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The Native Americans who inhabited Georgia during first European contact had many myths and legends that seem to relate to the time of the Mississippian Moundbuilders. The Mississippians are probably the ancestors to modern Creek Indians. Migration legends of the Creeks seem to support the idea that they came here from someplace west of Georgia, possibly Mexico. The Cherokee also have a myth that relates to the Moundbuilders who they called Anikutani.
All of these myths and legends will be discussed here.
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Creek migration legends tell how they originated in a place much farther west, a place where the earth would occasionally open up and swallow their children (a possible reference to earthquakes). Part of their tribe decided to leave this place and began an eastward migration in order to find where the sun rises. On their journey they came to a mountain that thundered and had red smoke coming from its summit which they later discovered, after climbing the mountain, was actually fire (a possible reference to a volcano.) Here they decided to settle down after meeting people from three nations (Chickasaws, Atilamas, & Obikaws) who taught them about herbs and "many other things."
From these references one must assume that these people migrated from Mexico which is west of Georgia and has both earthquakes and active volcanoes. Mexico is also the birthplace of corn agriculture, a defining characteristic of these newcomers who archaeologists call the Mississippians. Also, the type of tobacco grown in the southeast by the Muskogeans has been shown to have its origins in Central America (part of the extensive trade network of the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan). Additionally, the Muscogean language belongs to the Hokan-Siouan family which reads like a who's who of the Mississippian languages. This language family has its origin in Mexico and Central America where Chontal and the Yuman group is still spoken in western Mexico. The Yumans also constructed earth lodges which is another feature of the Ocmulgee site. It is in central Mexico where we find a religious cult based around a feathered serpent, also a feature of the Mississippian religion. It is also in Mexico where we find cities consisting of flat-topped pyramid mounds and plazas which are the most noticeable feature of Mississippian town planning.
There are also intriguing place names in Georgia that not only sound amazingly similar to important places in Central Mexico but also have nearly identical meanings. Chula and Tallulah are two such cities in Georgia which sound incredibly similar to Cholula and Tula, two very important indigenous sites in central Mexico. Chula is a Choctaw word meaning fox and Tallulah is a Choctaw word meaning "leaping waters." (Tallulah is the name of an important waterfall in Georgia once known as the "Niagara of the South.")
Cholula is a Nahuatl word that means "water that falls in the fled place." In fact, because of Native American pronunciations, Tallulah can also be pronounced as Tchallulah. (For instance, Cherokee is the Anglo pronunciation of Tsa La Gi, which is how the Muscogeans referred to this tribe.) Thus the amazing similarities in both pronunciation and meaning seem to be more than coincidental. Choctaw is a Muscogean dialect and one of the original four tribes of the Creek Confederacy. Nahuatl is a language of central Mexico.
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