Apalachicola Province was a group or association of towns located along the lower part of the Chattahoochee River in present-day Alabama and Georgia. The Spanish so called it because they perceived it as a political entity under the leadership of the town of Apalacicola. It is believed that before the 17th century, the residents of all the Apalachicola towns spoke the Hitchiti language, although other towns whose people spoke the Muscogee language relocated among the Apalachicolas along the Chattahoochee River in the middle- to later- 17th century. All of the Apalachicola towns moved to central Georgia at the end of the 17th century, where the English called them "Ochese Creek Indians". They moved back to the Chattahoochee River after 1715, with the English then calling them "Lower Creeks" ("Lower Towns of the Muscogee Confederacy"), while the Spanish called them "Ochese".
Origins In the first half of the 17th century, a number of towns were situated along of the Chattahoochee River in Alabama and Georgia, from the south of the falls at present-day Columbus to Barbour County, Alabama. Archaeological evidence indicates that the material culture of the 17th century lower Chattahoochee region had developed in place over several centuries. The ancestors of at least some of the people in the area may have been there as early as 12,000 years ago. In the Middle and Late Woodland Period (300–750) sites such as Kolomoki were important centers of the regional culture. A variant of the Lamar regional culture, with influences from the Fort Walton culture to the south, developed in the towns along the Chattahoochee between 1300 and 1400. The cultural continuity of archaeological sites into historical times suggests that the towns along the Chattahoochee River spoke the Hichiti language in the late prehistoric period.
A chiefdom of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture had existed in the lower Chattahoochee River valley in the 16th century. A major change in ceramic types at sites along the Chattahoochee River occurred between 1550 and 1650. There is also evidence of a large drop in the population in the area. The de Soto expedition in the 1540s did not enter the Chattahoochee Valley, but appears to have severely disrupted the population of that chiefdom, causing many deaths there due to epidemics of European and African diseases introduced by the Spaniards. Some archaeologists state that only two population centers survived along the Chattahoochee in the late 16th century, situated on opposite sides of the river south of the falls at Columbus. Both sites had large platform mounds, and may have served as ceremonial centers. While some archaeologists believe that some sites along the Chattahoochee remained stable population centers, and became sites of later population expansion, other archaeologists believe that there were significant influxes of other people into the Chattahoochee Valley, changing the material culture of the area, and that similar processes occurred in the Tallahassee Hills region of Florida (the historic Apalachee Province). At least some of the people of the Chattahoochee River towns may have migrated south towards Apalachee, while Muscogee people from the Coosa and Tallapoosa areas in Alabama may have moved into the Chattahoochee valley. Folklore of the Lower Towns of the Muscogee Confederacy supports an interpretation of Muscogee-speaking immigrants joining a Hitchiti-speaking resident population, with the Chattahoochee River area including both Hitchiti- and Muscogee-speaking towns by the later 17th century. Speakers of the Koasati language, Apalachee people, and people known as Chisca or Yuchi also settled in the Chattahoochee towns in the later 17th century.
The collapse of the Mississippian culture that followed the disruption caused by the de Soto Expedition was incomplete. Both Foster and Hahn comment that Apalachicola Province had "the form, but not the substance, of a multi-community 'chiefdom'." Individual towns in Apalachicola Province were independent to a great extent. Bolton refers to the towns in Apalachicola Province in 1679 as the "Apalachicola Confederacy".
Spanish contacts The Spanish contacted the towns on the Chattahoochee River in 1638, five years after Spanish missions were first established in Apalachee Province. The Spanish called the association of towns on the Chattahoochee River "Apalachicola Province", after what they perceived as the most powerful town in the province, Apalachicola. Apalachicolas began asking for friars to be sent to them in the 1640s, and regular trade between the Spanish in Apalachee Province and the Apalachicola began in the 1650s. By the 1670s, deer skins from the Apalachicola were being shipped to Havana.
The Spanish heard of outside people moving into Apalachicola Province in the 1670s. At the same time the English adventurer Henry Woodward, who had reached the upper reaches of the Savannah River, heard reports of the "Cowatoe", the first mention of Coweta in European sources. Later the same year the bishop of Cuba produced a list of potential targets for missions, which included Coweta ("Cueta" to the Spanish) in the northern part of Apalachee Province. While Coweta later claimed to be the most ancient and powerful town on the Chattahoochee, it had only moved there in the 1660s or 1670s, into the northern end of a province consisting of at least eight Hitchiti-speaking towns. The Spanish originally perceived political power to be concentrated in the southern part of the province. The Spanish recognized Apalachicola as the most important town in the province, while Sabacola, at the southern end of the province, also exercised great influence, being closest to the Spanish in Apalachee Province. The chief of Sabacola may have converted to Christianity, and was recognized by the Spanish at one point as the "grand cacique" of Apalachicola Province.
