This is another installment of our ongoing blog series that acknowledges the ancestral lands on which the National Archives’ buildings are situated. This series of acknowledgements is a simple way to offer recognition and respect to the people who once lived on these lands.
The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum is located in Atlanta, Georgia, along with two other facilities run by the National Archives: the National Archives at Atlanta, in Morrow, and the Atlanta Federal Records Center, which is located in Ellenwood.
All of these National Archives facilities are situated on the ancestral lands of the Muscogee Nation, also known as the Muscogee Creek Nation, a part of the Creek Confederacy.
Source: Native Land
“The Muscogee (Creek) people are descendants of a remarkable culture that, before 1500 AD, spanned the entire region known today as the Southeastern United States. Early ancestors of the Muscogee constructed magnificent earthen pyramids along the rivers of this region as part of their elaborate ceremonial complexes. The historic Muscogee, known as Mound builders, later built expansive towns within these same broad river valleys in the present states of Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina.”
From: MuscogeeNation.com
My thanks to Gwen E. Granados, Director of the National Archives at Riverside, and Christopher Geissler, Deputy Director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, who researched the information for this land acknowledgement.
For more information:
- Brief history of the Muscogee people from the Muscogee Nation website.
- Map showing Creek territory, including the Atlanta Area, situated near the “Chattahoochee River” likely in the general area near the “shallow ford” notation. From: Map by which the Creek Indians gave their statement at Fort Strother on the 22nd Jany, 1816 : [Alabama and Georgia], Library of Congress.
- “Ratified Indian Treaty 198: Comanche, Wichita, Cherokee, Muscogee, Choctaw, Osage, Seneca, and Quapaw – Camp Holmes, Muscogee Nation – August 24, 1835,” National Archives Catalog.