Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state in the Southeastern United States. It began as a British colony in 1733, the last and southernmost of the original Thirteen Colonies to be established. Named after King George II of Great Britain, the Province of Georgia covered the area from South Carolina south to Spanish Florida and west to French Louisiana at the Mississippi River. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788. In 1802–1804, western Georgia was split to the Mississippi Territory, which split to form Alabama with part of former West Florida in 1819. Georgia declared its secession from the Union on January 19, 1861, was one of the original seven Confederate states, it was the last state to be restored to the Union, on July 15, 1870. Georgia is the 8th most populous of the 50 United States. From 2007 to 2008, 14 of Georgia's counties ranked among the nation's 100 fastest-growing, second only to Texas. Georgia is known as the Empire State of the South. Atlanta, the state's capital and most populous city, has been named a global city.
Atlanta's metropolitan area contains about 55% of the population of the entire state. Georgia is bordered to the north by Tennessee and North Carolina, to the northeast by South Carolina, to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by Florida, to the west by Alabama; the state's northernmost part is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Appalachian Mountains system. The Piedmont extends through the central part of the state from the foothills of the Blue Ridge to the Fall Line, where the rivers cascade down in elevation to the coastal plain of the state's southern part. Georgia's highest point is Brasstown Bald at 4,784 feet above sea level. Of the states east of the Mississippi River, Georgia is the largest in land area. Before settlement by Europeans, Georgia was inhabited by the mound building cultures; the British colony of Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe on February 12, 1733. The colony was administered by the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America under a charter issued by King George II.
The Trustees implemented an elaborate plan for the colony's settlement, known as the Oglethorpe Plan, which envisioned an agrarian society of yeoman farmers and prohibited slavery. The colony was invaded by the Spanish during the War of Jenkins' Ear. In 1752, after the government failed to renew subsidies that had helped support the colony, the Trustees turned over control to the crown. Georgia became a crown colony, with a governor appointed by the king; the Province of Georgia was one of the Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution by signing the 1776 Declaration of Independence. The State of Georgia's first constitution was ratified in February 1777. Georgia was the 10th state to ratify the Articles of Confederation on July 24, 1778, was the 4th state to ratify the United States Constitution on January 2, 1788. In 1829, gold was discovered in the North Georgia mountains leading to the Georgia Gold Rush and establishment of a federal mint in Dahlonega, which continued in operation until 1861.
The resulting influx of white settlers put pressure on the government to take land from the Cherokee Nation. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, sending many eastern Native American nations to reservations in present-day Oklahoma, including all of Georgia's tribes. Despite the Supreme Court's ruling in Worcester v. Georgia that U. S. states were not permitted to redraw Indian boundaries, President Jackson and the state of Georgia ignored the ruling. In 1838, his successor, Martin Van Buren, dispatched federal troops to gather the tribes and deport them west of the Mississippi; this forced relocation, known as the Trail of Tears, led to the death of over 4,000 Cherokees. In early 1861, Georgia became a major theater of the Civil War. Major battles took place at Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta. In December 1864, a large swath of the state from Atlanta to Savannah was destroyed during General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea. 18,253 Georgian soldiers died in service one of every five who served.
In 1870, following the Reconstruction Era, Georgia became the last Confederate state to be restored to the Union. With white Democrats having regained power in the state legislature, they passed a poll tax in 1877, which disenfranchised many poor blacks and whites, preventing them from registering. In 1908, the state established a white primary, they constituted 46.7% of the state's population in 1900, but the proportion of Georgia's population, African American dropped thereafter to 28% due to tens of thousands leaving the state during the Great Migration. According to the Equal Justice Institute's 2015 report on lynching in the United States, Georgia had 531 deaths, the second-highest total of these extralegal executions of any state in the South; the overwhelming number of victims were male. Political disfranchisement persisted through the mid-1960s, until after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. An Atlanta-born Baptist minister, part of the educated middle class that had developed in Atlanta's African-American community, Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as a national leader in the civil rights movement.
King joining with others to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta in 1957 to provide political leadership for the Civil Rights Movement across the South. By the 1960s, the proportion of
Tennessee
Tennessee is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 16th most populous of the 50 United States. Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the west, Missouri to the northwest; the Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, the Mississippi River forms the state's western border. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, with a 2017 population of 667,560. Tennessee's second largest city is Memphis, which had a population of 652,236 in 2017; the state of Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians. What is now Tennessee was part of North Carolina, part of the Southwest Territory. Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state on June 1, 1796. Tennessee was the last state to leave the Union and join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.
