Coosa chiefdom

Map of the Paramount Chiefdom of Coosa in March 1538
Map of the Paramount Chiefdom/Kingdom of Coosa in March 1538 (right before the De Soto expedition), along with its internal chiefdoms and neighboring states.[original research?]

The Coosa chiefdom was a powerful Native American paramount chiefdom in what are now Gordon and Murray counties in Georgia, in the United States.[1] It was inhabited from about 1400 until about 1600, and dominated several smaller chiefdoms.[2] The total population of Coosa's area of influence, reaching into present-day Tennessee and Alabama, has been estimated at 50,000.

Hernando de Soto and his conquistadors visited Coosa on their expedition through the Southeast United States in 1539–1541, as did participants in Tristán de Luna's expedition in 1560, and Juan Pardo's 1566–1568 expedition.[3] The Europeans recorded descriptions and impressions of the various chiefdoms they visited, describing Coosa as a series of communities and fertile gardens containing much food, rather than a town or city.[4] [failed verification]

Coosa was also the name of one of the four mother towns of the Muscogee Creek confederacy.[5]

  1. ^ "Late Prehistoric/Early Historic Chiefdoms (ca. A.D. 1300-1850)" Archived 2012-10-04 at the Wayback Machine. New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 22, 2010.
  2. ^ Charles Hudson (1998). Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-2062-5.
  3. ^ Ethridge, Robbie Franklyn (2010). From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European invasion and the transformation of the Mississippian world, 1540-1715. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-8078-3435-0.
  4. ^ Charles Hudson (Winter 1988). "A Spanish-Coosa Alliance in Sixteenth-Century North Georgia". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 72 (4): 599–626. JSTOR 40581893.
  5. ^ Isham, Theodore and Blue Clark. "Creek (Mvskoke)." Archived 2010-07-20 at the Wayback Machine Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Retrieved 20 Aug 2012.