Chronology of European Occupancy in the Southern Highlands

The following is a chronological outline of archival and physical evidence that Europeans were living in the Southern Appalachians long before the region was officially settled by Anglo-Americans:

1564 – Captain René de Laundonnière named the mountains in Georgia and western North Carolina, Les Apalachiens in honor of the Apalache Indians after an exploration team returned with glowing reports of the Apalache’s friendliness and advanced culture. 1 For the next 130 years French maps claimed the Appalachian Mountains and stated that gold could be found there in abundance.

1565 – Several Frenchmen, who were away when Fort Caroline was massacred, were given sanctuary by the Apalache. 2 They lived near the capital and married Native women. According to Rochefort, they eventually converted the king of Apalache to Christianity.  However, very few commoners became Christians.  Rochefort stated that as public observance of the elite’s sun worship religion declined, the commoners fell back on their traditional religious practices

1567 – Captain Juan Pardo built five forts to protect the route between Santa Elena, SC on the coast and the gold and silver deposits in the mountains of Georgia and North Carolina. 3 Most of the enlisted men were either Basques, Moriscos or Conversos (converted Muslims and Jews.)  Pardo was a Spanish ethnic term in the 1400s and 1500s. 4 It could be roughly translated as “half-breed,”  a term to describe the offspring of marriages between lighter skinned Christians and dark-skinned North Africans.

1568 – Spain allowed it to be generally known that all but one of the soldiers died in massacres of the five Pardo forts. 5 Strangely, Santa Elena stayed on good terms for the next few years with the Native province due north of their town, where supposedly the entire garrison was massacred. 6 The Spanish government stated that it was no longer interested in exploring the Appalachians.  The reason given was that there was nothing there of particular value to trade for.

In April of 1568 Fort San Mateo and two outer forts were massacred by a combined French-Native Force led by Captain Dominique de Gourgues. 7 Between November of 1567 and early April of 1568, the soldiers of Captain de Gourgues’ expedition were somewhere in the interior of the Southeast, but he was silent about his activities during this time, when reporting to French officials.

1568 -1584 – With the full knowledge of the Governor of La Florida, a steady stream of Spanish traders traveled covertly to the Apalache to trade European crafted items for gold, silver, copper, sapphires, rubies and diamonds. 8 Almost all Spanish traders were forbidden to enter the inner sanctum of the Apalache in the Nottely River Valley.  Trading probably occurred at villages located near Dahlonega, GA, Helen, GA and north of Athens, GA.

Most Spaniards, who attempted to hike into the Nottely Valley over the gap at Blood Mountain, were killed on sight.  Sixteenth century Spanish armor has been found near US Hwy. 19-129, south of Blood Mountain, which follows the old Native American “Great White Path.” 9 The White Path is mentioned in both the Rochefort book and the “Migration Legend of the Kashita People. 10

This period was also a time when large numbers of Conversos,  Moriscos and Crypto-Jews migrated from Portugal to remote Spanish colonies such as La Florida and Nuevo Leon in northern Mexico.  The records of the commoners who migrated from Iberia to La Florida no longer survive.  However, even if the names were known, it would probably be difficult to determine which were Conversos or Crypto-Jews.

1589 – Roanoke Colony survivors arrived in the Nacoochee Valley in the Georgia Mountains, according to Eleanor Dare stones. 11 The Chattahoochee River begins a few miles north of the Nacoochee Valley.

1596-1601 – Many family members of Governor Don Luis de Carvajal of Nuevo Leon were burned at the stake in Mexico City by the Inquisition. 12 The executions sent a shock wave through the 200,000+  Converso Jews and Crypto-Jews, who had settled in the Spanish colonies. No province governed by Spanish officials seemed safe.

It is interesting that the primary business activity of the Carvajal family was capturing members of less advanced Native American tribes and selling them as slaves to Caribbean Island sugar plantations. 13 Luis Carvajal was said to have a gang of more than 60 slave raiders.  The Spanish authorities described them as outlaws, criminals, murderers and Mestizos.  The governor made a fortune in this enterprise.  His thugs raided somewhere north along the Rio Grande, capturing hundreds or thousands of Indians whom they sold into slavery.

Carvajal had commercial links to the Sephardic Jewish pirates operating off the coast of Mexico.  These pirates transported the slaves to Caribbean sugar plantations.  This organized crime ring may be the origin of the Comancheros.

Raiding Native American villages would soon become a profitable enterprise in Virginia. Something is intriguing about this story.  The Franciscan missionaries on the coast of Georgia described the slave raiders who preyed on their mission Indians as “Chichimecas.”   The Chichimeca Indians were indigenous to the Province of Nuevo Leon, where Carvajal was governor.

c. 1590 – Just before 1900, a 400+ feet long, sloping shaft mine was discovered in Mitchell County, NC. Mitchell contains some of North Carolina’s most rugged mountains and is northwest of Asheville. A tree growing up through the shaft of the mine was found to be 300 years old.  See discussion for c. 1895.

1599 – Eleanor Dare died of natural causes in the Nacoochee Valley, according to her grave marker. Before dying she bore several children with her Apalache husband. 14 Apparently, most or all of the Roanoke Colony survivors married Apalache spouses in order to secure acceptance in the province.

1610 – The Inquisition arrived in Cartagena, Colombia. Its primary victims were the several thousand Jewish families who had prospered there. 15 Most were able to escape to “somewhere” north of Colombia, where enforcement of religious laws was lax.  Cartagena and Vera Cruz, Mexico were the only two ports in the Spanish American colonies that were allowed to trade African slaves.  Several members of the Sephardic Jewish community were involved in the slave trade prior to escaping Cartagena.

1612 – According to the French Huguenot traveler, Charles de Rochefort, once the Jamestown Colony became stabilized, an intermittent trickle of English traders and colonists settled in scattered parts of the Southern Highlands. 16 Apparently, most were married to Native American women.  Rochefort stated that after the full-blooded Frenchmen died off, that Apalache came under English Protestant influence.

1615 – A Sephardic Jewish couple made their marriage legal in the absence of a rabbi by carving “PRE DARMOS CASADA – SEP 15, 1615 on a boulder at Hoopers Bald, NC in the Great Smoky Mountains. 99Thornton, Richard L. “North Carolina rock’s inscription will ultimately change history”  he Examiner,  December 12, 2010.00

1622 – According to Charles Rochefort, 21 English colonists settled in a location near the capital of Apalache, instead of Virginia, because there was a sudden and violent rebellion among the Powhatan Indians.  The king of Apalache allowed them to build a Protestant chapel there. 17 The story has the ring of at least partial truth, but something else was going on along the Atlantic Coast.  In late 1621 the Dutch West India Company ordered all private fur traders to vacate the New Netherland.

1643 – Florida sent missionaries and surveyors up the Chattahoochee River as far as its source near Helen, GA. 18 A mission was establishedon the Chattahoochee River near present day Columbus, GA.   According to Charles de Rochefort, this expedition marked the beginning of increased Spanish influence and immigration in the Southern Appalachians.

1645 – After the Spanish governor of Florida’s army burned several Apalache towns on the Chattahoochee River, he established a trading post on the Upper Chattahoochee River. 19 The archives state that it was at the headwaters of the river, but it may have been at the head of freight canoe navigation below The Palisades in NW Atlanta.

It was probably during this time that Spanish mining claims were carved onto boulders along Nickajack Creek in Smyrna, GA (Cobb County, NW Metro Atlanta.)  Nickajack is the frontier Anglicization of Nacoochee. 20 However, the glyphs have never been studied by archaeologists or dated by geologists.

