February 11, 2014
Itza Mayas at the
Gate
Information from a newly
acquired map, published in 1721, reinforces architectural, genetic and
linguistic evidence that Itza-Chontal Maya traders established towns in
mountain gaps and river confluences along Southern Appalachian Mountain trade
routes. This is exactly how the Itza and
Chontal Mayas established trade supremacy in Mesoamerica.
In the early 1700s
the Cherokees labeled the region around Cherokee, Clay and Franklin Counties,
North Carolina, plus Union, Towns, Rabun, White and Habersham Counties, Georgia
as Itsayi (Place of the Itza’s.) Most of the Cherokee towns with Itza Maya names
disappeared from the European maps within a few years, while Creek and Seminole
towns with Itza Maya names survived until the Trail of Tears.
Keywords: Itsate, Itsapa, Itsayi, Itcha-e, Itchao,
Etchae, Echoee, Chiaha, Cheoah, Coweta, Coweeta, Chote, Chichi-we, Tallulah, Talasee,
Relates to the history of:
Itsate (Hitchiti) Creek ~ Highland Apalache ~ Valley
Cherokee ~ Koweta Creek ~ Seminole ~ Overhill Cherokee ~ Apalachicola ~ Koasati
~ Kusa-te ~ Cusseta
One of the biggest
dangers while translating Native American place names in the Southeast is that
they are typically Anglicized and only approximate the original indigenous
words. For example, an internal “s” in
Itstate Creek (Hitchiti) and the Maya “z” are pronounced as “jzh” sound. In Cherokee, an
English “s” more guttural “sh”. So when
an English speaker heard a Creek say It: jzhä : tē, it was written down as Hitchiti.
Cherokee was
originally spoken with very little movement of the lips, whereas Itsate-Creek,
like Maya, was often pronounced with the tip of the tongue or movement of the
lips. For example, the Itsate-Creek word
for “bear”, nokoshe, became Naguche in Cherokee and Nacoochee in English. Cherokees could not pronounce an Itzate “p”
sound, so often dropped the “p” sound altogether from towns with Maya or Itsate
Creek names. Itsapo became Etchao.
In
2006 I was working on the design of the adaptive reuse of an early 20th
century Ford dealership in downtown Clayton, GA into a locally owned
mega-pharmacy. Clayton is located in
extreme northeast Georgia near the headwaters of the Little Tennessee
River. Some of the most fertile land in
the Appalachians is located in the floodplain of this river between Clayton and
the North Carolina line. This was also the location of an extremely important
trade route that linked the South Atlantic Coast with the Tennessee Valley and
Midwest.
The
region around headwaters of the Little Tennessee and Tuckasegee River is the
traditional homeland of the Koweta Creeks. Known now by their Muskogee name, they were
originally Itsate speakers, who called themselves Kowi-te (Mountain Lion
People.) The first European map to
mention this ethnic group shows them living no farther north than the
northeastern Georgia Mountains. Their
villages were scattered all over northern Georgia, but their capital in 1743
was in western Georgia on the Chattahoochee River.
The
Koweta Creeks’ presence in Franklin County, NC survives in the place names of Cowee, Coweyi and the Coweeta Mound. The Coweeta
Mound is now described in North Carolina literature as the oldest known
Cherokee mound. Coweeta and Cowi are then explained as ancient
Cherokee words, whose meanings have been lost.
After
finishing the measurements of the old car dealership I drove northward to the
GA-NC line to measure the little known Otto Mounds town site. I had “discovered” the Otto Mound in 2005 by
creating a triangular matrix of all Early Mississippian sites in Georgia. The triangles were formed by the angle of the
Winter Solstice Sunset, True North and True South. All of the major towns of that period were aligned
to this triangular matrix. I suspected
that there would be a mound somewhere near US 23-441 on the state line . . .
and there it was.
Just
to the south of the Otto Mound in Georgia are several other town sites with
mounds along the Little Tennessee River. They occupied what is now called Rabun Gap,
but in the 1700s was called Itsate
Gap. It is a constricted, but gently
sloped path through the Blue Ridge Mountains. A Native American canoe launched
into the Little Tennessee River in Dillard, GA could have been paddled all the
way to Cahokia and beyond.
