Estanko Brothers and Sisters! I get so tired of those Euro-centric archaeologists and reporters distorting history. Again and again the myth becomes to truth, and it makes it even harder for Native American scholars with integrity to get the truth across. The silver medallion found on the town site on the lower Ocmulgee River only proves that a resident of the town had possession of a Spanish artifact from the late 1500s or early 1600s. It absolutely is not proof that de Soto came through that town. I will tell you why, below. Many such artifacts have also been found in NW Georgia - far more than this site. Here is the facts behind the Fernbank Museum project on the Ocmulgee. It started out four years ago as a search for a briefly occupied Spanish mission at the Forks of the Altamaha to the Timucua - an Arawak speaking tribe associated with NE Florida and the SE tip of Georgia during the 1500s. They were Caribbean peoples, who invaded the region around 1150 AD. After reading the first newspaper article in the AJC, I sent the Fernbank's archaeologist, Dennis Blanton, a package, with copies of Colonial maps. The "Forks of the Altamaha" in Colonial times was where the Ohoopee River joined the Altamaha River. The location was the extreme northern tip of Timucua territory. The Spanish map also showed that a road had been cut from the headwaters of the Satilla River to that location. There were a string of missions and forts along this road. That is exactly how the Spanish developed inland missions. They built roads and then spaced mission stations at equal distances along them. I told them that where they were searching was the homeland of the Tamatli - the Hitchiti speaking Creeks, who used lots of Maya words. The lower Ocmulgee River has ALWAYS been Creek territory. Grannies, our tribe's Principal Chief was born less than a mile from where the Fernbank was digging. I also sent the Fernbank summaries of FIVE Spanish expeditions that went up the Altamaha River in the late 1500s from the Mission Santa Catalina de Guale. The Spanish were trying to convert the Tamatli and Okonee, plus get permission to pass through their territories to reach the gold deposits in northern Georgia. The Tamatli refused passage. Eventually, a small minority of Tamatli converted to Catholicism, were kicked out of the province, and then placed at a mission right on the GA-FL line where the GA welcome station is located. The politics of what is going on, is that the Fernbank solicited many large contributions for their project on the Lower Ocmulgee based on the hopeful discovery of a mission to the Timucua, who never lived on the Ocmulgee. So the press releases about de Soto are a smoke screen to make the donors forget about the original purpose of the excavation. I personally believe that de Soto's Expedition did go through that general area of Georgia. However, what few Spanish artifacts the Fernbank's five summer digs have discovered, merely prove that the Tamatli either traded for the Spanish jewelry with towns closer to the missions, were given the jewelry as gifts of good will from "some" Spanish explorer, or else the stole them during raids on the Spanish coastal missions. We do know that the first expeditions from Santa Catalina to the Tamatli, found peaches and water melons growing there. The Tamatli had obtained the seeds by trade from Wahale villages associated with mission stations. Richard T.