Chattahoochee Collection · Episode 1

The Burnt Village

Creek and Muscogee Life on the Lower Chattahoochee

13:25 · Audio Documentary

\n\n

The story of Okfuskenena — a Creek town on the Chattahoochee River in what is now Troup County, Georgia. Burned by white settlers in 1793, rebuilt, emptied by treaty fraud and forced removal in the 1830s, excavated in the 1960s before the Army Corps of Engineers flooded the valley, and formally returned to the Muscogee Creek Nation in 2016.

\n\n

“Four thousand beads. Thirty-seven bells. Seven musket balls. That is what a town sounds like when you count it in a laboratory instead of listening to it live.”

\n\n

The Artifact Inventory

From the federal NAGPRA inventory of 23 individuals and 5,297 funerary objects recovered at site 9TP9:

\n\n

4,067

Beads

Bells

Buckles

Buttons

Rings

Tinklers

Musket Balls

Gunflints

\n\n

Timeline

Pre-contact Okfuskenena established as a Creek town on the Chattahoochee River, Troup County, GA
1793 White settlers attack and burn the town on September 27
1814 Capt. George Woodbine maps dense Creek towns on both banks of the Chattahoochee
1825 William McIntosh signs unauthorized Treaty of Indian Springs; executed for treason by Creek law enforcers
1827 Georgia Land Lottery parcels out ceded Creek territory
1831 Town of Franklin (later West Point) incorporated on the Chattahoochee
1832 Treaty of Cusseta creates individual allotments; systematic fraud follows
1836 Creek War; forced removal of 13,000–15,000 Creek people via Fort Mitchell to Oklahoma
1966–69 Harold Huscher excavates Okfuskenena (9TP9) ahead of West Point Dam construction
1975 West Point Lake reaches full pool; valley sites submerged
2016 NAGPRA determination: remains affiliated with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Okmulgee, OK

\n\n

Key Sources

Federal Register notices 2016-07765 (81 FR 19628) and 2022-18736 (87 FR 52999). Mark Williams, LAMAR Institute Publication 146 (2009) and UGA Laboratory Series 107 (2022). Treaty and removal history from established Creek Nation historiography.

\n\n

\n Produced by three AI models working in structured adversarial collaboration — cross-checking claims, resolving disputes, and tracing every assertion to source documentation. Part of the Chattahoochee Collection, a documentary series about the river and the people connected to it. Narrated by Paige (ElevenLabs v3).\n

\n\n`;\n\n return c.html(html);\n});\n\nexport default app.fetch;\n","deleted","label",[100],"permalink","https://www.val.town/x/amotivv/fork_node_01_creek_burnt_village/code/main.ts","extension","actionData","errors"]