This
Proto-Creek province has received very little study from either Georgia or
North Carolina archaeologists. Most
Georgia archaeologists have shown little interest in the mountains even though
Robert Wauchope chronicled phenomenal archaeological resources in that region
during 1939 and 1940. The Otto Mound Site is 250 miles away from
Chapel Hill and clearly off the radar screen of their archaeologists and
educators.
The
only archaeological survey of the town site occurred in 1988 when a young
archaeologist assigned to the Western District Office of the North Carolina
State Historic Preservation Office visited it for a few hours. She dug some post holes that immediately
revealed an intense occupation of the town site going back to the Middle
Woodland Period. She found both Swift
Creek and Hopewell style ceramics, plus Late Woodland and a full range of Mississippian
Styles typically found around Etowah Mounds in NW Georgia. This presented a
problem. Even though the same potsherds would have been labeled Napier
Complicated Stamp, Woodstock, Etowah 1-3 and Lamar a hundred feet away in
Georgia, she called them proto-Cherokee styles that didn’t exactly match
potsherd found elsewhere in North Carolina.
She speculated that the town had been abandoned at some time in the
1600s. There were some historical period
artifacts near the surface that suggested the site might have been briefly
occupied later on.
The
archaeologist did not know that William Bartram had visited this town in 1776.
She also was not even aware that the Otto site contained several mounds and a
rectangular plaza. She apparently never
looked at a topographic map, satellite photo or infrared image of the site. For
reasons explained below, the Otto Site and a cluster of town sites immediately
to the south in Georgia should be considered one of the more important
archaeological zones in the Appalachians.
Instead these town sites are virtually ignored.
There
is something very special about the site plan of this town on the Little
Tennessee River. The main mound is five
sided like the big mound at Etowah. The
Otto Mound and its rectangular plaza are a mirror image of the five sided mound
and plaza at Etowah, but approximately 1/10th the size. Both
architectural monuments are aligned to the Winter Solstice sunset, which was
the beginning of the Maya solar year. It is the same shape and size as several five
sided mounds along the Chattahoochee River in the vicinity of Columbus,
GA.
Linguistic evidence and
the 1721 map
After
measuring the main Otto Mound, I headed north to get eat some barbecue in
Franklin, NC. Along the way, a North
Carolina historical marker entitled “Cherokee Victory” caught my eye. I stopped to read about the Battle of Echoee. It described a Cherokee victory against the
British in 1760 farther south on US 23-441.
The battle was fought near the present Georgia-North Carolina line. One word caught my eye. It was Itsate. That was the original name of the mountain
pass at the location of the Otto Mounds, where the battle was fought. I wondered, “Why would the most important gap in the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains
have the same name as what the Itza Mayas called themselves?” That was weird. When I got home that evening, I looked up the
words Echoee and Itsate in a Cherokee history website. Neither one had a known
meaning in contemporary Cherokee.
In
the years since then, I became aware that the original name of the large
proto-Creek town around the five-side Kenimer Mound in Georgia’s Nacoochee
Valley was Itsate. This is where we re-discovered
a large, terraced Chontal Maya ballcourt in October of 2013. Robert Wauchope first documented it and gave
the massive earthwork an official site number, but somehow both Georgia’s
archaeologists and the Sautee Community forgot that it was literally composed the
front yard of their community center.
During
the 1600s, French, Spanish and English maps placed a town named Apalache in the
Nacoochee Valley. This may be the
European name for Itsate, since an infrared image picked up the footprint of a
three sided fort immediately south of the cluster of indigenous earthworks.
The
original name for a large town on the lower Little Tennessee River in Tennessee
was also Itsate. This town is better
known by its Cherokee “nickname” of Chote.
However, Chote is also an Itza Maya word. Cho’I was the language spoken by the
Itza. The “te” suffix means “people” in
Itza and Itsate Creek. Interestingly
enough, the town named Itsate in the Nacoochee Valley eventually was also given
the name Chote.
