On June 7, 1735 the leaders of the Creek Indian Confederacy traveled to the new colonial town of Savannah to meet with Governor James Edward Oglethorpe and leading citizens. The purpose was first to establish diplomatic and trade relations, but also to convince Oglethorpe that they were not primitive savages as they were viewed by most the British officials in older colonies to the north.
Their high king, +++Paracusa Chikili+++ presented Oglethorpe with a bison vellum, on which was written in the Apalache-Creek writing system, the early history of the Kaushete-Creek people. The Kaushete became the leading branch of the Upper Creeks. Newspaper accounts of the writing system described it as being composed of “peculiar red and black characters, not pictures.” The text of the vellum was read by Chikili and translated into English by Kusaponakesa (Mary Musgrove), a Creek noblewoman married to a British colonist. Georgia colonial secretary, Thomas Christie, wrote down the final translation.
Oglethorpe immediately realized that he had witnessed something extraordinary. He wrote a letter to King George II stating that the Creek Indians were distinctly different from any other tribe ever encountered by the British in North America. He stated, “I am convinced that the Creek Indians are descended from a great civilization. They are equal in intelligence or greater so, to any Englishman and deserving of being treated as our equals in all matters.”
Oglethorpe directed Christie to place the bison calf vellum, his translation and the interviews with Creek leaders on the next ship headed to London. The ship departed on July 6, 1735. The documents created quite a stir in London and were given extensive coverage in the American Gazetteer newspaper. The vellum hung on the wall of the Colonial Office at Westminster for many decades. The location of the translation that brought meaning to the vellum was soon lost.
Throughout the 1800s, several delegations of prominent scholars from major American universities sailed across the Atlantic in vain search for the lost Migration Legend of the Creek People. By the time that archaeology was becoming a true profession in the United States, the Migration Legends had become almost forgotten . . . but not by the Creek People.
https://apalacheresearch.com/2019/12/26/the-discovery-of-the-lost-c...
Three weeks later, I received an email with “Clarence House” in the email address. OMG! It was from the famous Welsh historian and poet, Dr. Grahame Davies. He was Prince Charles’ Asst. Private Secretary. He informed me that Prince Charles had confirmed that the documents I described in my email were originally the property of the British Royal Family. Prince Charles had asked him to assist me in the hunt for the Original Creek Migration Legend until it was found. OMG!
It took six months, but Dr. Davies was eventually figured out the history of the original transcripts by Mary Musgrove and Thomas Christie. King George II was very impressed, when he learned from General Oglethorpe that a very tall, civilized and intelligent tribe of Indians lived in his realm, who were related to the civilizations of Mexico.
The king forwarded the transcript and velum to Archbishop of Canterbury William Wake with instructions to create a Creek dictionary then both Creek and English language versions of the New Testament for distribution to the Creeks...[The Archbishop never followed through.]
We hit many roadblocks along the way to discovering the actual wooden crate, which transported the reports by Christie on the Creek Indians. Most of the roadblocks were bureaucratic in nature. However, there was nothing like a quick telephone call from the future king of England to dislodge a British bureaucrat from their traditional state of lethargy and inflated self-importance!
I could not afford the thousands of dollars required for producing high resolution, archival photographs of the original transcript. Prince Charles picked up the tab with the condition that I sign a document, promising never to sell archival photos or mass-distribute them.
Where you can see the Migration Legend of the Creek People
Exactly identical archival copies are on display at the Ocmulgee National Historical Park Museum in Macon, GA. The Poarch Creek Tribe in SW Alabama, the Tama Tribal Town in SW Georgia and the Coweta Creek Tribe in northern Georgia also hold archival copies for viewing by their members.
The Georgia Historical Society refused their copies of the transcripts because their staff said that these documents didn’t exist. Their historians assured management that the original copies of the Creek Migration Legend had been lost 280 years ago.
The Muscogee-Creek Nation refused their copies, because (1) They never heard of Mary Musgrove, (2) Nevertheless, her translation of the Migration Legend was all wrong, and (3) They are tired of having white people like Mary Musgrove tell Creek people, what their history was. (Mary was a full-blooded Creek and a henehv (Sun Princess) of the royal family.)
The Library of Congress demanded that I pay historians from three nationally recognized universities to determine the authenticity of the documents. I gave their copies to the National Park Service.
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All politics and controversy aside, I find this to be a most fascinating and inspirational story. I had never even heard of the Creek Migration Legends.
But I'm interested because I (and probably many other southern Americans) have a tiny drop of Yucatan Peninsula (where ancient Mayans lived) in my own dna.
https://apalacheresearch.com/2022/09/10/something-that-every-native...
Charles III, King of the United Kingdom
Coosaponakesee (Mary Musgrove)
https://dlg.usg.edu/record/gaarchives_colwills_294
(I was unable to find a Geni profile for Thomas Christie (ca. 1700 - 1751), Georgia colonial secretary.)
https://archive.org/details/colonialrecords10assegoog/page/8/mode/2...