Occupied by Union forces from 1862, it was the first state to be readmitted to the Union at the end of the war. Tennessee furnished more soldiers for the Confederate Army than any other state besides Virginia, more soldiers for the Union Army than the rest of the Confederacy combined. Beginning during Reconstruction, it had competitive party politics, but a Democratic takeover in the late 1880s resulted in passage of disenfranchisement laws that excluded most blacks and many poor whites from voting; this reduced competition in politics in the state until after passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-20th century. In the 20th century, Tennessee transitioned from an agrarian economy to a more diversified economy, aided by massive federal investment in the Tennessee Valley Authority and, in the early 1940s, the city of Oak Ridge; this city was established to house the Manhattan Project's uranium enrichment facilities, helping to build the world's first atomic bombs, two of which were dropped on Imperial Japan near the end of World War II.
Tennessee's major industries include agriculture and tourism. Poultry and cattle are the state's primary agricultural products, major manufacturing exports include chemicals, transportation equipment, electrical equipment; the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation's most visited national park, is headquartered in the eastern part of the state, a section of the Appalachian Trail follows the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Other major tourist attractions include the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga; the earliest variant of the name that became Tennessee was recorded by Captain Juan Pardo, the Spanish explorer, when he and his men passed through an American Indian village named "Tanasqui" in 1567 while traveling inland from South Carolina. In the early 18th century, British traders encountered a Cherokee town named Tanasi in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee; the town was located on a river of the same name, appears on maps as early as 1725. It is not known whether this was the same town as the one encountered by Juan Pardo, although recent research suggests that Pardo's "Tanasqui" was located at the confluence of the Pigeon River and the French Broad River, near modern Newport.
The meaning and origin of the word are uncertain. Some accounts suggest, it has been said to mean "meeting place", "winding river", or "river of the great bend". According to ethnographer James Mooney, the name "can not be analyzed" and its meaning is lost; the modern spelling, Tennessee, is attributed to James Glen, the governor of South Carolina, who used this spelling in his official correspondence during the 1750s. The spelling was popularized by the publication of Henry Timberlake's "Draught of the Cherokee Country" in 1765. In 1788, North Carolina created "Tennessee County", the third county to be established in what is now Middle Tennessee; when a constitutional convention met in 1796 to organize a new state out of the Southwest Territory, it adopted "Tennessee" as the name of the state. Tennessee is known as The Volunteer State, a nickname some claimed was earned during the War of 1812 because of the prominent role played by volunteer soldiers from Tennessee during the Battle of New Orleans.
Other sources differ on the origin of the state nickname. This explanation is more because President Polk's call for 2,600 nationwide volunteers at the beginning of the Mexican–American War resulted in 30,000 volunteers from Tennessee alone in response to the death of Davy Crockett and appeals by former Tennessee Governor and Texas politician, Sam Houston. Tennessee borders eight other states: Virginia to the north. Tennessee is tied with Missouri as the state bordering the most other states; the state is trisected by the Tennessee River. The highest point in the state is Clingmans Dome at 6,643 feet (
Tennessee River
The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is 652 miles long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley; the river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names, as many of the Cherokee had their territory along its banks in eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama. Its current name is derived from the Cherokee village Tanasi; the Tennessee River is formed at the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers in present-day Knoxville, Tennessee. From Knoxville, it flows southwest through East Tennessee into Chattanooga before crossing into Alabama, it travels through the Huntsville and Decatur area before reaching the Muscle Shoals area, forms a small part of the state's border with Mississippi, before returning to Tennessee. Its route northwesterly through Tennessee defines the boundary between two of Tennessee's Grand Divisions: Middle and West Tennessee; the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway, a U. S. Army Corps of Engineers project providing navigation on the Tombigbee River and a link to the Port of Mobile, enters the Tennessee River near the Tennessee-Alabama-Mississippi boundary.
This waterway reduces the navigation distance from Tennessee, north Alabama, northern Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico by hundreds of miles. The final part of the Tennessee's run is north through western Kentucky, where it separates the Jackson Purchase from the rest of the state, it flows into the Ohio River at Kentucky. The river has been dammed numerous times during the 20th century since the 1930s by Tennessee Valley Authority projects; the construction of TVA's Kentucky Dam on the Tennessee River and the Corps of Engineers' Barkley Dam on the Cumberland River led to the development of associated lakes, the creation of what is called Land Between the Lakes. A navigation canal located at Grand Rivers, links Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley; the canal allows for a shorter trip for river traffic going from the Tennessee to most of the Ohio River, for traffic going down the Cumberland River toward the Mississippi. The river appears on French maps from the late 17th century with the names "Caquinampo" or "Kasqui."