1650 – Rabbi Menashe Ben Israel, Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam recorded an intriguing story in his book Mikveh Yisrael, written in 1650. He related a conversation that he had with a Jewish Dutch explorer of the Americas. The explorer related how he made contact with some Native Americans in the Appalachian Mountains, but after trying to communicate with them in every possible European language, he had no success. Being a Jew, as was his first mate, these two began to talk amongst themselves in Late Medieval Hebrew. To his utter amazement, upon hearing him speak Hebrew to his first mate, the Native American chief responded in kind and stated, “Shema Yisrael.”

There is something equally interesting about this story, which, coming from a rabbi is probably true.  The Dutch Jewish explorers were in the Southern Appalachians, territory claimed by England.  That confirms that Dutch traders were traveling down the Great Valley of Virginia, while English settlements hunkered in the Tidewater Region.  This would explain the origin of the name “Rickohocken.”

1653 – A party of Virginians under the leadership of Francis Yeardley visited the principal chief of the Tuscarora in central North Carolina. 21 The chief told them that a wealthy Spaniard, 30 members of his family and seven Africans had lived in his village for seven years before moving westward.

Between 1587 and 1670, the Atlantic Coast between the mouth of the Savannah River in Georgia and the Outer Banks of North Carolina was a “no-man’s land” significantly depopulated of its indigenous peoples by European plagues and slave raids and claimed by three nations, Spain, France and England.  This region was the domain of pirates, many of whom were Sephardic Jews.  Its intricate pattern of barrier islands, capes, tidal marshes, tidal creeks and the mouths of rivers that led to the Appalachians made an ideal location for covert groups of colonists to land and then disappear into the interior.

1654 – Portugal captured the Dutch colony of Northern Brazil. 22 All Jews were expelled. It is documented that at least one ship load of Portuguese Jewish refugees settled in New Amsterdam.  By this time, Dutch ships were regularly trading with New Amsterdam and the English ports in Virginia. The ships could have easily dropped off refugees at remote locations.

1665 – Charles de Rochfort wrote that since 1645, increasing numbers of Spanish settlers had immigrated into the southern Appalachian Mountains. 23 One Catholic church had been built in the area where gold was plentiful. Rochefort did not distinguish between Spanish-speaking Christians and Spanish-speaking Jews.  He said that after the generation of pure Englishmen had died out, the Spanish had increasing influence on the king of Apalache, Mahdo, but those in the southern provinces thoroughly disliked the Spanish and refused to convert to Catholicism.  In the northern edge of Apalache, increasing numbers of Englishmen were settling.  This statement is confirmed by the maps discussed in Part Four, which state that English settlements began in northeastern Tennessee before 1650.  Mahdo is the pronunciation of the Creek word for, “Thank you!”

1669 – Johann Lederer, a recent immigrant to Virginia from Germany, led a small exploration party southward along the Blue Ridge Mountain escarpment of North Carolina. 24 This was one of three journeys that he made to the west in search of a route to the Pacific Ocean. The map, which he prepared for his book on the journey, showed the southwest Virginia and NW North Carolina Mountains occupied solely by the Rickohocken Indians.  The party turned around at the headwaters of the Keowee River.  In the vicinity of the Keowee, Lederer sketched a man-made dam and pond.  Lederer’s map does not mention the Cherokees or Spanish settlers in the mountains.

An example of the fabrication of Southern Highland history, currently going on, can found in the Wikipedia article on Lederer. A sentence was altered by someone to infer that Johann Lederer said that the town of Sara was called the village of Suale by the Spanish and was equivalent to the city of Joara , visited by Juan Pardo.  Lederer never mentioned Joara or the village of Suale. He only stated that he passed the large town of Sara. He did mention the Sualy Mountains in West Virginia that are named after the Xuale Indians of northern West Virginia, but did not go there.

There is also doctoring of Wikipedia articles concerning a small Native American archaeological site in Burke County, NC called Joara.  Other articles tell the reader that Lederer visited the large Cherokee city of Joara in Burke County, NC and use the other two articles as references.  Now a legion of “cut and paste” Cherokee history web sites authoritatively state that the last European to visit Joara was John Lederer!

1669 – John Locke wrote the Charter for the Colony of Carolina. It included freedom of religion for Jews, non-church members and dissenters. 25

Any group of citizens that included seven people, who believed in God, could be chartered as a church or synagogue.  It is believed that this provision was intentionally included in order to attract Jewish immigrants from Brazil, Germany and Amsterdam, in order to stimulate international trade.

1671 – Thomas Wood, Thomas Batt and Robert Fallon departed from Petersburg, VA to find a quicker route to the “South Sea” – presumably meaning the Gulf of Mexico. 26 Four days into the journey, a horse became lame.  They hired a man that they described only as a “Portugal” to take the horse back to Petersburg.  The location is now Brookneal, VA in the south-central part of the Commonwealth.  What really stands out in this story was that the men did not consider it unusual to find a Portuguese man in the Virginia wilderness.

1673 – In June of 1673 the Marquette Expedition (French) encountered American Indians living at the confluence of the Ohio River and the Mississippi River, who had firearms, munitions, European tools and cloth. 27 The French could not determine the source of these European items, but did confirm that they did not come from direct trade with English, French or Spanish colonies.  The Indians refused to divulge the source of the goods. The origins of these items seemed to have been from several countries.

1673 – In July of 1773 Robert Needham and Gabriel Arthur led a party from Petersburg, VA southwestward in attempt to open up trade contacts with large Indian towns located at the confluence of the Upper Tennessee and Little Tennessee River. 28

After Needham returned, Abraham Woods wrote a letter to John Richards, a financier in England that described the journey.  It is quite possible that Abraham Woods was Jewish, since the use of Old Testament names only slowly received acceptance after the Protestant Reformation.   Prior to then, all persons were given the names of saints.  Richards is a typical English Jewish name, but not always.

Virtually all “Cherokee History” web sites and books state that the traders journeyed southwestward make contact with “the Overhill Cherokees living on the Little Tennessee River in Chota.”  In actuality, the words Cherokee, Chota and Tennessee are not mentioned in the long report that Needham wrote to his employer, Abraham Wood.

The town names in that region were all Creek or Maya words.  The name of the Tennessee River, Kallimako, is an Itza Maya word meaning “House or throne of the king.”  The only southwestern Virginia Indian tribes mentioned in the report were the Appomattox (Algonquin) Tamahiti (called Tomahitan by Algonquin speakers) and the Oconechee (Oconee Creeks, but most Virginia scholars call them Siouans today because they don’t know the Creek languages – see notes.) 29

Academic fraud went to an extreme level when the Abraham Woods letter was “edited.” The history fabricators substituted the word “Chota” for “Tomahitan capital.”  Most edited versions also substituted the word “Little Tennessee River” for Tomahitan River, even though the Little Tennessee River didn’t get that name until around 1785. Most “Cherokee” editions also deleted references to Spaniards and Africans living in the mountains, or minimized references to the Spanish by substituting the word “whites.”

This is what the original text from the Virginia State archives says:

“This towne is seated on ye river side, haveing ye clefts of ye river on ye one side being very high for its defence . . . “

This is what you will read on most “North Carolina or Cherokee History” web sites:

“The Charakee towne of Chote is on ye river side, having ye clefts of the Tanasi River on ye one side being very high for its defence . . . “

Below are some other sections of Wood’s letter in their original wording:  (key words are emphasized)

“Eight dayes jorny down this river lives a white people which have long beardes and whiskers and weares clothing, and on some of ye other rivers lives a hairey people . . .”

