Native history
Early
c. AD 800-1600
DeKalb County
General area only

Mississippian chiefdoms

Farming chiefdoms built flat-topped platform mounds and ruled from capitals such as Etowah, near Cartersville. After about 1400 many reorganized, and by the late 1600s their descendants had joined in the Muscogee (Creek) alliance.

See it on the map All Early records

The record

The New Georgia Encyclopedia dates the period AD 800-1600 (Early 800-1100, Middle 1100-1350, Late 1350-1600). People grew corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and other plants, and ranked societies built rectangular, flat-topped mounds as platforms for buildings and ceremonies. Etowah was the largest chiefdom capital in the region during the Middle Mississippian. Hernando de Soto's army crossed the Southeast in 1539-43; European diseases and disruption helped bring the chiefdoms down. The encyclopedia's Creek article says some large chiefdoms collapsed about AD 1400 and regrouped into smaller ones that formed the Muscogee alliance by the late 1600s. A heat-treated chert scraper dated AD 900-1500, excavated at Standing Peachtree and shown by the Atlanta History Center, is a local trace of these centuries.