page_title: Lamar Mounds and Village Site
section_title: Possible location of Ichisi
hierarchical_section_title: Lamar Mounds and Village Site / Possible location of Ichisi
caption_attribution_description: English: A map showing the de Soto expedition route through the future U.S. states of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. Based on the Charles M. Hudson map of 1997.
context_page_description: The Lamar Mounds and Village Site is an important archaeological site on the banks of the Ocmulgee River in Bibb County, Georgia and several miles to the southeast of the Ocmulgee Mound Site. Both mound sites are part of the Ocmulgee National Monument, a national park and historic district created in 1936 and run by the U.S. National Park Service. Historians and archaeologists have theorized that the site is the location of the main village of the Ichisi encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1539.
context_section_description: On March 29, 1539, the Hernando de Soto entrada, while winding its way northward after leaving Florida, came upon the province of Ichisi, which may have been part of the larger paramount chiefdom of Ocute. They were greeted, at the first village, by women dressed in white mantles with gifts of corn cakes and wild onions. On March 30 they were ferried across the Ocmulgee River in dugout canoes and met by the paramount chief of the province, a man with only one good eye. They spent several days at the village as the guest of the one-eyed ruler. The chief gave de Soto gifts of food and offered him porters and translators to speed him on to the next chiefdom to the northeast, Ocute, a people who spoke a different language from the Ichisi. Before leaving on April 1, the Spaniards erected a large wooden cross atop one of the village mounds and tried to explain its significance to the villagers. Noted historian and de Soto researcher Charles M. Hudson theorized in the 1980s and 90s, that the de Soto entrada crossed the Ocmulgee River near Macon and that the Lamar Mounds may have been the location of the paramount town of the Ichisi, a view supported by archaeologists who have worked at the site. New archaeological work at a site in rural Telfair County, Georgia near the town of McRae in 2009 called this identification into question and suggested the crossing took place approximately 90 miles (140 km) further south. Archaeologists and historians are still debating which of the two sites was actually visited by de Soto and his men.
caption: Proposed de Soto expedition route through Georgia (Hudson 1997).
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