“. . . and all ye wesocks children they take are brought up with them as ye Ianesaryes (Janessaries) are a mongst ye Turkes. this King came to my house upon ye 21st of June as you will heare in ye following discouerse.”

“Ye prisoner relates that ye white people have a bell which is six foot over which they ring morning and evening and att that time a great number of people congregate togather and talkes he knowes not what. They have many blacks among them.”

“Now after ye tumult was over they make preparation for to manage ye warr for that is ye course of theire liveing to forage robb and spoyle other nations and the king commands Gabriell Arther to goe along with a party that went to robb ye Spanyarrd, promising him that in ye next spring hee him selfe would carry him home to his master.”

“They travelled eight days west and by south as he guest and came to a town of negroes, spatious and great, but all wooden buildings Heare they could not take anything without being spied. The next day they marched along by ye side of a great carte path, and about five or six miles as he judgeth came within sight of the Spanish town, walld about with brick and all brick buildings within. There he saw ye steeple where in hung ye bell which Mr. Needham gives relation of and harde it ring in ye evening.”

“Well, shall now give a relation, what my man hath discovered in all ye time that Mr. James Needham left him att ye Tomahitans to ye 18th of June 74. which was ye daye Gabriell arived att my house in safety with a Spanish Indian boy.”

“Ye 7th day a Spanniard in a gentille habitt, accoutered with gunn, sword and pistoll. one of ye Tomahittans espieing him att a distance crept up to ye path side and shot him to death.”

“By this meanes wee know this is not ye river ye Spanyards live upon as Mr. Needham did thinke.”

The letter from Abraham Wood makes it clear that the British knew there were substantial numbers of Spaniards and Africans living in mountains around present day NE Tennessee, SE Kentucky, SW Virginia and NW North Carolina.  It is also clear that there were no Cherokees around.  The article does not even mention the Rickohockens.  The description of a church with a steeple and a large bell seems to describe an Orthodox or Roman Catholic Christian community.  Protestants did not normally have Matins and Vesper services.

1674 – Henry Woodward traveled to a Westo town near where Augusta, GA is located today. 30 The name of the village was a word recorded by English speakers as being similar to Rickohocken.  Woodward reported to the colonial authorities that there was a cluster of villages on the tributaries of the Savannah River that the Westo called Chorake, who were their enemies.  Chorake is a Muskogee-Creek word that means “Splinter People.”

1675 – In 1675 Pablo de Salazar, a government bureaucrat in Santo Domingo, wrote other officials to describe his concept of a Mexican Indian colony in the Florida Panhandle. 31 The plan was to bring Maya weavers and Mexican farmers to the region in order to pump up the colony and provide more militiamen for defending Florida against English and French incursions. He stated that both the English and the French had been settling in the region north of Florida. He also stated that the English were giving firearms to the Chichimeca Indians then training them in European military practices. He feared that the purpose of this military assistance was to dispatch them on slave raids to the Florida missions.

1684 – The towns of Tamasee, Okonee and Keowah on the headwaters of the Savannah River made a trade agreement with the governor of the Charlestown Colony. 32 Virtually all historical references refer to this as the first treaty with the Cherokee Indians.  The word Cherokee is not mentioned.  The first treaty with the Cherokee Tribe was in 1721. In this agreement, the governor agreed to allow traders to visit their towns.

These towns were originally all colonies of Creek provinces in Georgia. The Tamasee’s mother town was Tama was near the confluence of the Oconee and Altamaha Rivers. The mother towns of the Oconee and Keowah were on the Oconee River near present day Athens, GA.  These towns were not ethnically Algonquin Cherokees, but in a few years would begin an alliance that would become the Cherokee tribe.

1690s – Asheville’s famous historian F. A. Sondley found archival evidence that Spaniards were living in large numbers on the Toe River in the North Carolina Mountains and Nolichucky River in extreme eastern Tennessee during the 1690s. 33 The Toe River flows into the Nolichucky River, which then flows into the French Broad River, which then joins the Holston River to form the Tennessee River.  The Spruce Pine Mining District on the North Toe River is one of the richest deposits of precious stones in the world.

1690 – James Moore and Maurice Mathews attempted to prospect for gold in the Nacoochee Valley, but were turned away by what they thought were hostile Native Americans. 34 All references label these hostiles to be Cherokees.  That is absolutely impossible. The Cherokees didn’t exist in 1690 and they didn’t capture the Nacoochee Valley from the Creeks until after they changed sides in the Yamasee War.

Moore and Mathews then took the Unaka Trail northward into what is now Clay and Cherokee Counties, North Carolina. Here they observed white men mining, probably in the Andrews Valley where there were silver deposits. All the men wore long beards.  In the Europe of 1690, that would have been very faux pas, unless one was Jewish or an Irish/Scottish peasant.

Again, local folklore calls the local Natives, Cherokees, but in 1690 in Tomatla, North Carolina, they would have been Tamatli Creeks, speaking the Itsate Creek language.  Even after the Cherokees took over, the large town kept the name, Tamatli. The local Natives were not considerable hosts. Several years later the locals told the British that they had killed the bearded miners; three years after Moore met them.  The timing of the murders coincides with a British Army patrol that visited the Nacoochee Valley.

1690 – French engineers and traders explored and mapped the Little Tennessee River Basin in western North Carolina. 35 They encountered a village that they said had to be seen to be believed. It was a town of log cabins.  It occupants had European beards, hair color and eyes. They spoke a broken form of Elizabethan English.” The olive complexion of these mountaineers and past experience with Mediterranean traders led the French explorers to conclude they had found a colony of “Moors” in the New World of North America.

These hybrids may have been Sephardic Jews or they may have met people of mixed English-Native American heritage.  As stated earlier, the king of Apalache allowed Englishmen to settle in the mountains.

The Guilluame DeLisle map that was produced from this expedition has some surprising information.  Talasee and Tuskegee Creeks were show to live on the Little Tennessee River.  To the east of them were Shawnee villages.  The Apalache occupied the Hiwassee River basin in North Carolina and Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia.  The words “Cherokee” or “Rickohocken” are not on the map, but the map shows Tamahiti living in SW Virginia and Tongoria (Yuchi) living in the Cumberland Plateau.

1693 – A party of 20 Chorake leaders with Creek or English names from a cluster of towns at the headwaters of the Savannah River traveled to Charlestown to seek help in the return of their people, who had been captured in slave raids by the Savano, Kusaw and Esaw tribes. 36 Governor Ludwell offered to provide the group of towns firearms and treat with them as a tribe. This is considered the beginning of the Cherokee Indians as a tribe, but the name “Cherokee” would not appear on maps for another 20 years.

1694 – An exploration party composed of British soldiers and their Native American guides from the Savannah Headwaters towns followed a trail to a vantage point overlooking the Nacoochee Valley.  Presumably, this was on Tray Mountain. 37 The British observed many columns of smoke.  They were told by their native guides that the smoke was produced by the gold smelters, being operated by Spanish gold miners.  The British soldiers turned around and reported their discovery to government officials in Charleston.  The report is in British colonial archives, but was left out of the history books.

