Discovery might rewrite history of Spaniards in Georgia

Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 12 Nov 2007 | Mark Davis

[BGHater]

What a high school girl found in 6 inches of South Georgia dirt last year may help rewrite the history of Europeans' earliest forays into the great, green New World that greeted them half a millennium ago.

The discovery is a glass bead no larger than a pencil eraser. It and four other beads, plus two ancient slivers of iron, may prompt historians to reconsider the presence of Spaniards in Georgia five centuries ago.

Archaeologist Dennis Blanton of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History considers the finds, which he could easily slip in his pocket, "world history in the making."

Blanton, the museum's curator of Native American archaeology, went looking for the remains of a long-lost Spanish mission near a spot not far from the place where the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers join in a roil of brown water. He found something a century older.

He wonders if the artifacts may be evidence left by Hernando de Soto, who entered Georgia in 1540 on a three-year trek. Or could they hint of a doomed settlement that has never been found?

Blanton and a handful of volunteers two summers ago stalked into a loblolly forest near Jacksonville, a Telfair County town where city-limit signs proudly tell passersby that it's home of the world-record largemouth bass. They stuck shovels in the dirt where hunters had reported finding pottery shards. The diggers hoped they'd find evidence of the 17th-century Spanish mission Santa Isabel de Utinahica, a place so remote and small that one Franciscan friar lived there.

On July 16, they uncovered something else.

It was a hot day, getting hotter as the sun crept above the treetops, when Ellen Vaughn approached Blanton. A high school senior, she'd volunteered for a week of the knees-in-the-dirt process of sifting soil through screens. She held one hand in a grimy fist.

"Is this anything?" she asked, unfolding her hand.

There, in her dirty palm, rested a red, white and blue glass bead. Blanton stared, and knew: The bead predated anything they expected to find — something, Blanton, realized, that might alter history books.

"Then," he recalled, "we did a little artifact dance, right on the spot."

Early visitors

You need to turn back to the earliest pages of Georgia's recorded history to understand the significance of what came to light that hot morning two years ago.

In 1526, sugar planter Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon attempted to colonize the wild, new land. Historians think the expedition chose a site on the Georgia coast. That little-known expedition ended in death and rebellion, and the location of Ayllon's short-lived settlement remains a mystery.

Fourteen years later, de Soto and more than 1,000 others crossed into Georgia from what is now Tallahassee. It was the beginning of a trek that wound across swamp and mountain, encompassing a swath of what is now the Southeastern United States.

Historians have changed their minds on the path de Soto and his followers took as they waded into a yawning wilderness. Since the early 1980s, they've generally agreed that he crossed the Ocmulgee near Macon — about 100 miles from the Fernbank dig.

Ayllon and de Soto doubtless carried beads and iron for trade and gifts, said John Worth, an assistant professor of archaeology at the University of West Florida. He considers the Fernbank find "super-important."

But what does it mean? Worth isn't sure. "The presence of the artifacts doesn't necessarily change" de Soto's route through the wilderness, he said. Nor, said Worth, is it proof of a lost settlement.

'Electrifying' find

The beads are stunning, still brilliant after centuries in the dark. Three are identical to the one that emerged two summers ago, and the fifth is shimmering blue.

"It's electrifying to see one," said Blanton. "I don't even like to hold them."

Historians are certain they came from the glass forges of Murano, a Venetian island. They're equally sure the beads were manufactured early in the 16th century. The Italians used them in trade with the Spaniards. When galleons pressed westward toward La Florida in the early 1500s, they carried the handiwork of Murano in their holds. They also carried iron that could be converted to ax heads or used as weapons.

Because they were used for gifts and for trade, Native Americans could just as easily have exchanged them among themselves as European visitors, said Chester DePratter of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.

"Artifacts do move ... without the presence of Spaniards," he said.

Blanton cheerfully agrees. "We may never know" how they wound up in the dirt of South Georgia, he said.

Does it matter where the visitors entered the state or where they crossed rivers? Jamil Zainaldin, president of the Georgia Humanities Council, says yes. Refining history, he said, helps illuminate the little-known period when two disparate cultures met, forever changing communities, countries and a continent.

"The Fernbank [dig] makes us realize that we are walking on history," he said.

The discoveries help Georgians get a better idea of where Spaniards walked their state, state archeologist Dave Crass said. He works for the state Department of Natural Resources, which has given Fernbank $14,000 annually for the past two years to help fund its field research.

Archaeology, he said, adds life to the written word. "It has this powerful ... sense of touch," he said. "It's very tangible."

Blanton, meanwhile, is preparing to return to the dig, whose precise location is knowledge shared by only a few. He likens the trip to fishing.

"I know we have something on the line," Blanton said.

"And we're reeling it in. It's big. But we don't know exactly what it is. Not yet."

[BGHater]

Joey Ivansco/Staff

(ENLARGE)

Dennis B. Blanton, curator of native American Archaeology at Fernbank Museum of natural History, stands behind a 17', 200-year-old yellow pine native American dugout canoe that was recovered about 45 miles from a archaeological dig in south Georgia.
 

Joey Ivansco/Staff

(ENLARGE)

Dennis B. Blanton (CQ), curator of native American Archaeology at Fernbank Museum of natural History, looks a glass 'chevron' bead of Italian origin, made in the early 16th century. It was found from a archaeological dig in South Georgia.
 

Joey Ivansco/Staff

(ENLARGE)

Kathryn Ruedrich (left) and Leslie Perry try to reconstruct broken pieces of pottery. Ruedrich is an archaeology programs specialist, and Perry, a collections assistant at Fernbank.
 

BTW, AJC site appears to have some problems showing the enlarged photos.

[bill1952]

Imported from other indian travelers/tribes.

[BGHater]

The sign up to view the article is creating problems for the link.

[w1andsodidwe]

Linked work for me with no sign in. I could enlarge the picture of the bead, but not the others.

[Enchante]

"Artifacts do move ... without the presence of Spaniards," he said. Blanton cheerfully agrees. "We may never know" how they wound up in the dirt of South Georgia, he said.

Interesting - but absent any other evidence, I don't see how it proves anything about Spanish presence in that particular location - trade with natives surely might have led to beads and other easily portable items getting dispersed up the coast.......

[Wuli]

Now a string of glass beads will be used to expand the La Raza claims to how all our land is theirs!!!!!!!!!!!

On that same slim basis, for “Hispanic” title to Georgia and “natural” “Hispanic” rights there, the French could dock boats on the Gulf of Mexico, along the Louisiana shore and tell that boats’ French-citizen-passengers to just go ahead and go ashore - they have a right to be here. Because the wars the Spanish lost to us (over their right to rule North of the Rio Grand,the treaties the French made with us, and our national sovereignty, are to mean nothing.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

A spanish fort,or the foundation of, would be pretty good proof.Barring that I aint buying it.

[Deguello]

An occasional stand of mesquite trees would seal the deal.

[Boiler Plate]

Nobody expects "The Spanish Inquisition"

[vetvetdoug]

A High School student in Memphis, Tennessee, was walking on the East side of the Mississippi River bank and found a Spanish Dabloon. There was some other evidence that the Spaniards and DeSoto crossed the Mississippi there. Quite a find.

[tophat9000]

Shhhhh be quiet or you will be knee deep in reconquestia claiming Georgia as part greater historical Azteclan