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chiefdom to the north known as Yupaha.31 After coming across a bridge over a small stream
“soon as the Governor had crossed, he found a town, a short way on, by the name of Achese.”32

Following this passage, de Soto gives a brief account of the people of this village and his amiable
exchange with their Cacique.33 Though his description is short, found in just a page and a half of

his overall narrative are two valuable clues connecting Muscogee heritage to Mississippian
civilization. The first is the name de Soto gives to this town. Later in the 17th and 18th centuries

Portuguese, Spanish, and English traders reference an American Indian settlement in the same
region as Ochese and Ichisi respectively.34 Considering the variants of European renderings of

Native American names and spellings, along with the general location described in de Soto's

travelogues, Achese is almost certainly a reference to a Hitchiti village at what is now known as
the Lamar site at Ocmulgee National Monument.35 Though not located at the heart of the

Ocmulgee Plateau proper, the Lamar site represents the last of several settlement relocations at

Ocmulgee National Monument.

Further establishing the likelihood that the Hitchiti village was indeed Achese as

described in de Soto's account is the interaction described between his translator and the local

peoples. Juan Ortiz, a man of Spanish descent who became stranded among the Indigenous

population on a previous expedition to Spanish Florida, accompanied de Soto's group as an

interpreter. During the eleven years he spent as captive among the Native Americans of northern

Florida, Ortiz became fluent in at least some Native languages. The expedition headed north

31 Buckingham Smith, trans., Narratives of De Soto in the Conquest of Florida, (Gainsville: Palmetto Books,
1960), 50.

32 Smith, Narratives of De Soto, 53.
33 Cacique is the term that Soto uses to describe Indigenous leaders throughout the Southeast.
34 Davis, interview by author, February 1, 2018.
35 Though all three appear to be interchangeable depending on the English translation, Achese, Ichisi, and Ochese

are thought to be variations of European attempts to replicate the Muskogean word Hitchiti. Ochese and Ichisi
were used to reference both the creek and the people that lived along it, later the English simply called all Native
Americans in the modern Middle Georgia region Creek Indians.

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