1700 – Englishman, John Lawson, and some companions paddled up the Santee River to the Congoree River.  They then paddled up the Congoree River to its headwaters. 38 From there they hiked southwestward along the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the headwaters of the Keowee River.  There, they stayed in the cabin of a friendly Keowee Indian. Most “Cherokee histories” change the word, Keowee, to Cherokee.  Lawson’s book never mentions the words Cherokee, Chorakee or Rickohocken.  He also did not mention seeing any Portuguese, Spanish or Jewish colonists.

Lawson described the Keowee men as being extremely tall, plus they wore mustaches and turbans.  This is exactly how de Soto described the men of the Oconee Province in Georgia. Islamic scholars cite these two descriptions as “proof” that the Creek Indians were Muslims. This is not the case.  Creek men averaged a foot taller than 16^th century Europeans and Arabs. Seven foot tall skeletons have been found in royal burials at Etowah Mounds and Ocmulgee. The Mayas and ancestors of the Creeks were wearing turbans and head bands long before Islam existed. The mustache was a symbol among all branches of the Creeks that a man had been in combat.  Until the 1700s, Creek elders wore goatees, just like the customs of several ethnic groups in Mexico.

Virtually all non-Muskogean anthropologists today assume that the Kiawee were always a division of the Cherokees and spoke an Algonquian language.  They actually were a division of the Oconee-Creek Indians and called themselves the Kiale or Kiawa.  Kiawah Island, SC once was their coastal trading center, but their mother town was on the Oconee River, where Watkinsville, GA is now located.  Kialegi Tribal Town in Oklahoma is a direct descendant of these people.  The Keowee in South Carolina, that helped form the original “Chorakee” alliance, were colonists of the main branch in Georgia.

1702–1713 –The War of Spanish Succession in Europe spread to North America and the Caribbean Basin, where it was known as Queen Anne’s War. 39 In North America, British colonists and their Native allies were pitted against French and Spanish colonists and their Native allies. Although to date no archives have been discovered that specifically describe raids by British allies into territories of French and Spanish allies in the southern Appalachians, there were stark changes in the locations of Native American ethnic groups between 1702 and 1717.

The old Apalache province in the Georgia Mountains completely disappeared.  The Spanish gold mining colony in the Nacoochee Valley of Georgia disappeared, but Spanish speaking people with Arabic and European names would continue to occupy the region until at least the 1770s (See 1770-Bohurons.)  The Spanish colony disappeared from the Holston River Basin.  Instead, a new ethnic group that the French called the “Charaqui” was shown to occupy the Holston River Basin. In 1718 Kusa and Koasati (Creek) towns still occupied the Upper Tennessee and Little Tennessee River Basins, but by 1725, that region was labeled Cherokee.

The Queen Anne’s War completely destroyed the mission system in Florida and made it impossible for the Spanish to maintain contact with their colonists in the Southern Appalachians.  In 1702 Captain Francisco Romo de Uriza led a combined Spanish and Florida Apalachee army of about 800 men in an invasion of the territories of the Apalachicola and Chickasaws in present day southwest Georgia. 40 The Spanish force attacked a combined Apalachicola and Chickasaw force numbering about 400. Most of the Spanish force was killed on the battlefield.

Apalachicola means Apalache People in Gulf Coast Choctaw.  They are the same people who occupied the Georgia Mountains in the 1500s and 1600s. Today they are known as the “Lower Creeks” but originally occupied the entire Chattahoochee River Basin.  The Chickasaws in 18^th century Georgia were formerly the branch of the Chickasaws living in the Southern Appalachians that Hernando de Soto called Chiscas.  These Chickasaws became members of the Creek Confederacy.

The following year, Governor James Moore began a series of combined Creek–Yamasee– South Carolina militia raids into northern Florida. 41 The invaders defeated all Spanish forces thrown at them and destroyed most of the missions.  Coweta Creek slave raiders paddled down the Chattahoochee River to the Gulf of Mexico and destroyed the Native American tribes in the vicinity of Tampa Bay. Land-based Cherokee slave raiders ranged as far as Lake Okeechobee and wiped out most of the tribes in Florida’s interior, not associated with the missions. Thousands of Christian and non-Christian Florida Indians were marched to Charleston to be sold as slaves.  Afterward, Spanish officials in Florida became increasingly dependent on escaped African slaves for military defense and food production.

1711 –1715 – At the onset of the Tuscarora War, John Lawson was tortured and killed. 42 The British persuaded the Catawba and Chorakee Alliances to assist them in fighting the Tuscaroras.  The Tuscaroras were considered by the Iroquois Confederation to be their relatives.  The involvement of the Catawba and Cherokee in this war precipitated a bloody war with the Iroquois Confederacy that would last for decades and virtually depopulate the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia and northwestern North Carolina.

1714 – In Cherokee tradition, the Cherokees made a surprise attack on Yuchi towns on the west side of the Hiwassee River in Tennessee as revenge for the murder of a Cherokee man and killed all the inhabitants. 43 Another version is that a trader named Wiggins was angry at the Yuchi because they caught him making a crooked trade and cut off an ear. In fact, this was probably a military action instigated by the British against Native allies of the French in eastern Tennessee. The Wiggins story probably was a cover, because nothing came of the criminal charges that Wiggins supplied the Cherokees with muskets.  The attackers were probably the descendants of the Rickohockens.  The proto-Cherokees had muskets provided by the British, while the Yuchi’s did not.  The Yuchi’s supposedly fought to the death from inside their public buildings.

Another version of this legend says that the Cherokees then attacked Creek towns on the Hiwassee River and drove the Creeks out of North Carolina. At the time there was no such thing as a Creek Indian. Muskogeans apparently were driven away from the Murphy, NC area, but continued to live west and south of Murphy until 1763.  The Cherokees called the Unaka Mountains, the “Enemy Mountains.”

Some Yuchi continued to live in the Unaka Mountains of North Carolina and the Cohutta Mountains of Georgia until at least 1911.  The sudden appearance of Tennessee Yuchi refugees at Yuchi towns in northeast Georgia around this time give credence to the claim that the Yuchi were driven out of the Tennessee Valley.  In 1713 the word Cherokee still had not appeared on any official maps or document.  It would not appear until three years later.  The word “Creek Indians” would not appear until the late 1730s as the name for a new confederation of Muskogean provinces.

1715 – At a prescribed signal the major tribes in the Southeast killed the Englishmen in their territories. It is not known if they also killed Spanish-speaking Sephardic settlers. 44 However, virtually all South Carolina traders were killed.  Most traders from Virginia were not. The Cherokees then invited the leaders of the towns in what had been the “kingdom” of Apalache to a diplomatic conference at the recently sacked and reoccupied town of Ustanoli on the Tugaloo River.  The stated purpose was to plan a military alliance against the Colony of South Carolina.  The Cherokees called their new village, Tagale.  During the 1500s and 1600s, the territory of Ustanoli encompassed the future territory of the Lower Cherokees.  Their claim on northwestern South Carolina was based on the old boundaries of the Muskogean Ustanoli Chiefdom. Virtually no non-Muskogean anthropologists or historians know this fact.

A Cherokee conjurer named Charite Haggi urged the Cherokees to kill the Creek leaders and change sides in the Yamasee. 45 He said that the demonic spirits in the sacred fire at Tagale had told him to do this. The modern spin by white historians is that 12-18 Creek leaders were killed in an argument.  According to Creek tradition, assassins led by Haggi killed 32 leaders in their sleep.  The fact that precisely 32 Cherokee chiefs were captured and executed 40 years later by the Creeks lends credence to their version.  Whatever the actual facts, the event led to a 40 year long war between the Creeks and the Cherokees.  It is interesting that the Haggi is quite common in the Middle East among Muslims, Turks, Palestinian Christians and Sephardic Jews.  His name is typically written as Hagey in English records. Charite is the Itsate Creek version of the Muskogee word Chorake. His name in English roughly meant “Cherokee Prophet.”

