theNational Register of Historic Places in 1966, and redesignated in 2019 as anational historical park.
Ocmulgee (/oʊkˈmʌlɡiː/) is a memorial to ancient indigenous peoples in Southeastern North America. The name comes from theMikasukiOki Molki, meaning 'Bubbling Water'.[6] FromIce Age hunters to the Muscogee Creektribe of historic times, the site has evidence of 12,000 years of human habitation. The Macon plateau was inhabited during thePaleoindian,Archaic, andWoodland phases.
The major occupation was ca. 950–1150 CE during the EarlyMississippian-culture phase. The people of this sophisticated, stratified culture built the complex, massive earthworks that expressed their religious and political system.[7] Archeologists call this society the Macon Plateau culture, a local expression of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture.[8] During this period, an elite society supported by skillful farmers developed a town. Leaders directed the complex construction of large, earthworkplatform mounds, the central structures on the plateau.
Carrying earth by hand in bags, thousands of workers built the 55 ft (17 m)-high Great Temple Mound on ahigh bluff overlooking the floodplain of the Ocmulgee River.Magnetometer scans have revealed theplatform mound had a spiraling staircase oriented toward the floodplain. The staircase is unique among any of the Mississippian-culture sites. Other earthworks include at least oneburial mound.
The people built rectangular wooden buildings to house certain religious ceremonies on the top of the platform mounds. The mounds at Ocmulgee were unusual because they were constructed further from each other than was typical of other Mississippian complexes. Scholars believe this was to provide for public space and residences around the mounds.
Circularearth lodges were built to serve as places to conduct meetings and important ceremonies. Remains of one of the earth lodges werecarbon dated to 1050 CE. This evidence was the basis for the reconstructed lodge which archeologists later built at the park center. The interior features a raised-earth platform, shaped like an eagle with a forked-eye motif. Molded seats on the platform were built for the leaders. The eagle was a symbol of theSoutheastern Ceremonial Complex, which the people shared with other Mississippian cultures.
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As the Mississippian culture declined at the ceremonial center, ca. 1350 a new culture coalesced among people who lived in the swamps downstream. TheLate Mississippian period (1350–1600 CE),[9] also consisted of the Lamar Period, where natives built two mounds that have survived at that site, including a unique spiral mound. The Lamar period is composed of four distinct phases that lasted between the years 1375 and 1670. It is identified through unique ceramic design elements that were primarily produced during this period.[10] These four phases were the Duvall, Iron Horse, Dyar, and Bell phases.[10]
The people at Lamar had a village associated with the mounds. They protected it by a constructed defensivepalisade of logs placed vertically. They built rectangular houses, with roofs made of thatch or sod and clay-plastered walls, which were located around the mounds.[11] This archeological site of a former settlement is now protected as theLamar Mounds and Village Site.[12]
Lamar pottery was distinctive, stamped with complex designs like the pottery of the earlier Woodland peoples. It was unlike other pottery of the Macon Plateau culture. Many archaeologists believe the Lamar culture was related to the earlier Woodland inhabitants, who, after being displaced by the newer Mississippian culture migrants, developed a hybrid culture.[13] Late Woodland Period characteristics extended into the Mississippian Period of 800–1600 CE.[13]
In 1540, the expedition ofSpanishconquistadorHernando de Soto recorded its travel through thechiefdom ofIchisi. Historians and archeologists believe this was likely what is now known as the Lamar site.[14] The Spaniards left a trail of destruction in their wake as they explored the present-daySoutheastern U.S.[citation needed] in a failed search for precious metals. Their deadliest legacy of unintended consequences was likely related to the pigs they brought as food supply. Escaping pigs became feral, disrupting local habitat and spreadingEurasianinfectious diseases. As the American Indians had no acquiredimmunity to these new diseases, they suffered high fatalities. The rate of deaths caused social dislocations and likely contributed to a collapse of the Mississippian cultures.[15]
In the aftermath of De Soto's expedition, the Mississippian cultures declined and disappeared. Hierarchicalchiefdoms crumbled. They were replaced by loose confederacies ofclans and the rise of historic regional tribes. The clans did not produce the agricultural surpluses of the previous society, which had supported the former population density and development of complex culture. Agriculture had enabled the development of hierarchy in the larger population. Its leaders planned and directed thecorvée labor system that raised and maintained the great earthen mounds. The culture supported artisans as well.
