Carrie Williams Jones County Historian

For hundreds of years before white men came into Georgia, the Hitchiti Indians seem to have been here. They did not live as nomads but had developed a higher level of civilization. These Indians traveled extensively from the Great Lakes to Georgia. There were many different tribes in the Great Creek Confederacy, and the first account we have of these Hitchiti Indians they were speaking the Muscogee dialect. Georgia pre-history and early Colonial history is intimately bound up with the Creek Confederation, which came to occupy fully two-thirds of the State.

Many Indian relics have been found in Jones County and there is definite proof that before Jones County was formed the Indians were here. Even today arrow heads may be found in the woods and fields. At Dames Ferry the Indian arrow-maker lived on the place later owned by the Dame family. Hundreds of arrow heads have been picked up in this vicinity. The trails made by the wild animals later became Indian trails. The western boundary of Jones County is the Ocmulgee river and this was the favorite place for the Indians to live. The banks of the river were high and the was not flooded so the Creeks lived up and down the lands adjacent to this river for several years after Jones County was organized. Their largest settlement was at Ocmulgee Old Fields (now Bibb County). Jones County was criss-crossed with many Indian trails, as the Indians were constantly going to Milledgeville, the capital, in 1807. Indian Springs, a few miles from Jones’ borders was a center of the Creek Confederacy and the trails going to many points crossed Jones County. We only know the routes and names of a few of these trails. “Horse-Path” ran the route of the Garrison Road (No. 49) and was used for travel south, to Spanish Forts at Tallahassee, St. Marks and Pensacola. Another trail was “Old Indian Path,” which came across the Ocmulgee at what is now Juliette and went in the direction of Milledgeville. North and south were two parallel trails a few miles apart known as “Cheehaw Trail” and “Tom’s Trail.” Tradition has it that “Red Horse Trail” went through Pope’s District, Ethridge and on to New Orleans.

We began to obtain land by treaty after the Oconee Wars. The treaty that obtained the counties of Baldwin, Wayne and Wilkinson was between the Federal government and the Creek Confederacy. The treaty was signed by forty chiefs and warriors on June 16, 1802, on the Oconee river at Wilkinson. It was ratified Jan. 11, 1803. At that time the fort was commanded by Major Samuel Beckam. In 1806-07 the garrison was moved to Fort Hawkins in Jones County and Col. Benjamin Hawkins was in command, this in 1807 the very year that Jones County was formed. This site near the Ocmulgee river had fourteen acres in the stockade where the blockhouse was built and 96 acres surrounding it. This was twenty feet square, thirty-four feet high and surrounded by watchtowers and a basement built of stone eighteen inches thick and ten feet high. The second story projected over the first for three feet on all sides. There were holes in the floors in order to shoot any Indians attempting to scale the rock base, to burn the wooden structure above. Col. Benjamin Hawkins selected the site for this fort on a commanding eminence near the Ocmulgee river.

About thirty miles west of Jones count y at Indian Springs, the site of the Confederacy of the Creeks, on Feb. 12, 1825 while Jones County was eighteen years old, Chief William McIntosh signed a treaty giving the United States government all lands west of the Flint River. For signing away the Creeks’ lands this handsome son of a full-blooded Scotchman and a pure Indian mother was cruelly murdered by his own people.
The following record was found in the Ordinary’s office at Gray, Jones County, and is probably the only record of its kind, in the original cramped writing of. This shows that in 1818, eleven years after Jones County was settled, we were still having dealings with the Indians.

Jones County, Georgia, 1818.
Thomas tolls a strawberry road horse about thirteen years old, four feet two inches high, branded on the right buttock thus; 8, considerably marked by the saddle, a star in his forehead, a small bell on, confined by a raw hide string. Appraised by Thomas Morris and William Simmons to twenty dollars, on 22nd of June 1818.
Levi Mobley, J. P.

Book of strays 1808 Inferior Court Minutes, no page number. Proven away by the Indians.
Creek Agency-29th Junes 1808. “The bearer Jemmittic Feards brig Feards nephew is in search after a small red roan horse that his uncle feared lost down at Milledgeville spring. Said horse is branded on the cushion, 8, he has heard the horse is in the possession of some white men over Ocmulgee that lives on the road leads out to Tom’s Ford, Feard begs his friends the white people will give his nephew any information they possess about said horse and anyone that has him in possession hopes they will from this deliver him to the bearer, his nephew.
Timy Barnard, Asst. Agt. And Interpreter by order of Agt. Col. Hawkins

Indians came into Clinton during the first twelve years of its existence, to exchange skins and furs for goods. They camped outside of the town and stayed several weeks. Some of the people could speak their language. One of these was Dr. Thomas Hamilton. The Indians were very fond of music so Dr. Hamilton, who lived in the big white house in front of the Johnson home in Clinton, brought twenty Indians to his home to hear his daughter, Frances, play the piano. Dr. Hamilton had brought this piano from Philadelphia and Frances was a gifted pianist. She was so afraid of the Indians that her father stood by her with his hand on her shoulder while she played about all of the pieces that she knew. The Indians were delighted and when leaving, they chatted away to Dr. Hamilton and told him that they like “heap big fiddle music.” He let them look inside of the piano, and their surprise and expressions must have been very interesting.

(Clipping from an old newspaper; “The Jones County Searchlight”)
Jones County was part of the Ocmulgee National Monument until Bibb County was cut out in 1822. This area was a concentration of Indian villages for the past 10,000 years. From 1715 to 1836 the Creeks’ Confederation of 50 towns was the most powerful Indian organization in America. The large mounds of earth on which they erected their temples may still be seen. The Department of Interior has made this into a National Park and preserved the main mound and put the relic in a museum.