The initial military successes of the Cherokees caused the former towns of Apalache to reunite with the town of Koweta in present day Carroll County, GA as its capital.  The previous Apalache capital in Union County, GA was far too close to the Cherokee heartland.  This marked the beginning of the Creek Confederacy.  The diplomatic conference that reunited Creeks in South Carolina, eastern Georgia and western Georgia was held at the Ocmulgee Old Fields in present day Macon, GA, site of the original capital of Apalache.

1715 – A Jewish girl or woman named Liube carved her name and the date, 1715, on the Track Rock Petroglyphs between Blairsville, GA and Brasstown Bald Mountain.  Some of the bloodiest events of the Yamasee War occurred in 1715. Perhaps she was letting potential rescuers know that she was alive.

1716 – An expedition led by Governor James Spotswood crossed over the Blue Ridge Mountains and into the southern edge of the Shenandoah Valley. 46 The men saw no Natives in what had been Rickohocken territory and observed the ruins of a large Native American town with mounds in the Shenandoah Valley.

C.1721 – A non-Cherokee man who had traveled south to join the Overhill Cherokees, was given the name, “White Owl.”  When he became a leader, he was given the name, “Attakullakulla” (Probably Atta Kullak Ula.) British officials couldn’t translate his name, but thought it might have something to do with wood, so they called him, “Little Carpenter.” In 1997 author Brent Kennedy stated that his name was Turkish and meant, “Spiritual father of the Red Men.” Attakullakulla married a Natchez woman, captured on a slave raid, then later became the peace chief of the Cherokee Nation.

1745 – Cherokee Indians entered the Tuckasegee River Basin in present day Jackson County, NC for the first time. Sylva, the county seat of Jackson County, is only 16 miles from the North Carolina Reservation, but is separated from the reservation by mountains over a mile high.

The Cherokees sent a report to colonial authorities in Charleston that they had not seen any American Indians, but there were several villages in the valley occupied by “white” families with skin the color of Indians. The men wore long beards and appeared to speak Spanish with each other.  The houses were built out of logs and had arched windows.  The Cherokees stated that these people “worshiped a book.”  Because the settlers were obviously not British, the Cherokees drove them out of the valley or killed those who resisted.

This archive is clear proof that at least some British colonial authorities knew that there were Europeans living in the Appalachians, who were not of British ancestry, and that the British government used their Cherokee mercenaries to carry out ethnic cleansing of the North Carolina Mountains.  Cherokees thought of themselves as being “Indians” in 1745, even though (as will be shown in Part Ten) their DNA appears to be primarily European and Middle Eastern.

1770 – Throughout the early 1700s, there was a band of “Indians” living in northeast Georgia between present day Athens and the Nacoochee Valley. 47 Early Nineteenth century settlers remembered them as “Cherokees,” but they were in territory that belonged to the Creek Nation until 1818 then was quickly settled by Anglo-Americans. There were many other traits about these “Indians” that seem unusual.

This tribe was said to be allies of the Spanish, even after the Spanish left the Southeast in 1763.  Both the Cherokees and the Creeks were allies of the British during most of the period up to 1776.  The Creeks were only belligerents during  the Yamasee War (1715-1717.)  The Cherokees turned on the British between 1757 and 1762.  Well, there was something else.  This tribe spoke Spanish!

The “tribe’s” name was the Bohuron.  Bohuron is a family name in Bretagne Province, France. It is derived from the Gaelic word for drum.  However, there is another possible origin for Bohuron.  It is the Arabic and Turkish word for “nobility.” 48 That unexpected origin fits the situation better.  Many of the names of the Bohuron survive. They are Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Dutch words. 49 The horse that one of the Bohuron’s rode was named Al-Buraq.  That means “Lightning” in Arabic. It is the name of the winged horse that took Mohammed to heaven in the Q’uran. It is also the origin of President Obama’s first name. The word for “horse” is the Moorish and Turkish word for horse.

In 1770 a war was fought between the Bohuron and the Talasee Creeks, who had just settled in what is now Jackson County, GA.  The Talasee had lived in the basin of the Little Tennessee River in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee for many centuries, until being forced out by “somebody.”  The Talasee’s had a score to settle and they won.  It is not known what happened to the surviving Bohuron’s after their defeat, but they were probably absorbed by the Creeks, as was generally the policy of the Creek Confederacy.  The Bohuron’s name disappeared from maps and history books.

A considerable portion of the book that mentions the Bohurons, The Early History of Jackson County, GA, re-tells stories of events in the 18^th century, first written by Gustavus Wilson in the mid-19^th century. 50 Wilson was a self-educated carpenter, who rose to become the county’s school board chairman for three decades.  The descriptions of the ethnic groups that he calls Cherokees and Creeks appear to be highly romanticized from a Euro-centric perspective.  Almost all the words that he called Cherokee, were actually Turkish, Spanish and Arabic words. 51

The people that Wilson called Creek Indians, were actually a polyglot mixture of refugees and indigenous Oconee Creeks.  The refugee villages came from as far away as the Great Smoky Mountains and the mouth of the Altamaha River.  The county seat of Jackson County originally had the same name as the Arawak tribe that in 1565 lived next to the French Huguenot’s Fort Caroline on the coast.  In fact, present day, southern Jackson County was where de Laundonnière planned to build the capital of New France in 1566.

1775 – William Adair published his landmark book, A History of the America Indian. 52 A substantial portion of the book was composed of his arguments that the Southeastern were the descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.  He had observed customs practiced by his Chickasaw wife, which seemed derived from Judaism.  They may well have been. The Chickasaws were indigenous to eastern Tennessee, the northwestern tip of Georgia and northern Alabama. A Jewish female may have passed down certain ways of doing things to her daughters, and her daughters to their daughters.

John Adair stated in his book that several hundred Cherokees, living in the North Carolina Mountains, spoke an ancient Jewish language that was nearly unintelligible to Jews from England and Holland.

1780-1784 –While the Patriot cause in the Southern colonies seemed at its lowest ebb in 1780, former Shenandoah County, Virginia residents, Colonel John C. Tipton and Colonel John Sevier, began leading wagon trains of Shenandoah County residents down to what is now northeastern Tennessee, but was then North Carolina. 53

A wide range of rugged mountains would protect the pioneers from British Redcoats in the Carolina Piedmont.  Most settlers went to what is now the Johnson City area.

On their first trip down to Tennessee, Tipton observed very old villages in SW Virginia and NE Tennessee that were occupied by Spanish speaking Jews. Tipton stated that the Jewish families appeared to make their living as gold and silver smiths.  He could not figure out who they sold their products to. The Jewish settlers’ command of English was so poor that they could not answer many of his questions.

Since passing through these villages, Colonel Sevier had always been curious about the people with olive complexions and black hair in northeastern Tennessee. 54 In 1784 he took a horseback ride across several counties along the northeastern tier of the Tennessee Territory, and encountered hundreds of people who appeared to be either of Spanish, Moorish or Jewish ancestry.

Sevier stumbled upon an entire community of these unusual people in the Newman’s Ridge region of upper East Tennessee.  After entering their village, he discovered that they spoke broken English.  Unlike the Cherokees, these people identified themselves as “Porty-ghee” and said that they were Christians.