By the late 18th century, the largest Native American confederacy in present-dayGeorgia andAlabama was theMuscogee confederacy (known during the colonial and federal periods as the Muscogee Creek tribe). They were among the Muskogean-speaking peoples of the Southeast.
They considered the ancient Mississippian mounds at Ocmulgee to be sacred and made pilgrimages there. According to Muscogee oral tradition, the mounds area was "the place where we first sat down", after their ancestors ended their migration journey from the West.[16]
In 1690,Scottishfur traders fromCarolina built atrading post on Ochese Creek (Ocmulgee River), near the Macon Plateau mounds. Some Muscogee settled nearby, developing a village along theOcmulgee River near the post, where they could easily acquire trade goods. They defied efforts bySpanish Florida authorities to bring them into themission province ofApalachee.[17]
The traders referred to both the river and the peoples living along it as "Ochese Creek." Later usage shortened the term to Creek, which traders and colonists applied to allMuskogean-speaking peoples.[17] The Muscogee called their village near the trading-postOcmulgee (bubbling waters) in the localHitchiti language. Carolina European colonists called it Ocmulgee Town, and later named the river after it. .
The Muscogee traded pelts ofwhite tailed deer and Native American slaves captured in traditional raids against other tribes. They received West Indianrum, European cloth, glass beads, hatchets, swords, andflintlock rifles from the colonial traders. Carolinianfur traders, who were men of capital, took Muscogee wives, often the daughters ofchiefs. It was a practice common also among European fur traders in Canada; both the fur traders and Aboriginal Canadians saw such marriages as a way to increase the alliances among the elite of both cultures. The fur traders encouraged the Muscogee slaving raids against Spanish "Mission Indians." The English and Scots colonists were so few in number in the Carolina region that they depended on Native American alliances for security and survival.
In 1702, Carolina governorJames Moore raised amilitia of 50 colonists and 1,000Yamasee and Ochese Creek warriors. From 1704 to 1706, theyattacked and destroyed a significant number ofSpanish missions in coastal Georgia and Florida. They captured numerous Indians who were referred to as Mission tribes: theTimucua andApalachee. The colonists and some of their Indian allies sold their captives intoslavery, with many being transported to Caribbean plantations. Together with extensive fatalities fromepidemics ofinfectious diseases, the warfare caused Florida's indigenous population to fall from about 16,000 in 1685 to 3,700 by 1715.[18]
As Florida was depopulated, the English-allied tribes grew indebted toslave traders in Carolina. They paid other tribes to attack and enslave Native Americans, raids that were a catalyst for theYamasee War in 1715. In an effort to drive the colonists out, the Ochese Creek joined the rebellion and burned the Ocmulgee trading post. In retaliation, theSouth Carolina authorities began arming theCherokee, whose attacks forced the Ochese Creek to abandon the Ocmulgee andOconee rivers, and move west to theChattahoochee River. The Yamasee took refuge in Spanish Florida.
After the defeat of the Yamasee, former soldierJames Oglethorpe established thecolony of Georgia, founding the settlement ofSavannah on the coast in 1733. Although various development schemes were attempted (silkworm cultivation, production of naval stores), the colony did not become profitable until after Georgia ended its prohibition of slavery. The founders had intended to provide a colony for hardworkingyeomen laborers, but not enough people were willing to immigrate from England and bear its hard conditions. The colony began toimport enslaved Africans as laborers and to develop the labor-intensiverice,cotton andindigoplantations in the 1750s in the Low Country and on the Sea Islands. These commodity crops, based on slave labor, generated the wealth of theplanter class of Georgia and South Carolina.
Because of continuing conflicts with European colonists and other Muscogee groups, many Ochese Creek migrated from Georgia to Spanish Florida in the later 18th century. There they joined with earlier refugees of the Yamasee War, remnants of Mission Indians, andfugitive slaves, to form a new tribe which became known as theSeminole. They spoke mostly Muscogee.
The Ocmulgee mounds evoked awe in eighteenth-century travelers. ThenaturalistWilliam Bartram journeyed through Ocmulgee in 1774 and 1776. He described the "wonderful remains of the power and grandeur of the ancients in this part of America."[19] Bartram was the first to record the Muscogee oral histories of the mounds' origins.
