Post by blackcrowheart on Jun 23, 2008 16:57:24 GMT -5
Great Buffalo Lick - Cherokee
Back when buffalo still roamed Georgia's woodlands, they came here to lick
the sweetish gray clay that provided a soothing antacid for bison bellies.
Back when Georgia was a British colony, this was the frontier the line that
marked the western limit of Colonial encroachment on lands of the Creek and
Cherokee.
Plymouth Rock it's not. Drivers whiz by on Ga. 22 south of Lexington without
a second glance. They are unmindful that this patch of dreary timberland,
littered with spent .22-caliber casings and flattened beer cans, is hallowed
ground in Southern history only now resurrected from two centuries of
cartographic limbo.
"This is it," said University of Georgia geographer Louis DeVorsey,
surveying an unremarkable forest clearing from atop a freshly cut tree
stump. "This is the Great Buffalo Lick. Not just any buffalo lick, the great
one. The real one, too."
The research supporting DeVorsey's claim is published in the current issue
of the Southeastern Geographer, a journal of the American Association of
Geographers.
Great Buffalo Lick may not look like much now, but back in the late 8th
century, this spot marked the great divide between cultures. It was a
crucial landmark in a territory the size of Delaware that the Indians ceded
to the British in 1773 a cession that paved the way for the tide of settlers
that swept into Georgia's Piedmont.
But times change. Soon, there were no buffalo. Then there was no treaty. As
the Indians were pushed farther west and the lick's importance diminished in
the lives of both man and beast, it became nothing more than a point on a
map. On lots of maps. All different. A century later it was lost for good
testimony to the fact that bad maps are often worse than no map at all.
The Great Buffalo Lick might have stayed lost but for two accidents of
history.
In 1773, at the height of its importance as a landmark, the famous
naturalist William Bartram, accompanied by "surveyors, astronomers,
artisans, chain-carriers, markers, guides and hunters, besides a very
respectable number of gentlemen," passed through this spot and noted the
"vast pits licked in the clay, formerly by the Buffaloes, and now kept
smoothe and open by cattle, deer and horses."
Bartram said the lick was a four-day ride, about 80 miles, from Augusta,
located on a "great ridge" separating the watersheds of the Savannah and
Altamaha rivers. Precision, alas, was not Bartram's strong suit. Bartram,
whose writings provide some of the earliest accounts of native plants and
animals in the South, spent only a little time at the lick listening to
Indians and whites haggle over the boundary and then moved on.
That was the first accident. The second was Louis DeVorsey's weakness for
whimsy and a good geographic detective story .
DeVorsey first heard of Great Buffalo Lick 40 years ago, when he was in
London, studying Colonial maps and records for his doctoral thesis on the
Indian boundaries of the Southern Colonies. Years later, as a professor at
the University of Georgia, he was surprised to discover that no one was sure
about the location of the historic spot.
Over the years, as treaty after Indian treaty was abrogated, Great Buffalo
Lick gradually became a Southern analog of "Washington slept here" its
historic significance undisputed but its true location increasingly obscure.
Georgia history buffs could be forgiven for any confusion. A mile east of
Union Point in Greene County, for instance, a solid brass plaque proclaims
that the location of one Great Buffalo Lick. U.S. Geological Survey maps say
it's there too.
But 10 miles away, outside the little community of Philomath, a battered
roadside sign, with half the text missing, points to another site of
"Bartram's Buffalo L. . ." A third location for the lick lies in Greene
County near the defunct mica mining camp of Sunshine, itself long gone from
contemporary maps.
"I knew the locations couldn't all be right," says DeVorsey. "As it turned
out, none of them were." On and off over the years, his research turned up
flaws in each of the three locations. The breakthrough came with the
discovery of a 1796 plat for a tract of land deeded to one David Witt, with
one side of the property on the original Indian boundary and one corner at
an "ash tree in Buffalo Lick."
Using the files of hand-drawn plats from the surrounding land, DeVorsey
painstakingly built a mosaic showing the holdings of the original landowners
as they matched the legal descriptions with creeks and other physical
features that could still be identified.
Then, he and some archaeologists took a satellite navigation device and went
looking for the lick. Beneath the forest litter, a half mile south of a
sleepy stream called Buffalo Creek, they found a thin layer of light clay,
kaolin, right where DeVorsey's maps said it should be.
"We've never seen anything like these little pockets of whitish clay
before," says Tom Gresham, director of Southeastern Archaeological Service,
a contract archaeology service in Athens. "On the surface there isn't a
trace of the lick to be seen."
In a state where the historic sites tend to be antebellum mansions and Civil
War battlefields, Great Buffalo Lick --- real or presumed --- isn't exactly
a burning controversy.
"The monument outside of our town doesn't say specifically where it is,"
said Union Point Mayor Ben Stuart. "If it turns out to be somewhere else, I
don't think anybody would know the difference."
Still, Gresham thinks the true location of the lost lick at least deserves
equal billing. "The members of our group, Historic Oglethorpe County, want
to put up some kind of permanent marker so it doesn't get lost again," he
said.