1828 – Laborers employed by South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun discovered the well preserved ruins of a mining village along Dukes Creek in the Nacoochee Valley of Georgia. 55 It was on land acquired by Calhoun for gold mining.  The Georgia Gold Rush had just begun.

The miners uncovered the foundations of several log houses, plus what appeared to be the timber-lined shaft of a pit mine.  They also found iron or steel tools and weapons that were typical of the 1600s.  A Spanish cigar mold was also discovered.  The artifacts were viewed and authenticated by anthropologist, Charles C. Jones, Jr. and described in his landmark book on the Indians of Georgia.

c. 1895 – Horse Stomp Mine on Rich Knob in Mitchell County, NC was explored by D. D. Collis before it collapsed. 56 The mine tunnel went 400 feet into the mountain at an angle then went down at least 80 feet as a pit.  This was a major mine. Collis thought that it was a gold mine that had completely removed a vein of gold, since he saw no evidence of copper being mined.  A tree growing up through the collapsed entrance of the shaft had at least 300 rings so the mine had been abandoned before 1600 AD!

1913 – William Dockery of Marble, NC explored a 16^th or 17^th century mine shaft in nearby Tomatla, NC.  It was cribbed eight feet square every three feet by massive red oak girders and posts. 57 Ancient Spanish iron tools were found in the mine, which Dockery explored for 65 feet into the tunnel.  Nearby was the ruin of an ancient furnace.  A Spanish coin mold was also found nearby.   The presence of a coin mold suggests that at least some of the Spanish mining operations in the Southern Appalachians had the approval of government authorities in St. Augustine or that the miners were making counterfeit coins.

This location in the Andrews Valley is very significant.  The mine was in the Snowbird Mountains where Juan Pardo found silver ore in 1567.  The highway serving Tomatla is none other than U. S. 129 that connects the Little Tennessee River with the head of canoe navigation on the Oconnee River in northeast Georgia.  The Creek Indians called this route, the Great White Path. It went through Track Rock Gap.

Tomatla was the location of a major colony of the Tamatli branch of the Creeks, whose capital was Tama near the confluence of the Ocmulgee and Altamaha Rivers in south-central Georgia.  The Andrews Valley once contained at least 18 Native American mounds.  Most were destroyed by Florida developers in the first decade of the 21^st century in anticipation of a second Cherokee gambling casino being built in Tomatla.  The main mound at the principal Tamatli town is still visible from US 129.

1954-1976 – During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s a series of hydroelectric dams, constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Tennessee Valley Authority, resulted in a rash of well-funded archaeological studies in the Southern Highlands. 58 It was during that period that most of what is known about the Native American cultures of the region was discovered.  Radiocarbon dating had been invented in 1947.  As the technology developed, it was utilized to obtain increasingly accurate estimates of an archaeological site’s occupation period.  In contrast, either didn’t exist or were in their infancy.  The ethnic identities of skeletons were based on pottery styles or merely the opinion of the senior archaeologist involved.

A consistent pattern was seen at almost all the town sites with mounds.  Mound construction stopped somewhere around 1585 to 1600 AD. Almost all the large towns were completely abandoned thereafter.  The only exception was the Tugaloo site on a mountain tributary of the Savannah River.  Archaeologist Joseph Caldwell found that the extremely large town contained Creek Indian type artifacts until sometime immediately after 1700 AD.  At that time the town was burned and abandoned.  A short time later, an ethnic group that made much cruder pottery and had access to European manufactured items built a small village in one section of the original town.

After this period of frenzied archaeological discovery, archaeologists in Tennessee and Georgia generally labeled Southern Highland town sites with rectangular houses, occupied mounds and no European artifacts as being Muskogean.  Town sites with round houses or log houses, plus European artifacts were labeled Cherokee.  In contrast, North Carolina archaeologists labeled all settlements in their mountains as being either Cherokee or proto-Cherokee.

It is quite probable that some of the Colonial Period habitations and burials discovered in the Southern Highlands were occupied by colonists with European, African or mixed ancestry.  The only sure way to determine the ethnicity of the skeletons is to obtain DNA samples from the skeletal remains or teeth.  The Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act mandates that in the seven state Southern Highland Region, any laboratory testing of possible Native American human skeletal remains must be approved by the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes.

1996 – Spanish and Native American glyphs were discovered on boulders near Nickajack Creek in Smryna, GA. 59 They appeared to be a Spanish gold mine claim or else, a territorial claim by both the Spanish and their Native American allies.  The glyphs have never been studied by an archaeologist.

A Spanish trading post or village may have been located at the confluence of Nickajack Creek and the Chattahoochee River.  There is a designated archaeological zone at this location that has never been excavated by archaeologists.  In the state site files, it is called a Historic Cherokee village site.  This label is entirely based on local folklore, because early white settlers found European artifacts around the site.

Very few Cherokees ever lived in Cobb County. Until 1818, the southern half was Creek territory.  Prior to 1795, the county was in the Creek Nation. Surface collecting by the author, while Principal Planner-Historic Preservation Planner for Cobb County, GA, revealed a wide range of indigenous pottery styles that stretched back at least to 400 BC.  However, there were also extensive numbers of European ceramics that looked like the 17^th and18th century ceramics.

2004 – In 1986 archaeologists associated with Warren Wilson College near Asheville, NC found Spanish artifacts at a small village site in Burke County, NC (Morganton). 60 Known as the Berry Archaeological Site, the location is in the Upper Piedmont.  It is not adjacent to a major river or expanse of alluvial bottomland, as is typical of all major Mississippian Period towns in the Southeast.  It is 2.199 miles from the shallow, fast-moving Catawba River and 9.637 miles from the nearest mountain. 61

The village contains a single, small platform mound that is now about two feet high, but according to archaeologists working on the site, was originally was 12 feet high.  Approximately, 12 to 30 houses were clustered around a small plaza.   Archaeological work began on the site in 2001 and has continued.

In 2004, the excavation was sponsored by the National Geographical Society.  In order to give a dramatic ending to the National Geographic Channel documentary, the program ended with the statement that the little village might be the site of the town of Joara visited by Spanish explorer, Juan Pardo, and also short-lived, Fort San Juan, which was built in February 1567. Its +/- 20 man garrison was massacred at some time between January and February of 1568.   The Berry Site is now promoted as “one of the major Mississippian regional centers in the Southeast and the location of Joara, visited by both Hernando de Soto in 1540 in Juan Pardo in 1567, and the first Spanish settlement in the interior of North America.”

In July 2013, the archaeological team issued a press release that it had discovered a moat and palisade that was built by the Spanish and therefore proven that this was the site of Fort San Juan. 62  Juan Pardo built at least five forts in the interior of the Carolinas.  Each had a different name.

The sponsors of the Berry Site have saturated the media with their interpretation of their little archaeological site, so that their version is the only one that the public sees.  There are many facts that are concealed from the public.  These include: The word, Joara, never occurs in the De Soto Chronicles. No evidence has been found to indicate that de Soto traveled through the Asheville Area.  Joara was the only community that Juan Pardo labeled a city. His chronicler stated that it was a large city with many streets, temples and plazas.  One diminutive mound does not a city make.

The Berry site bears no resemblance to the landscape of Joara as described by Pardo’s chronicler. He stated that the city was at the bottom of a rock-sided canyon where four rushing mountain rivers met. The canyon was at the foot of high mountains that were impassible in winter because of the heavy snow accumulation.