Maps from the early 18th century call it "Cussate," "Hogohegee," "Callamaco," and "Acanseapi." A 1755 British map showed the Tennessee River as the "River of the Cherakees." By the late 18th century, it had come to be called "Tennessee," a name derived from the Cherokee village named Tanasi. The Tennessee River begins at mile post 652, where the French Broad River meets the Holston River, but there were several different definitions of its starting point. In the late 18th century, the mouth of the Little Tennessee River was considered to be the beginning of the Tennessee River. Through much of the 19th century, the Tennessee River was considered to start at the mouth of Clinch River. An 1889 declaration by the Tennessee General Assembly designated Kingsport as the start of the Tennessee, but the following year a federal law was enacted that fixed the start of the river at its current location. At various points since the early 19th century, Georgia has disputed its northern border with Tennessee.
In 1796, when Tennessee was admitted to the Union, the border was defined by United States Congress as located on the 35th parallel, thereby ensuring that at least a portion of the river would be located within Georgia. As a result of an erroneously conducted survey in 1818, the actual border line was set on the ground one mile south, thus placing the disputed portion of the river in Tennessee. Georgia made several unsuccessful attempts to correct what Georgia felt was an erroneous survey line "in the 1890s, 1905, 1915, 1922, 1941, 1947 and 1971 to'resolve' the dispute", according to C. Crews Townsend, Joseph McCoin, Robert F. Parsley, Alison Martin and Zachary H. Greene, writing for the Tennessee Bar Journal, a publication of the Tennessee Bar Association, appearing on May 12, 2008. In 2008, as a result of a serious drought and resulting water shortage, the Georgia General Assembly passed a resolution directing the governor to pursue its claim in the United States Supreme Court. According to a story aired on WTVC-TV in Chattanooga on March 14, 2008, a local attorney familiar with case law on border disputes, says the U.
S. Supreme Court will maintain the original borders between states and avoid stepping into border disputes, preferring the parties work out their differences; the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported on 25 March 2013 that Georgia senators approved House Resolution 4 stating that if Tennessee declines to settle with them, the dispute will be handed over to the attorney general, who will take Tennessee before the Supreme Court to settle the issue once and for all. The Atlantic Wire, in commenting on Georgia's actions stated: The Great Georgia-Tennessee Border War of 2013 Is Upon Us Historians, take note: On this day, not a day in 1732, a boundary dispute between two Southern states took a turn for the wet. In a two-page resolution passed overwhelmingly by the state senate, Georgia declared that it, not its neighbor to the north, controls part of the Tennessee River at Nickajack. Georgia doesn't want Nickajack, it wants that water.. The Tennessee River is an important part of the Great Loop, the recreational circumnavigation of Eastern North America by water.
The Tennessee River has been a major highway for riverboats through the south and today they are still found along the river in abundance. Major ports include Guntersville, Chattanooga and Yellow Creek, Muscle Shoals. Navigation has contributed greatly
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, as described in the New Testament. Its adherents, known as Christians, believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and savior of all people, whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament. Depending on the specific denomination of Christianity, practices may include baptism, prayer, confirmation, burial rites, marriage rites and the religious education of children. Most denominations hold regular group worship services. Christianity developed during the 1st century CE as a Jewish Christian sect of Second Temple Judaism, it soon attracted Gentile God-fearers, which lead to a departure from Jewish customs, the establishment of Christianity as an independent religion. During the first centuries of its existence Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, to Ethiopia and some parts of Asia. Constantine the Great decriminalized it via the Edict of Milan; the First Council of Nicaea established a uniform set of beliefs across the Roman Empire.
By 380, the Roman Empire designated Christianity as the state religion. The period of the first seven ecumenical councils is sometimes referred to as the Great Church, the united full communion of the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, before their schisms. Oriental Orthodoxy split after the Council of Chalcedon over differences in Christology; the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church separated in the East–West Schism over the authority of the Pope. In 1521, Protestants split from the Catholic Church in the Protestant Reformation over Papal primacy, the nature of salvation, other ecclesiological and theological disputes. Following the Age of Discovery, Christianity was spread into the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, the rest of the world via missionary work and colonization. There are 2.3 billion Christians in the world, or 31.4% of the global population. Today, the four largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodoxy.
