There was a food shortage in July 1736 at New Ebenezer, Effingham County’s early settlement of Salzburgers.

Seeking relief from this condition of impoverishment, Philip Georg Friedrich von Reck, the young Hanoverian nobleman who led two travel groups of Salzburgers to Georgia, went to the native people whose village was at Mt. Pleasant.  

He sought help from these Native Americans, whom he identified in his journal as “The Yuchi (Euchee) nation, our neighbors at Ebenezer...”

He wrote: “This evening (July 19, 1736) I went to Yuchi Town.  The captain of this tribe promised to send some of his people who, as he put it, would shoot game for our wives and children.  They soon thereafter, camped near Ebenezer and shot several stags and roebucks....”   
Von Reck noted in one of his writings that the natives in Georgia were “so skilled in shooting and tracking of game that they never miss a shot” (DR, I, p. 143).  

Euchee Town was located on the Georgia side of the Savannah River in today’s northeastern section of Effingham County. In a 1740 report regarding the state of affairs in the colony, William Stephens, Secretary of the Province, identified among Georgia’s towns and villages “Euchee Town,” which he said, was located on Mount Pleasant.

Stephens further stated that “about a hundred Indians” lived there.  

When the first English, Salzburger and German settlers came to the region that became Effingham County, the area north of Ebenezer Creek was designated by colonial authorities as “Uchee land”— land on which the Europeans were forbidden to settle with the exception of trading and military outposts at Mount Pleasant and Fort Augusta.

Von Reck was fond of Ebenezer’s Native American neighbors. He saw them as people of nobility, writing they were “very careful not to do anything that may be unbecoming to a nobleman” (DR, I, p. 143).  

During Von Reck’s visit to Georgia in 1736, a German artist, Christoph Heinrich Mueller, who accompanied him (DR, III, 200), painted or sketched both flora and animals in Georgia, various aspects of life that he observed, and also the native people, especially the Euchees.  

Although Von Reck has been credited with this artwork, recently, Dr. Kai Dose of Bad Kreuznach, Germany, has documented that it was indeed Mueller who produced these pictures, not Von Reck.  The paintings and sketches of the Euchees at Mount Pleasant are more than mere pictures: written on the artwork are descriptive words in English, German, Creek and Euchee languages.  

Among the paintings is a sketch of a Euchee headman entitled “The Mico (Chief) of the Uchi named Senkaitschi,” as well as a painting of him and his wife entitled “The Indian King and Queen of the Uchi, Senkaitschi.”  

There are other paintings: one of a ritual dance and another of a war chief named Kipahalgwa.  Then there is a sketch of a Euchee woman on a mat weaving a basket; Euchee hunters are portrayed, and a shelter in a hunting camp. These pictures are available to us in a Beehive Press publication entitled “Von Reck’s Voyage.”

On the 28th of July 1736, Von Reck wrote in his journal: “I went back to Yuchi Town to attend the busk, or annual Indian festivity.”  This celebration that he attended was apparently the annual Green Corn Ceremony — a festival still celebrated today by tribal members in Oklahoma when the new corn ripens in mid summer.  An important part of the festival is a dance that historically was performed in the “Town Square” of Euchee villages.  

Musical instruments — terrapin shell rattles, drum and hand rattles — accompanied the dancers who moved around a sacred fire.

Frank G. Speck, a Euchee authority, who researched the tribal culture in Oklahoma a hundred years ago, provided this description of the ritual:  “a dancer inclines his body forward, gesticulating with his arms according to the occasion, and raises first one foot then the other slightly above the ground, bringing them down flat at each step with vigor.  In this way the dancers file circle contra-clockwise about the fire in the center of the square.”  

Georgia’s colonial officials most often spelled the tribal name “Uchee” or “Euchee.”   Scholars in later times, such as the Native American ethnologist, John R. Swanton, spelled it “Yuchi.”  

However, tribal members still living in Oklahoma prefer the spelling Euchee. In their native language, they call themselves Tsoyahá — “Offspring of the Sun.” This name is derived from their religious beliefs in which their traditional concept of Deity is manifest in the forces of nature. The most important of these forces, according to traditional tribal belief, is the Sun, which the Euchees view as female and life giving.  Speck recorded this story of tribal origin in his 1909 book (p. 106):

The Sun deity was in her menstrual courses.  She went to dip up some water (up in the sky world). She went down to the creek.  Then some (of her) blood fell on the ground.... When she reached the top of the hill ... she thought something had happened. She went down the hill again. A small baby was sitting there. She took it along with her and kept it. She raised it and it grew . . . (But) he had no one to play with.... He was lonesome.  While he was sleeping and lying there, his mother pulled out one of his ribs  ... She made a woman out of it.  Then the boy awoke. He saw her. He was glad now. Then they multiplied and increased in numbers.... Her son was the child of the Sun, (and)  that is what the Yuchi are named, Children of the Sun.

To be continued next week………………..

This article was written by c, a historian and HES member residing in Marietta who also provided the photograph. If you have questions, photographs or information to share contact Susan Exley who compiles this column at 754-6681 or e-mail: susanexley@historiceffinghamsociety.org