The Lower Creek of Georgia initially had good relations with the federal government of the United States, based on the diplomacy of bothBenjamin Hawkins, PresidentGeorge Washington's Indian agent, and the Muscogee Principal ChiefAlexander McGillivray. McGillivray was the son ofSehoy II, a Muscogee woman of the Wind Clan, and Lachlan McGillivray, a wealthyScottishfur trader. He achieved influence both within thematrilineal tribe, because of the status of his mother's family, and among the Americans, because of his father's position and wealth. McGillivray secured U.S. recognition of Muscogee and Seminolesovereignty by theTreaty of New York (1790).
But, after the invention of thecotton gin in 1794 made cultivation ofshort-staple cotton more profitable, Georgians were eager to acquire Muscogee corn fields of the uplands area to develop as cotton plantations; they began to encroach on the native territory. Short-staple cotton could be grown here, whereas Low Country plantations had to use long-staple cotton.
Under government pressure in 1805, the Lower Creek ceded their lands east of theOcmulgee River to the state of Georgia, but they refused to surrender the sacred mounds. They retained a 3-by-5-mile (4.8 km × 8.0 km) area on the east bank called the OcmulgeeOld Fields Reserve. It included both the mounds on the Macon Plateau and the Lamar mounds.
In 1806 theJefferson administration orderedFort Benjamin Hawkins to be built on a hill overlooking the mounds. The fort was of national and state military importance through 1821, used as a US Army command headquarters, and a supply depot for campaigns in theWar of 1812 and later. Economically, it was important as a trading post, orUnited States factory, to regulate the Creek Nation's trade in deerskins. In addition, it served as a headquarters and mustering area for the Georgia state militia. It served as a point of contact among the Creek Nation, the US, and the state of Georgia military and political representatives.[20]
Tensions among the Upper Creek and Lower Creek towns increased with encroachment by European-American settlers in Georgia. Many among the Upper Creek wanted to revive traditional culture and religion, and a young group of men, the Red Sticks, formed around their prophets. The US and Georgia forces used the fort as a base during theCreek War of 1813–1814. At theBattle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, GeneralAndrew Jackson defeated theRed Stick faction of the Upper Creek. Together with their own issues, the Red Sticks had been influenced by theShawnee chiefTecumseh and were seeking to drive the Americans out of their territory. The Lower Creek fought alongside the U.S. against the Red Sticks.
Led by ChiefWilliam McIntosh, the Lower Creek also allied with the United States in theFirst Seminole War in Florida. McIntosh's influence in the area was extended by his family ties to Georgia'splanter elite through his wealthy Scots father of the same name. McIntosh was also connected to the McGillivray clan. A resident ofSavannah, the senior McIntosh had strong ties to the British and had served as aLoyalist officer during theAmerican Revolution. He tried to recruit the Lower Creek to fight for the British in the war. Remaining in the new United States after the war, he became a cottonplanter.
In 1819, the Lower Creek gathered for the last time at Ocmulgee Old Fields. In 1821, Chief McIntosh agreed to thefirst Treaty of Indian Springs, by which the Lower Creek ceded their lands east of theFlint River, including Ocmulgee Old Fields, to the United States. In 1822 the state charteredBibb County, and the following year the town ofMacon was founded.
The Creek National Council struggled to end such land cessions by making them acapital offense. But in 1825, Chief McIntosh and his paternal cousin, Georgia GovernorGeorge Troup, negotiated an agreement with the US. McIntosh and several other Lower Creek chiefs signed thesecond Treaty of Indian Springs in 1825. McIntosh ceded the remaining Lower Creek lands to the United States, and the Senate ratified the treaty by one vote, despite its lacking the signature of Muscogee Principal ChiefWilliam McIntosh. Soon after that, the chiefMenama and 200 warriors attacked McIntosh's plantation. They killed him and burned down his mansion in retaliation for his alienating the communal lands.
William McIntosh and a Muscogee delegation from the National Council went to Washington to protest the treaty to President John Quincy Adams. The US government and the Creek negotiated a new treaty, called theTreaty of New York (1826), but the Georgia state government proceeded with evicting Creek from lands under the 1825 treaty. It also passed laws dissolving tribal government and regulating residency on American Indian lands.