Christianity and Christian ethics have played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization around Europe during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. In the New Testament, the names by which the disciples were known among themselves were "brethren", "the faithful", "elect", "saints" and "believers". Early Jewish Christians referred to themselves as'The Way' coming from Isaiah 40:3, "prepare the way of the Lord." According to Acts 11:26, the term "Christian" was first used in reference to Jesus's disciples in the city of Antioch, meaning "followers of Christ," by the non-Jewish inhabitants of Antioch. The earliest recorded use of the term "Christianity" was by Ignatius of Antioch, in around 100 AD. While Christians worldwide share basic convcitions, there are differences of interpretations and opinions of the Bible and sacred traditions on which Christianity is based. Concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds, they began as baptismal formulae and were expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith.
The Apostles' Creed is the most accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith. It is used by a number of Christian denominations for both liturgical and catechetical purposes, most visibly by liturgical churches of Western Christian tradition, including the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, Lutheranism and Western Rite Orthodoxy, it is used by Presbyterians and Congregationalists. This particular creed was developed between the 9th centuries, its central doctrines are those of God the Creator. Each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period; the creed was used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome. Its main points include: Belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the Holy Spirit The death, descent into hell and ascension of Christ The holiness of the Church and the communion of saints Christ's second coming, the Day of Judgement and salvation of the faithful; the Nicene Creed was formulated in response to Arianism, at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in 325 and 381 and ratified as the universal creed of Christendom by the First Council of Ephesus in 431.
The Chalcedonian Definition, or Creed of Chalcedon, developed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, though rejected by the Oriental Orthodox churches, taught Christ "to be acknowledged in two natures, unchangeably, inseparably": one divine and one human, that both natures, while perfect in themselves, are also united into one person. The Athanasian Creed, received in the Western Church as having the same status as the Nicene and Chalcedonian, says: "We worship one God in Trinity, Trinity in Unity. Many evangelical Protestants reject creeds as definitive statements of faith while agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds. Most Baptists do not use creeds "in that they have not sought to establish binding
Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands
Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, Southeastern cultures, or Southeast Indians are an ethnographic classification for Native Americans who have traditionally inhabited the Southeastern United States and the northeastern border of Mexico, that share common cultural traits. This classification is a part of the Eastern Woodlands; the concept of a southeastern cultural region was developed by anthropologists, beginning with Otis Mason and Frank Boas in 1887. The boundaries of the region are defined more by shared cultural traits than by geographic distinctions; because the cultures instead of abruptly shift into Plains, Prairie, or Northeastern Woodlands cultures, scholars do not always agree on the exact limits of the Southeastern Woodland culture region. Shawnee, Waco, Tonkawa, Karankawa and Mosopelea are seen as marginally southeastern and their traditional lands represent the borders of the cultural region; the area was linguistically diverse, major language groups were Caddoan and Muskogean, besides a number of language isolates.
The following section deals with the history of the peoples in the lengthy period before European contact. Evidence of the preceding cultures have been found in archeological artifacts, but in major earthworks and the evidence of linguistics. In the Late Prehistoric time period in the Southeastern Woodlands, cultures increased agricultural production, developed ranked societies, increased their populations, trade networks, intertribal warfare. Most Southeastern peoples were agricultural, growing crops like maize and beans for food, they supplemented their diet with hunting and gathering wild plants and fungi. Belonging in the Lithic stage, the oldest known art in the Americas is the Vero Beach bone found in present-day Florida, it is a mammoth bone, etched with a profile of walking mammoth. The Poverty Point culture inhabited portions of the state of Louisiana from 2000–1000 BCE during the Archaic period. Many objects excavated at Poverty Point sites were made of materials that originated in distant places, indicating that the people were part of an extensive trading culture.
Such items include chipped stone projectile tools. Stone tools found at Poverty Point were made from raw materials that can be traced to the nearby Ouachita and Ozark mountains, as well as others from the more distant Ohio and Tennessee River valleys. Vessels were made from soapstone which came from the Appalachian foothills of Georgia. Hand-modeled lowly fired clay objects occur in a variety of shapes including anthropomorphic figurines and cooking balls. Mississippian cultures flourished in what is now the Midwestern and Southeastern United States from 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally. After adopting maize agriculture the Mississippian culture became agrarian, as opposed to the preceding Woodland cultures that supplemented hunting and gathering with limited horticulture. Mississippian peoples built platform mounds, they refined their ceramic techniques and used ground mussel shell as a tempering agent. Many were involved with the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, a multi-regional and multi-linguistic religious and trade network that marked the southeastern part of the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere.
