(' Interior Provinces of the 17th Century frontier of the Spanish mission system, including a large part of PRELUDE TO ABANDONMENT: THE present-day Georgia, has had comparatively little investigation and INTERIOR PROVINCES OF EARLY synthesis (with some notable exceptions, including a volume edited 17TH-CENTURY GEORGIA by Hudson and Tesser, in press). This is particularly true for the period following the early exploratory expeditions, when even the Spaniards possessed only limited knowledge about the interior. Nevertheless, for many aboriginal societies in Georgia, thls John E. Worth era was precisely the most important one for understanding the Fernbank Museum of Natural History transformations that in most cases led to abandonment and relocation. During the late 16th and early 17th centuries, these Indian provinces remained largely beyond the realm of consistent historical documentation, but were nonetheless subject to INTRODUCTION: INTERIOR GEORGIA AFTER DE SOTO considerable stresses as immediate neighbors of Spanish Florida. One by one, almost all of the indigenous societies of southern and The first penetration of interior Georgia by Spanish explorers eastern interior Georgia fell apan, their members either being drawn under the leadership of Hernando de Soto has in recent years been into the mission system or relocating among other groups on the the subject of scholarly research and popular attention. resulting in frontier. What had been a substantially ab01iginal social geography large part from the efforts of Charles Hudson and his students and in these areas in 1600 gave way to a broad abandoned zone by the colleagues in re-evaluating the route that the expedition took. As a third quarter of the 17th century, ushering in a new landscape for result of this ethnohistoric and archaeological research, including the emerging Creek and Cherokee tribes. efforts to provide alternatives to Hudson's route, a much clearer Excluding Georgia's coastal zone, which was the scene of pkture has emerged of the late prehistoric chiefdoms of Georgia considerable activity during the first years of Pedro Menendez's and the Southeast at the moment of first Emopean contact in the colony of La Florida, Georgia's inteiior coastal plain and piedmont 16th centw-y. Fm1hermore, the recent Columbian Quincentenary regions remained effectively untouched for more than half a century marked the culmination of many years of stepped-up research into following the initial visit of Hernando de Soto. During this time the early colonial era, and in the case of the southeastern United (1540-1600), there is good evidence for large scale migration in the States, this has manifested itself in an explosion of new information core area of the prehistoric Coosa chiefdom, leaving the ridge and regarding the Spanish colonial system, including the late 16th and valley region of northwest Georgia vacant by the turn of the century 17th-century Franciscan mission provinces of Florida and Georgia. (Smith 1987, 1989, 1992). A similar process may have taken place As a result of thls recent surge of research, investigators now have in no11heast Georgia, where 16th-century settlements along the a much better grasp of the transformations that followed and headwaters of the Savannah River seem to have been abandoned by resulted from European contact and colonization in the Southeast. the start of the 17th century (see Williams and Shapiro 1990; Much of this research has concentrated eithe r on the Anderson and Joseph 1988; Smith 1992). At the same time, the transformations experienced by aboliginal provinces of the deep central and southwest Georgia provinces of Toa and probably northern and western interior visited by the expeditions of Soto Capachequi, along the Flint River, seem to have been abandoned as (1539-43), Luna (1559-61), or Pardo (] 566-68), or on the well (W 011h l 988, 1989), and this fate may have been shared by missionized provinces of nonhern Florida and coastal Georgia the Ocmulgee River province of fchisi (Hally and Rudolph 1986; during the late 16th and early 17th centuries (e.g. Smith 1987; Smith 1992). The remnants of these chiefdoms probably relocated Blakely 1988; Hann 1988; Hudson et al. 1984; Hudson 1989: to one or more of several aggregation points that emerged during Thomas 1987, 1990; McEwan 1991; Weisman 1992; Larsen the late 16th century (see Smith 1989), including the Coosa River 1990). Partly as a consequence of this, much of the immediate of northeast Alabama, the lower Chattahoochee River, the middle 25 Worth Interior Provinces of the 17th Century Table 1: Chronology of Interior Georgia, 1597-1661. 1597 Fray Pedro de Chozas expedition reaches Ta,na and Ocute; Talufa and Usatipa provinces also .mentioned. 