The presence of Spanish pottery and European tools does strongly suggest that Europeans were living at the Berry site during the 1500s or 1600s.  This site could be one of the other Pardo forts or may have no connection with Juan Pardo.  It could be an outpost where some of the hundreds or thousands of cryptic European colonists of the Southeastern Uplands lived.  More archaeological work, especially radiocarbon dating, is needed at the Berry Site before broad announcements can be presented as facts.

2009 – In 2006, the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta began sponsoring summer archaeological expeditions along the Lower Ocmulgee River of Georgia. 63 This area was known as the Toa Province in the De Soto Chronicles.  Initially, the goal of the expedition was to find a lost Spanish mission known as the Santa Isabela de Utinahica (Place of the Utina).  However, the site of this mission is more likely to be near the confluence of the Altamaha and the Ohoopee River, which the Spanish called the Santa Isabella River. The site of the capital of the Utina People is about six miles up the Ohoopee.  Discovery of increasing numbers of 16^th century Spanish artifacts has caused the Fernband expedition to shift its objectives to understanding the initial contacts between Native Americans and Europeans.  It is quite probable that at least one of the team’s archaeological sites is that of the town of Toa.

In 2009 the archaeological team from the Fernbank began finding Spanish artifacts that appear to date from the early 16^th century.  In the years since then, more, early 16^th century artifacts have been uncovered at one of the village sites.  This has led the team to suspect that they are at a village site where shipwrecked Spaniards or survivors of the disastrous 1526 Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón colony that was probably at the mouth of the Altamaha River.  Approximately, 80 Moors and Sub-Saharan Africans escaped the colony before it collapsed.

2012 – Melungeon researchers found extensive evidence of a community on the Pee Dee River in South Carolina composed of people of mixed Portuguese and Native American descent. 64 The Portuguese were probably Sephardic Jews from Portugal. Apparently, they arrived in the region in the early-to-mid 1600s, prior to the settlement of Charleston, SC.  Currently the earliest known printed mention of these people is 1754.   Their existence matches perfectly the 1654 eyewitness account of the Yeardley Expedition that said that extended “Spanish” families were migrating from the coast of the Carolinas to the mountains.

2013 – Along the trail walked by the 16^th century French explorers that connected the Oconee River’s head of freight canoe navigation to the gold fields in Dahlonega, GA, is a complex of stone walled terraces, oval stone mounds and rectangular stone building ruins. 65 The extensive archaeological zone runs along Sandy Creek for about a mile in southern Jackson County, GA and a bit of northern Clarke County, GA.  Along the creek’s flood plain is a concentration of Mississippian Period Native artifacts.

When archaeologists from the University of Georgia (six miles away) refused a request from the property owners to inspect the site because “they didn’t want to be associated with the Mayas in Georgia thing” a group of researchers from the People of One Fire visited the site.  The stone retaining walls may or may not have been built by indigenous people.  However, the research team found profound evidence of metal smelting activities in the vicinity of the stone building ruins. There was very little iron oxide in the ancient clinkers, but some zinc and copper oxide.  This would be the waste left over from smelting “red gold” ore.

“Something was clearly going on” in the Southern Highlands and Piedmont during the Early Colonial Period.  The true mystery is why so few archaeologists investigate this enigmatic time in North America.

Citations:

1. Hakluyt, Richard, The Voyages of René de Laundonnière (1582) The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation, vol. IX.[↩]
2. Rochefort, Charles, History of the Caribby-Islands (1665 in French, 1666 in English) Chapter 8, “Paysage au Apalache” p. 241. French Huguenot survivors were allowed to remain in the capital of Apalache and converted the king to Christianity.[↩]
3. De la Bandera, Juan, Relaccion de la Florida, 1568. The chronicles of the Juan Pardo expedition.[↩]
4. Kennedy, N. Brent, The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People, Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997; pp. 115-116.[↩]
5. De la Bandera, Juan, Relaccion de la Florida, 1568. The chronicles of the Juan Pardo expedition.[↩]
6. Mark R. Barnes, Patty Henry, and Erika Martin Seibert (2000) National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Charlesfort-Santa Elena / 38BU51 and 38BU162. National Park Service.[↩]
7. Hakluyt, Richard, The Principall Navigations Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (Imprinted at London, 1589)   Volume 9, “The Deposition of Nicholas Burgiognon.”[↩]
8. Hakluyt, Richard, The Principall Navigations Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (Imprinted at London, 1589)   Volume 9, “The Fourth French Voiage.”[↩]
9. De Soto Falls, near US 19-129 on the south side of Blood Mountain gets its name from the discovery of Spanish armor and weapons at the base of the larger falls.[↩]
10. The Migration Legend of the Kashita People was presented to the colonial leaders of Georgia in 1735. It was painted in the Creek writing system on bison calf vellum. The English translation requires several pages of printing in a book. The Creek writing system consisted of red and black characters, not pictures, and was a complete writing system that could convey past and present tenses.  The original vellum is lost somewhere in the archives of the Archbishop of Canterbury, whereas the English translation is accessible online.[↩]
11. White, Robert W., A Witness For Eleanor Dare,  Long Beach, CA: Lexikos., 1992.[↩]
12. Hammond, George P. and Rey, Apapito, The Rediscovery of New Mexico, 1580-1594, Albuquerque: U of NM Press, 1966, 297; Flint, Richard and Flint, Shirley Cushing, “Juan Morlete, Gaspar Castano de Sosa, and the Province of Nuevo León.”[↩]
13. Hammond, George P. and Rey, Apapito, The Rediscovery of New Mexico, 1580-1594, Albuquerque: U of NM Press, 1966, 297; Flint, Richard and Flint, Shirley Cushing, “Juan Morlete, Gaspar Castano de Sosa, and the Province of Nuevo León.”[↩]
14. White, Robert W., A Witness For Eleanor Dare,  Long Beach, CA: Lexikos., 1992.[↩]
15. Duncan-Hart, Ron, World Politics, Illegal Jews, and the Inquisition of Cartagena, Society For Crypto Judaic Studies.[↩]
16. Rochefort, Charles, History of the Caribby-Islands (1665 in French, 1666 in English) Chapter 8, “Paysage au Apalache” p.143.[↩]
17. Rochefort, Charles, History of the Caribby-Islands (1665 in French, 1666 in English) Chapter 8, “Paysage au Apalache” p.143.[↩]
18. “Ruiz de Salazar Vallecilla, Royal Governor of Florida”, Spanish Pathways in Florida, 1492-1992.[↩]
19. “Ruiz de Salazar Vallecilla, Royal Governor of Florida”, Spanish Pathways in Florida, 1492-1992.[↩]
20. The author was Principal Planner and Historic Preservation Planner for the Cobb County Government in 1995 when the petroglyphs were discovered. The City of Smyrna, which owned the property on Nickajack Creek where the petroglyphs were located did not want to bring in archaeologists, because it would delay construction of a park.  Nickajack is the Anglicization of the word, Nacoochee.  The Spanish trading post may have been at the confluence of Nickajack Creek and the Chattahoochee River, or perhaps moved there later.[↩]
21. Salley, Alexander S. J., Narratives of Early Carolina, New York: Charles Scribner Sons, 1911: p. 27.[↩]
22. Talbot, Sir William (Governor of Maryland) The Discoveries of John Lederer, In three several Marches from Virginia, To the West of Carolina, And other parts of the Continent: Begun in March 1669, and ended in September 1670.[↩]
23. Rochefort, Charles, History of the Caribby-Islands (1665 in French, 1666 in English) Chapter 8, “Paysage au Apalache”  p.145.[↩]
24. Talbot, Sir William (Governor of Maryland) The Discoveries of John Lederer, In three several Marches from Virginia, To the West of Carolina, And other parts of the Continent: Begun in March 1669, and ended in September 1670.[↩]
25. Section of the charter of the Carolina, written by John Locke:

    Article 97:  But since the natives of that place, who will be concerned in our plantation, are utterly strangers to Christianity, whose idolatry, ignorance, or mistake gives us no right to expel or use them ill; and those who remove from other parts to plant there will unavoidably be of different opinions concerning matters of religion, the liberty whereof they will expect to have allowed them, and it will not be reasonable for us, on this account, to keep them out, that civil peace may be maintained amidst diversity of opinions, and our agreement and compact with all men may be duly and faithfully observed; the violation whereof, upon what presence soever, cannot be without great offence to Almighty God, and great scandal to the true religion which we profess; and also that Jews, heathens, and other dissenters from the purity of Christian religion may not be scared and kept at a distance from it, but, by having an opportunity of acquainting themselves with the truth and reasonableness of its doctrines, and the peaceableness and inoffensiveness of its professors, may, by good usage and persuasion, and all those convincing methods of gentleness and meekness, suitable to the rules and design of the gospel, be won ever to embrace and unfeignedly receive the truth; therefore, any seven or more persons agreeing in any religion, shall constitute a church or profession, to which they shall give some name, to distinguish it from others.

    Article 100: In the terms of communion of every church or profession, these following shall be three; without which no agreement or assembly of men, upon presence of religion, shall be accounted a church or profession within these rules:

    1. “That there is a God.”
    2. “That God is publicly to be worshipped.”
    3. “That it is lawful and the duty of every man, being thereunto called by those that govern, to bear witness to truth; and that every church or profession shall, in their terms of communion, set down the external way whereby they witness a truth as in the presence of God, whether it be by laying hands on or kissing the bible, as in the Church of England, or by holding up the hand, or any other sensible way.”

    [↩]

26. Summers, Lewis Preston, The Expedition of Batts and Fallon: A Journey from Virginia to beyond the Appalachian Mountains, September, 1671. From Annals of Southwest Virginia, 1769-1800; 1929.[↩]
27. Thwaites, Reuben G., Father Marquette New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1902.[↩]
28. Virginia Version (original text)

    Letter from Abraham Woods to John Richards concerning the Expedition of James Needham and Gabriel Arthur in 1673 and 1674 from Petersburg, VA – August 22, 1674.

    North Carolina Version  (edited text)

    The Journeys of James Needham and Gabriel Arthur in 1673 and 1674 Through the Piedmont and Mountains of North Carolina to establish Trade with the Cherokees.[↩]

29. The reason that the Tomahitans and Oconeechee were allies in Virginia were that they spoke the same language, Itsate Creek, and both their mother towns in Georgia were on the Oconee River.  Their mother towns, Tama and Ocute were visited by Hernando de Soto in March of 1541.  These tribes’ real names were Tamahiti and Okonesee.  An internal Itsate “s” is pronounced “sh.”  The words mean “Merchant People” and “Offspring of the Okonee.”[↩]
30. Eric E. Bowne. The Westo Indians: Slave Traders of the Early Colonial South. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. pp. 121–123.[↩]
31. Redding, Katherine (Translator) Plans for the Colonization and Defense of Apalache, 1675.  University of Kansas: General Archives of the Indies, Seville. (Audiencia of Santo Domingo 58-2-5) Florida June 15, 1675.[↩]
32. The South Carolina Encyclopedia, p. 1015.[↩]
33. Shepherd, Murial Early, Cabins in the Laurel, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 13-14.[↩]
34. Presnell, Lowell, Mines and Minerals of Western North Carolina, Alexander, NC: WorldComm, 1999; p. 13.[↩]
35. “Melungeons-America’s greatest cultural mystery,” Tennessee Online History Classroom, Tennessee Department of Education.  Nashville, TN.[↩]
36. South Carolina Department of Archives and History; Records in the British Public Record Office relating to South Carolina, 1663-1782.[↩]
37. Kennedy, N. Brent, Melungeons-America’s greatest cultural mystery, 2002.[↩]
38. Lawson, John, A New Voyage to Carolina, London, 1709.[↩]
39. Thornton, Richard L., Sephardic Jews: the first European colonists of the Southern Highlands, The Examiner, March 14, 2011.[↩]
40. Queen Anne’s War – Wikipedia.[↩]
41. Battle of Flint River – Wikipedia[↩]
42. Apalachee Massacre – Wikipedia[↩]
43. Tuscarora War – Wikipedia[↩]
44. Guy, Joe, “The Forgotten Tribe of the Hiwassee”[↩]
45. Ramsey, William L., The Yamasee War: A Study of Culture, Economy, and Conflict in the Colonial South. University of Nebraska Press, 2008.[↩]
46. Yamasee War – Wikipedia[↩]
47. Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition – Wikipedia[↩]
48. Kennedy, N. Brent, The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People, Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997; pp. 133.[↩]
49. Kennedy, N. Brent, Melungeons-America’s greatest cultural mystery, 2002.[↩]
50. White, W. E. (Editor) Wilson, Gustavus J. N. (Author) The Early History of Jackson County, GA, Atlanta: Foote & Davis Printers, 1914; pp. 17-19.[↩]
51. Translations by Marilyn Rae of the People of One Fire research alliance, 2013.[↩]
52. James Adair, The History of the American Indians, particularly those Nations adjoining the Mississippi, East and West Florida, South Carolina, London: Edward & Charles Dilly Printers, 1775.[↩]
53. Owsley, Harriet Chappell, John Sevier Papers (1752-1815), Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives. The author owned and restored the original Tipton House in Shenandoah County, VA.[↩]
54. Davis, Louise, The Mystery of the Melungeons, Nashville Tennessean, September 22, 1963.[↩]
55. Jones, Charles C., Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press (Reprint) 1873, 1999: p.48.[↩]
56. Presnell, Lowell, Mines and Minerals of Western North Carolina; pp. 12-13.[↩]
57. Presnell, Lowell, Mines and Minerals of Western North Carolina; p.13.[↩]
58. Larsen, Lewis – Kelly, Arthur – Caldwell, Joseph, Archaeological Explorations at Etowah Mounds, Cartersville, GA During the 1955-1956 Season. Atlanta: Georgia Division of Parks and Historic Sites, 1957.[↩]
59. The author studied the Nickajack Creek site while Historic Preservation Planner of Cobb County, GA. Until 1994, Cobb County government employed in-house archeologists, but they never studied the Nickajack village site.[↩]
60. Quote from web site of the Berry Site Foundation: “We have identified the Berry site as the town of Joara, which was visited by the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1540 and by the Juan Pardo expedition from 1567-68. Pardo built a fort at Joara-Fort San Juan – the earliest European settlement in the interior of what is now the United States.”[↩]
61. Distances calculated precisely by GIS software as created by ERSI.[↩]
62. Fort Tells of Spain’s Early Ambitions – A version of this article appeared in print on July 23, 2013, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: First New World Fort Was Spain’s.[↩]
63. Archaeological Discoveries Shine Light On DeSoto, French Fort[↩]
64. The Real Core Melungeons.[↩]
65. Thornton, Richard L., Second complex of ancient stone terraces identifed in Southeast, The Examiner, March 14, 2011.[↩]