Information about Southeastern Ceremonial Complex primary comes from archaeology and the study of the elaborate artworks left behind by its participants, including elaborate pottery, conch shell gorgets and cups, stone statuary, Long-nosed god maskettes. The Calusa peoples, of southern Florida and painted wood in exquisite depictions of animals. By the time of European contact the Mississippian societies were experiencing severe social stress; some major centers had been abandoned. With social upsets and diseases unknowingly introduced by Europeans many of the societies collapsed and ceased to practice a Mississippian lifestyle, with an exception being the Natchez people of Mississippi and Louisiana. Other tribes descended from Mississippian cultures include the Alabama, Caddo, Muscogee Creek and many other southeastern peoples. During the Indian Removal era of the 1830s, most southeastern tribes were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River by the US federal government, as European-American settlers pushed the government to acquire their lands.
Some members of the tribes chose to accept state and US citizenship. Since the late 20th century, descendants of these people have organized as tribes. Frank Speck identified several key cultural traits of Southeastern Woodlands peoples. Social traits included having a matrilineal kinship system, exogamous marriage between clans, organizing into settled villages and towns. Southeastern Woodlands societies were divided into clans, they observe strict incest taboos, including taboos against marriage within a clan. In the past, they allowed polygamy to chiefs and other men who could support multiple wives, they held puberty rites for both girls. Southeastern peoples traditionally shared similar religious beliefs, based on animism, they used
Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas
The population figure of indigenous peoples of the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus has proven difficult to establish. Scholars rely on written records from European settlers. Most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated that the pre-Columbian population was as low as 10 million. Contact with the Europeans led to the European colonization of the Americas, in which millions of immigrants from Europe settled in the Americas; the population of African and Eurasian peoples in the Americas grew while the indigenous population plummeted. Eurasian diseases such as influenza, pneumonic plagues, smallpox devastated the Native Americans, who did not have immunity to them. Conflict and outright warfare with Western European newcomers and other American tribes further reduced populations and disrupted traditional societies; the extent and causes of the decline have long been a subject of academic debate, along with its characterization as a genocide. Given the fragmentary nature of the evidence semi-accurate pre-Columbian population figures are impossible to obtain.
Scholars have varied on the estimated size of the indigenous populations prior to colonization and on the effects of European contact. Estimates are made by extrapolations from small bits of data. In 1976, geographer William Denevan used the existing estimates to derive a "consensus count" of about 54 million people. Nonetheless, more recent estimates still range widely. Using an estimate of 37 million people in Mexico and South America in 1492, the lowest estimates give a death toll due from disease of 80% by the end of the 17th century. Latin America would match its 15th-century population early in the 19th century. In the last three decades of the 16th century, the population of present-day Mexico dropped to about one million people; the Maya population is today estimated at six million, about the same as at the end of the 15th century, according to some estimates. In what is now Brazil, the indigenous population declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated four million to some 300,000.
While it is difficult to determine how many Natives lived in North America before Columbus, estimates range from a low of 2.1 million to 7 million people to a high of 18 million. The aboriginal population of Canada during the late 15th century is estimated to have been between 200,000 and two million, with a figure of 500,000 accepted by Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Health. Repeated outbreaks of Old World infectious diseases such as influenza and smallpox, were the main cause of depopulation; this combined with other factors such as dispossession from European/Canadian settlements and numerous violent conflicts resulted in a forty- to eighty-percent aboriginal population decrease after contact. For example, during the late 1630s, smallpox killed over half of the Wyandot, who controlled most of the early North American fur trade in what became Canada, they were reduced to fewer than 10,000 people. Historian David Henige has argued that many population figures are the result of arbitrary formulas selectively applied to numbers from unreliable historical sources.
He believes this is a weakness unrecognized by several contributors to the field, insists there is not sufficient evidence to produce population numbers that have any real meaning. He characterizes the modern trend of high estimates as "pseudo-scientific number-crunching." Henige does not advocate a low population estimate, but argues that the scanty and unreliable nature of the evidence renders broad estimates suspect, saying "high counters" have been flagrant in their misuse of sources. Many population studies acknowledge the inherent difficulties in producing reliable statistics, given the scarcity of hard data; the population debate has had ideological underpinnings. Low estimates were sometimes reflective of European notions of racial superiority. Historian Francis Jennings argued, "Scholarly wisdom long held that Indians were so inferior in mind and works that they could not have created or sustained large populations."The indigenous population of the Americas in 1492 was not at a high point and may have been in decline in some areas.