1600 Governor Mendez de Canzo assembles testimony regarding the deep inteiior, including the Chozas expedition. 1602 Juan de Lara expedition reaches Tama and Ocute; testimony taken during review of the colony of Florida. Friars recount visits to interior provinces, including Oconi. 1604 Cacique of Tama meets Governor Ybana during his visitation of Guale. 1616 Fray Ore journeys north from Florida's Timucua province to mission Santa Ysabel de Utinahica, descending by the Altamaha River to the Guale province. 1624 Governor Salinas sends two small expeditions into the northern interior in search of rumored white horsemen. 1625 Adtian de Canizares expedition to Tama in search of white horsemen. 1627- Two successive expeditions under Ensign Pedro de Torres 1628 pass through Tmna on their way to Cofitachequi in South Carolina, both searching for the rumored white horsemen. 1630 Governor Rojas y Bo1ja assembles testimony about provjnces of La Flotida; Tama, Santa Ysabel, and Arapaja mentioned. Francisco Alonso de Jesus mentions Arapaja in a request for pack animals for distant missions. 1636 Mission Santa Ysabel de Utinahica contlibutes two Indians to the yearly Spanish labor draft from the Guale province. 1639 Apalachicola province first mentioned in reference to unconverted groups bordering the Apalachee mission Figure I . Social geography of early I 7th-century Georgia. Dotted province. lines indicate expanding zone of direct Spanish contact 26 27 Worth Interior Provinces of the 17th Century Table 1 (cont.). of this late I 6th-century process. By the beginning of the 17th century, a large part of no1thern Georgia (including much of the 1645 Governor Rufz includes Apalachicola in his visitation of Fall Line zone) seems to have been largely abandoned (see Figure the western mission provinces. 1). Although there are notable exceptions (as will be discussed below), the comparative lack of early l 7th-cemury occupation in 1646 Governor Rufz sends infantry to forcibly relocate fugitive the northern Georgia interior has prompted Marvin Smith to ask, Tirnucuan Indians at the Lake of Oconi (unsuccessful). "Where are Georgia's seventeenth-century inhabitants?", desc1ibing such sites as "rare" (Smith 1992:29,84 ). Based on both 1655 Mission list includes San.ta Mar£a de Los Angeles de archaeological and documentary information, this does indeed Arapaja and Santiago de Oconi (said to be on an island). appear to be an accurate reflection of depopulation in many .regions Mission San ta Ysabel not included on list. Governor dUiing the first half-century after de Soto. Rebolledo sends Captain Juan Fernandez de Florencia to A number of ab01iginal societies survived this era, however, burn Santiago de Oconi after capturing cacique; inhabitants and persisted well into the next phase of Spanish colonization, flee. namely missionization. During this period, Spanish observers were able to provide limited but valuable documentary information 1657- In the aftermath of the 1656 Timucuan Rebellion, Governor regarding these societies and their inhabitants, giving modern 1660 Rebolledo orders northern Timucuan missions relocated archaeologists the opportunity to add new depth and dimension to southward. Arapaja towns move to mission Santa Fe along their analysfa. Table l presents a brief chronology of Spanish the Camino Real. activity in interior Georgia dming this period. Occasional visits of friars and solcliers to the northern interior began again during the 1659- Interior provinces ravaged by Chichimeco slave-raiders last decade of the 16th century from new missions on the Georgia 1663 from Virginia; many inhabitants flee to the fringes of the coast, and mission provinces were established in north Florida Spanish mission system, including Tama among the beginning just after the tum of the century (see below), but it was Yamasee. Chichimeco raiders return to Tama and Catufa not until the 1620s that a clearer picture of the more distant following the 1661 assault on Guale. provinces emerged. By the second qua1ter of the 17th century, Spanish colonists and missionaries had begun to achieve a far better understanding of the social geography of the interior. ln 1630, for Oconee River, and perhaps notthwest Florida, in the region of the example, a1 the request of Fray Frandsco Alonso de Jesus, the Apalacbee province (although archaeological evidence for tl1e latter Governor of Florida Don Luis de Rojas y Bo1ja assembled several is limited and presenUy inconclusive [see Worth 1992: 173, 185]). expe1ienced soldiers for their testimony regarding the Indians of Despite present data limitations, ir nevertheless appears quite clear present-day Florida and Georgia (Rojas y Bo1ja 1630). Among that substantial transfoanations did take place in inre1ior Georgia these men was a