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Unless you are interested in nature, history or archaeology, this blog will bore you, so I don't want to waste the time of those looking for relationship issues. However, if you enjoy hearing adventure stories, stay here at my camp site for awhile and let the fire warm you, while I tell you about the golden turkey.
This week I stumbled upon digital copies of some maps of various parts of the Southeast, made by French cartographers in the late 1600s and early 1700s. The French were vastly superior mapmakers, when compared to the English and especially the Spanish. At last my three years of French were useful for something!
What I am up to is answering a riddle. Most history books, travel guides and the Museum of the Cherokee Indians, state that the Cherokees have been in the North Carolina Mountains for 10,000 years. Yet leaders of the Cherokees in the late 1700s and early 1800s clearly stated that their tribe were recent arrivals from the north, and they killed or drove off the people, who built the mounds in this region. Eighty per cent of the Native American places names in the Southern Highlands have no meaning in Cherokee other than being proper nouns, yet can easily be translated by modern dictionaries of the Muskogean languages. Both rivers on the Cherokee Reservation are Creek words.
Well, one of the many things that intrigued me was that the maps showed the inhabitants of NW Georgia in the first half of the 1700s, to be Apalachicola Indians. This was a branch of the Creek Indians that was always assumed to be located in the Florida Panhandle. The northeast part of Georgia back then, was inhabited by Coweta's (another branch of the Creeks), Okonees (my branch of the Creeks), Yuchi, and Savano Indians.
So today, I took off to the Cartacay River Valley with my three fun-loving canine companions to look at places, where the French maps said there were Apalachicola villages. Sure enough I found evidence of the village sites, including one large crescent shaped mound.
Afterward, I wanted to see if I could find a old trail over the Rich Mountains, that was shown on the maps. By hiking up the mountain on an old logging trail I was able to reach the remains of the 200 year old trade path . . . amazing! We had just started back down the mountain when I spotted six teenagers on horseback coming up the narrow road. Trying to get three herd dogs past six horses on the side of 45 degree mountain slopes would be a recipe for disaster. Therefore, I cut across to what was left of the ancient Indian trail and headed down the mountain that away. This was in wilderness area, so it is possible that no human had walked that trail for decades, if not hundreds of years.
We had gone about 1200 feet we came upon a marvelous sight. Deep within a ravine, I spied an ancient rock cairn next to a spring. Most of the stone structures and stone carvings around these parts date from around 1000 BC to 0 AD. They were built a mysterious people called the Chiaha (Highlanders) who looked something like a cross between a Creek Indian and a Welshman. They are believed to be the descendants of pre-Celtic copper miners, who got stranded in America. Just as I got to the cairn, I heard a wild turkey hen. She was perched on a hickory limb above the cairn. She was golden! . . . not brown, not bronze, but a pure gold color. Her feathers glistened in the setting winter sun.
I had seen a few wild turkeys like her in the mountains of southern Mexico, but never in the United States. Normally, our turkeys travel in flocks, but she was alone. She never left her perch while were there. Oh, if I had only taken my camera. Wouldn't you know it?
Well, the dogs are sound asleep now. Running up and down the mountain burned off their excess energy. However, I am sure they will be talking about their adventure on the side of the mountain for days to come.
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| On the Trail of the Wild Golden Turkey |
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