Indigenous populations in most areas of the Americas reached a low point by the early 20th century. In most cases, populations have since begun to climb. Genetic diversity and population structure in the American land mass using DNA micro-satellite markers sampled from North and South America have been analyzed against similar data available from other indigenous populations worldwide; the Amerindian populations show a lower genetic diversity than populations from other continental regions. Observed is both a decreasing genetic diversity as geographic distance from the Bering Strait occurs and a decreasing genetic similarity to Siberian populations from Alaska. Observed is evidence of a higher level of diversity and lower level of population structure in western South America compared to eastern South America. A relative lack of differentiation between Mesoamerican and Andean populations is a scenario
William Bartram
William Bartram was an American naturalist. The son of Ann and the naturalist John Bartram, William Bartram and his twin sister Elizabeth were born in Kingsessing, Pennsylvania; as a boy, he accompanied his father on many of his travels to the Catskill Mountains, the New Jersey Pine Barrens, New England, Florida. From his mid-teens, Bartram was noted for the quality of his ornithological drawings, he had an increasing role in the maintenance of his father's botanic garden, added many rare species to it. In 1773, he embarked upon a four-year journey through eight southern colonies. Bartram made many drawings and took notes on the native flora and fauna, the native American Indians. In 1774, he explored the St. Johns River, where he had memorable encounters with aggressive alligators, visited a principal Seminole village at Cuscowilla, where his arrival was celebrated with a great feast, he met chief of the Alachua band of the Seminole tribe. When Bartram explained to the Cowkeeper that he was interested in studying the local plants and animals, the chief was amused and began calling him Puc Puggy.
Bartram continued his explorations of the Alachua Savannah. William Bartram wrote of his experiences exploring the Southeast in his book Travels through North & South Carolina, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, the Country of the Chactaws, Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions, Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians, published in 1791 and, today known as Bartram's Travels. E. G. Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis, in their book, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, name Bartram as "the first naturalist who penetrated the dense tropical forests of Florida." William Bartram arrived in Charleston on March 31, 1773. He learned that a Native American congress was to take place in Augusta, Georgia in June and was invited by Superintendent of Indian affairs, John Stuart, to join the party that would survey a new land cession. After attending to some business Bartram travelled on to Savannah, arriving in that city on either April 11 or 12.
While he awaited the beginning of the Native American congress he travelled to the coast of Georgia. He first visited some rice plantations in Midway travelled on to Darien where he was the guest of Lachlan McIntosh. In Travels Bartram related an incident at this point that most took place in 1776; as he travelled through the sparsely populated country of South Georgia, he encountered an "intrepid Siminole" who had resolved upon killing the next white man he met, but was disarmed by Bartram's unexpected friendliness. During his trip along the coast Bartram revisited the region of Fort Barrington on the Altamaha River. John and William Bartram had discovered two new trees there in 1765, but they had no flowers for the season was late. William described these trees in the Franklin tree and fevertree; the story of the Franklin tree is fascinating for it no longer exists in the wild and all living trees are descended from seeds collected by William Bartram. Bartram travelled to Augusta and explored the area while he awaited the conclusion of the Native American congress.
The conference ended on June 1773 with the Treaty of Augusta. In return for dissolving their debts to the traders in Augusta, the Creeks and Cherokees gave up 674,000 acres of land in northeast Georgia. Bartram joined the survey party. An incident occurred at a place known as the Great Buffalo Lick when the Native Americans questioned the accuracy of the surveyor's course; when the surveyor said it was right because the compass told him so the chief, Young Warrior, said that... the little wicked instrument was a liar. This mistake displeased the Indians. Bartram returned to Savannah in mid-July and spent the fall and winter on the coast of Georgia, exploring the Altamaha River, writing his report, preparing his seeds for shipment to England. In March, 1774, Bartram began his much anticipated trip to East Florida, he landed on the north end of Amelia Island and travelled through Old Fernandina to Lord Egmont's plantation where modern Fernandina now stands. Bartram was entertained by Stephen Egan, Egmont's agent, who rode with him around the entire island observing the plantation and Indian mounds.
Bartram and Egan sailed from Amelia Island through the Intracoastal Waterway to the St. Johns River and to the Cow Ford where Bartram purchased a little sailboat. In three days Bartram landed at the plantation of Francis Philip Fatio at Switzerland. There he received information concerning the recent disturbances at Spalding's Stores, he paused the next day at Fort Picolata. Bartram kept to the west bank, or Indian shore, the river being the division between Indian country on the west bank and English land on the east, he observe
United States