In 1828,Andrew Jackson was elected president. He supportedIndian removal, signing legislation to that effect by Congress in 1830. Later he used US Army forces to remove the remnants of the Southeastern Indian tribes through the 1830s. The Creek, Cherokee,Choctaw,Chickasaw, and most of theSeminole, known as the Five Civilized Tribes, were all removed from the Southeast toIndian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
FollowingIndian Removal, the Muscogee reorganized in theIndian Territory (now Oklahoma). In 1867 they founded a new capital, which they calledOkmulgee in honor of their sacred mounds on the plateau of the Georgia fall line.[21]
While the mounds had been studied by some travelers, professional excavation under the evolving techniques ofarcheology did not begin until the 1930s, under the administration of PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt during theGreat Depression. TheWorks Progress Administration (WPA) sponsored large-scalearchaeological digs at the site between 1933 and 1942. Workers excavated portions of eight mounds, finding an array of significantarcheologicalartifacts that revealed a wide trading network and complex, sophisticated culture.[22] On June 14, 1934, the park was authorized by Congress as anational monument and formally established on December 23, 1936, under theNational Park Service.
As an historic unit of the Park Service, the national monument was listed on theNational Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966. In 1997, the NPS designated Ocmulgee Old Fields as aTraditional Cultural Property, the first such site named east of theMississippi River.
TheJohn D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed March 12, 2019, redesignated it as anational historical park and increased its size by about 2,100 acres.[23] It has an NPS-owned area of 701 acres (2.84 km2). The expanded area will be conveyed to the Park Service following redevelopment.[24] 906 acres were transferred to the park on February 9, 2022, after negotiations headed by theOpen Space Institute halted incompatible industrial development adjacent to the park; under the same deal, an additional 45 acres were transferred to the Ocmulgee Land Trust while wetlands restoration occurs, and will be transferred to the park at a later date.[25]
Ocmulgee'svisitor center includes an archaeology museum. It displays artifacts and interprets the successive cultures of the prehistoric Native Americans who inhabited this site for thousands of years. In addition, it interprets the historicMuscogee Creek tribe and their diverse tribal towns who settled this region archaeologically and historically during thecolonial era. The visitor center includes a short orientation film for the site. Its gift shop has a variety of craft goods, and books related to the park. In the early 1990s, the National Park Service renovated its facilities at the park.
The large park encompasses 702 acres (2.84 km2), and has5+1⁄2 miles (8.9 km) of walking trails. Near the visitor center is a reconstructed ceremonial earthlodge, based on a 1,000-year-old structure excavated by archeologists. Visitors can reach the Great Temple Mound via a half-mile walk or the park road. Other surviving prehistoric features in the park include a burial mound,platform mounds, and earthworktrenches. The historic site of the English colonialtrading post at Ocumulgee, when they were allied with the Muscogee, is also part of the park. It was discovered during archeological excavations in the 1930s.
The main section of Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park is accessible fromU.S. Route 80, offInterstate 16 (which passes through the southwest edge of the park). It is open daily except Christmas Day and New Year's Day.
The Lamar Mounds and Village Site is an isolated unit of the park, located in the swamps about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Macon. The Lamar Site is open on a limited basis.
In 2022, the NPS conducted a Special Resource Study on the Ocmulgee River Corridor,[26] which could have recommended expansion of the area as anational park andpreserve.[27][28] The study area includes parts ofBond Swamp National Wildlife Refuge,Robins Air Force Base, and three Georgia statewildlife management areas.[29] TheMuscogee Nation may be a partner in conservation management.[30]
In November 2023, the study's findings, which were sent to Congress, concluded that the Corridor proposal was unfeasible at the time due to estimated costs of acquisition, as well as opposition from landowners and theGeorgia Department of Natural Resources, but also assessed the Corridor as meeting criteria for "national significance and suitability" and recommended a scaled-down plan covering less land and operating as a public-private partnership (such as aNational Heritage Area orNational Historic Landmark designation) in association with the Muscogee Nation and other stakeholders.[31] Despite the study's findings and recommendations, SenatorsJon Ossoff andRaphael Warnock and RepresentativesSanford Bishop andAustin Scott, whose districts covered the Ocmulgee River watershed in question, announced their intent to support the intended expansion.[32][33]
Bipartisan bills were introduced both in the House and Senate of the 118th Congress in 2024[34][35] and of the 119th Congress in 2025[36][37] to establish Ocmulgee Mounds National Park and Preserve.
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Geographic data related toOcmulgee Mounds National Historical Park atOpenStreetMap| Middle Mississippian |
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| South Appalachian Mississippian |
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| Caddoan Mississippian | |||||||||||
| Upper Mississippian cultures |
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