The number and names of towns on the Chattahoochee River varied in different Spanish reports. Two lists, from 1675 and 1685–1686, show many similarities, and a few differences. The towns listed by the Spanish, from south to north, were: + Towns on the Chattahoochee River in the 17th century 1675 list 1685–1686 list Common English name Primary language of town possibly Hitchiti Sawokli or Sauwoogelo possibly Hitchiti Oconee Hitchiti Apalachicola or Palachicola Hitchiti possibly Hitchiti or Yamassee possibly Hitchiti possibly Hitchiti Okmulgee Hitchiti Echete or Hitchiti Hitchiti Kasihta, Cussita or Cusseta Muscogee Kolomi Muscogee Coweta Muscogee possibly Muscogee Tuskegee possibly Koasati or Yamassee probably Yamassee
Three towns that were on or close to the route of de Soto's expedition in 1540 may have later moved to the Chattahoochee River. Alapi may have derived from a town located east of Cofitachequi, the town of Ocuti may have been a successor to the Ocute chiefdom of the Oconee River valley, and Casista (Kasihta) was on the Coosa River at the time of de Soto's visit.
Missionaries and soldiers The Apalachicolas had requested the Spanish to send missionaries to their towns, but the lack of available missionaries had caused those requests to be ignored. The visit of Henry Woodward to Coweta in the late 1670s alarmed the Spanish. Possibly in response to the English encroachment, the Spanish began courting the Apalachicolas, inviting them to move their towns closer to Apalachee Province so that missions could be established in them. At least part of the town of Sabacola moved in 1674 to a spot just south of the junction of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers, where they established a new town of Sabacola el Menor, which became the site of the mission of La Encarnation a la Santa Cruz. Fearing attacks from the Chisca in western Florida, who were at war with the Apalachee, the residents of Sabacola el Menor moved north up the Chattahoochee River some time around 1677.
Sabacola el Grande was located on the Chattahoochee River a few leagues south of the falls at Columbus. Some residents of Sabacola had become Christians when the town was located in Florida, and requested that missionaries be sent to them. In late 1679, three missionaries, including the friar at the former mission in Sabacola el Menor, were sent to Apalachicola Province to convert the Apalachicolas as a counter to the growing English influence in the Chattahoochee valley. The Muscogee and Koasati-speaking towns were in communication with Westos, who were allied with the English in the Province of Carolina. The Christians of Sabacola had not informed the chief of Coweta of their request for Spanish missionaries. On hearing of the arrival of the missionaries, the chief traveled to Sabacola with men from Coweta and other towns who were friendly with the Westos, and forced the missionaries to leave three days later. In 1680, the Carolinians turned on the Westos, who had been their allies and slave-raiders, killing most of them. The surviving Westos sought refuge at Coweta. Now wary of the English, the chief of Coweta renewed contact with the Spanish. In the fall of 1680 the chief of Sabacola went to St. Augustine and invited the Spanish to send missionaries and soldiers to Apalachicola. Juan Márquez Cabrera, who had become governor of Spanish Florida in 1680, sent missionaries back to Sabacola in 1681, with an escort of seven (or twelve) Spanish soldiers. At about the same time, some Apalachicolas killed a couple of Christian Apalachees in Apalachee Province. The Spanish sent more soldiers to Apalachicola, and relations worsened. The missionaries baptized 36 residents of Sabacola before being forced out again a few months later. Cabrera suspected English influence in the hostility shown the missionaries. Threats from Cabrera led to at least the Christianized residents of Sabacola moving south to a point west of the Flint River just above where it joins the Chattahoochee. A mission named San Carlos de Sabacola was established in the town before 1686. The mission last appears in Spanish records in 1690. The mission town may have included Chatots from the earlier mission of San Carlos de los Chacatos in present-day Jackson County, Florida.
In the 1680s, the Spanish were using Uchise to refer to people living around Ochese Creek (now the Ocmulgee river) in central Georgia. In 1691, after the Apalachicola towns had mostly moved to the Ochese Creek area, the Spanish identified the people that had begun attacking missions that year as "Indians of Uchise, Yamasses, and Englishmen", where Uchise meant Apalachicola. Hann takes this transfer of identity as an indication that the people who lived in the vicinity of Ochese Creek in the 1680s were related to the Hitchiti-speakers of the Apalachicola Province, and may have become part of the province by 1680. There were also Yamasee from Tama Province living in Apalachicola province in the 1680s. Many Apalachees disaffected with the Spanish presence in Apalachee Province moved to the Apalachicola towns in the 1680s. Qua, an Apalachee woman from a prominent family at Mission San Luis (in Anhaica, the principal town of Apalachee Province), married Emperor Brim of Coweta. One of Brim's sons also had an Apalachee wife.
English contacts