"It would serve as a reminder that some places that look like are nothing
today are places where important things happened in the past."
www.cherokeebob.com/buffalo_lick.htm
Back when buffalo still roamed Georgia's woodlands, they came here to lick
the sweetish gray clay that provided a soothing antacid for bison bellies.
Back when Georgia was a British colony, this was the frontier the line that
marked the western limit of Colonial encroachment on lands of the Creek and
Cherokee.
Plymouth Rock it's not. Drivers whiz by on Ga. 22 south of Lexington without
a second glance. They are unmindful that this patch of dreary timberland,
littered with spent .22-caliber casings and flattened beer cans, is hallowed
ground in Southern history only now resurrected from two centuries of
cartographic limbo.
"This is it," said University of Georgia geographer Louis DeVorsey,
surveying an unremarkable forest clearing from atop a freshly cut tree
stump. "This is the Great Buffalo Lick. Not just any buffalo lick, the great
one. The real one, too."
The research supporting DeVorsey's claim is published in the current issue
of the Southeastern Geographer, a journal of the American Association of
Geographers.
Great Buffalo Lick may not look like much now, but back in the late 8th
century, this spot marked the great divide between cultures. It was a
crucial landmark in a territory the size of Delaware that the Indians ceded
to the British in 1773 a cession that paved the way for the tide of settlers
that swept into Georgia's Piedmont.
But times change. Soon, there were no buffalo. Then there was no treaty. As
the Indians were pushed farther west and the lick's importance diminished in
the lives of both man and beast, it became nothing more than a point on a
map. On lots of maps. All different. A century later it was lost for good
testimony to the fact that bad maps are often worse than no map at all.
The Great Buffalo Lick might have stayed lost but for two accidents of
history.
In 1773, at the height of its importance as a landmark, the famous
naturalist William Bartram, accompanied by "surveyors, astronomers,
artisans, chain-carriers, markers, guides and hunters, besides a very
respectable number of gentlemen," passed through this spot and noted the
"vast pits licked in the clay, formerly by the Buffaloes, and now kept
smoothe and open by cattle, deer and horses."
Bartram said the lick was a four-day ride, about 80 miles, from Augusta,
located on a "great ridge" separating the watersheds of the Savannah and
Altamaha rivers. Precision, alas, was not Bartram's strong suit. Bartram,
whose writings provide some of the earliest accounts of native plants and
animals in the South, spent only a little time at the lick listening to
Indians and whites haggle over the boundary and then moved on.
That was the first accident. The second was Louis DeVorsey's weakness for
whimsy and a good geographic detective story .
DeVorsey first heard of Great Buffalo Lick 40 years ago, when he was in
London, studying Colonial maps and records for his doctoral thesis on the
Indian boundaries of the Southern Colonies. Years later, as a professor at
the University of Georgia, he was surprised to discover that no one was sure
about the location of the historic spot.
Over the years, as treaty after Indian treaty was abrogated, Great Buffalo
Lick gradually became a Southern analog of "Washington slept here" its
historic significance undisputed but its true location increasingly obscure.
Georgia history buffs could be forgiven for any confusion. A mile east of
Union Point in Greene County, for instance, a solid brass plaque proclaims
that the location of one Great Buffalo Lick. U.S. Geological Survey maps say
it's there too.
But 10 miles away, outside the little community of Philomath, a battered
roadside sign, with half the text missing, points to another site of
"Bartram's Buffalo L. . ." A third location for the lick lies in Greene
County near the defunct mica mining camp of Sunshine, itself long gone from
contemporary maps.
"I knew the locations couldn't all be right," says DeVorsey. "As it turned
out, none of them were." On and off over the years, his research turned up
flaws in each of the three locations. The breakthrough came with the
discovery of a 1796 plat for a tract of land deeded to one David Witt, with
one side of the property on the original Indian boundary and one corner at
an "ash tree in Buffalo Lick."
Using the files of hand-drawn plats from the surrounding land, DeVorsey
painstakingly built a mosaic showing the holdings of the original landowners
as they matched the legal descriptions with creeks and other physical
features that could still be identified.
Then, he and some archaeologists took a satellite navigation device and went
looking for the lick. Beneath the forest litter, a half mile south of a
sleepy stream called Buffalo Creek, they found a thin layer of light clay,
kaolin, right where DeVorsey's maps said it should be.
"We've never seen anything like these little pockets of whitish clay
before," says Tom Gresham, director of Southeastern Archaeological Service,
a contract archaeology service in Athens. "On the surface there isn't a
trace of the lick to be seen."
In a state where the historic sites tend to be antebellum mansions and Civil
War battlefields, Great Buffalo Lick --- real or presumed --- isn't exactly
a burning controversy.
"The monument outside of our town doesn't say specifically where it is,"
said Union Point Mayor Ben Stuart. "If it turns out to be somewhere else, I
don't think anybody would know the difference."
Still, Gresham thinks the true location of the lost lick at least deserves
equal billing. "The members of our group, Historic Oglethorpe County, want
to put up some kind of permanent marker so it doesn't get lost again," he
said.
"It would serve as a reminder that some places that look like are nothing
today are places where important things happened in the past."
www.cherokeebob.com/buffalo_lick.htm