Research
into the Track Rock Terrace Complex in 2011 and 2012 revealed that the Itstate Creek
name for the region north of the Blue Ridge Mountain in north-central Georgia,
northeast Georgia and western North Carolina was Itsapa. That is pure Itza-Chontal Maya and means “Place
of the Itza.” The Cherokee word for the
region was Itsayi. Itsayi and Itsapa had
the same meaning.
A
big surprise came with the 1721 Barnwell map of Southeastern North America. It
was the first British map to mention the word “Charakee” and also included the
names of many Cherokee towns. There
were three towns at Unicoi Gap, Itsate (Echoee)
Pass and Tanasee Gap that had Itza as a root word. William Hamerton, the cartographer of this
map, wrote the Cherokee “s” sound as a “tch”.
The map labeled the Cherokee province around the headwaters of the
Little Tennessee River, Etchayi (Itsayi).
That is the same label that the 1725 Hunter Map placed on the region
around Brasstown Bald to the west.
The
Barnwell map also displayed several village names along the Little Tennessee
River between Rabun Gap and the Tennessee River that were obviously Itza Maya
words. Chiaha means “Salvia River” or possibly “Salvia Lord.” Chichiwe
means “Dog People.” Several other
village names had “Etchi” or “Itchi” as their anglicized roots. Near the
confluence of the Tennessee and Little Tennessee River was another town named
Itsate (Etchate in Hamerton’s spelling.)
A pattern emerges
The
Cherokee towns with Maya names were located in North Carolina counties in which
the 2102 POOF DNA study found substantial Maya DNA in members of the Eastern
Band of Cherokees. This region was known as the Valley Cherokees. These Valley Cherokees
had very different genetic profiles than those EBC members living on the Qualla
Reservation, which were analyzed by DNA Consultants, Inc. Also, the Valley Cherokees carried much higher
percentages of Asiatic (Native American) DNA than those on the
reservation. Cherokees in Towns County,
GA also carried substantial levels of South American DNA.
Although
the POOF study was not a truly scientific random sample, no Middle Eastern DNA
showed up in our test subjects, while Middle Eastern DNA was prevalent among
Qualla Cherokees. This contrast strongly
suggests that the original Cherokee Alliance was composed of distinctly different
ethnic groups.
The
province of Itsapa was defined on all sides by tall mountains and interlaced by
improved paths. According to Creek tradition,
a wide trail, paved with shells and white stones and known as the Great White
Path, was constructed along a route that is now US 129 Highway. It ran from the proto-Creek town of Talassee on the
Little Tennessee River and Great Smoky Mountains in Graham County, NC; through
present day Murphy, NC and Track Rock Gap, GA; then through Neels Gap and Dahlonega,
GA to the head of canoe navigation of the Oconee River in present day Athens,
GA.
At
every one of the gaps in these high mountains there are Early Mississippian
town sites with either five sided or truncated mounds. A town named Itsate with the massive,
five-sided Kenimer Mound guarded the eastern entrance to the Nacoochee Valley,
while Nokoshe guarded the west. Itsapo was where Helen, GA now sits,
guarding the Unicoi Gap, which was where both the Chattahoochee and Hiwassee
Rivers had their sources. Itsa-E
(meaning the principal town) was the probable name of the Otto Mounds at Rabun
Gap. There was a large town at the base
of Andrews Gap in Cherokee County, NC and another town with Tallula
mound guarding the other side of the gap in Graham County, NC. Tali guarded the Little Tennessee
River Gorge through the Unaka Mountains. Chiaha was on an island in the
Little Tennessee at the mouth of Nantahala Gorge. A town
of unknown name was situated on Cane Creek in Lumpkin County, GA where it
flowed out of Neels Gap.
Regional
organization of town locations and maintenance of regional trade routes is
strong evidence that the indigenous people of the Southern Appalachians were
led by a political structure that was substantially more sophisticated than
typical of what anthropologists label “chiefdoms.” Many
Southeastern tribes have a tradition that immigrants from the south introduced
this political sophistication. They were called “sun lords” . . . hene ahau in Itza Maya. The
official title of the Second Chief of the Muscogee-Creek Nation is henehv.
If
anybody needs some snow, I can UPS it to you!
Richard
L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner
POOF
Editor
.jpg)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
