I have written about the Kingdom of Apalache in several threads and some people have been skeptical about it, which is understandable since it's existence has been basically ignored by history. I have now pulled together sources and related information to show that it was a great nation in Southeastern North America, known to the European powers colonizing the New World. First, I will tell you about natural disasters that had impacts on the populations of Southeastern North America, allowing new populations to enter the area, and then helping eradicate those very populations. Then I will present historical accounts and maps of the Kingdom of Apalache. After that, some peculiarities of the Apalachite rulers/elite, which then extended to the leadership of other tribes. I will also discuss the impact of Sephardic Jewish and French Hugenot immigrants/refugees on the Kingdom of Apalache.
THE NATURAL DISASTERS
There are three natural disasters that happened in the Southeastern United States that are not talked about. These had a lot to do with changes in population levels in the area. Two of these were meteor or debris impacts off the coast, causing tsumanis and smaller meteor/debris impacts inland. The third disaster was the Chimney Mountain gas/ash volcanic explosion. I don't have undisputable mainstream evidence of these events, just circumstantial, but we all know that mainstream evidence is NOT the same thing as Truth.
The first of these is the tsunami that hit the entire East coast of the North America about 536-539 AD, as the result of the impact of a meteor or chunk of volcanic debris in the water off the coast of modern-day Georgia. The geological remnant of this is the Eastern Fall Line or South Atlantic Ridge, a cliff that crosses several states, where the coastal plains stop abruptly. The debris ridge is as high as 85 feet in some areas. When you look up the geological history of the Fall Line, it says it is related to erosion and happened long before mankind. That may be the case. If so, it provided the perfect barrier to halt the progress of the tsunami caused by the meteor/debris in 539 AD. This tsunami wiped out the indigenous people that were previously living in the area, leaving it open for immigration from Mexico, Central and South America, and the earliest European explorers (that history doesn't teach us about). Archeologists talk of the Swift Creek Culture disappearing from the Southeast around this time, and the Hopewell Culture of the Midwest experiencing a sharp decline, as they would when all their trading partners on the coast were wiped out. After 600 AD, new types of buildings and pottery appeared in the Southeast, similar to the people of Campeche, Mexico, who seem to have declined in their original homeland around the same time, apparently immigrating to the now-open areas. The Itza Maya people migrated north following the trail of the meteor and looking for the impact site. This led them to the Nacoochee River Valley, where one of the meteor fragments had impacted. It has been shown that energy and magnetics are different at the sites of meteor impacts; this is likely what drew them here to establish their new homeland. They set up their headquarters in the Nacoochee Valley and built the effigy Sky Serpent Mound to commemorate the celestial connection. (The famous Serpent Mound of Ohio is also built at the site of a meteor impact.)
The Secret Tectonic Past of the North American Atlantic Coast
Science agrees that there were worldwide weather changes, earthquakes and multiple volcanic eruptions around the year 539 AD. It was thought to be triggered by the 'Ilopango Catclysm', which was the eruption of a volcano in Central America. It caused the decline of many cultures in the area, including a dark age known as the 'Maya Hiatus'. The eruptions may have been originally been triggered by meteors.
Volcanic winter of 536 - Wikipedia
The second meteor impact came around 945-1015 AD. This was more in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but still caused a lesser tsunami, and left meteor fragments and debris scattered over the Caribbean and Southeastern areas. The Atlantic coast of Europe also experienced tidal waves/tsunamis from this. This is the geologic event that destroyed the North Carolina barrier islands. Of course, this caused a major population decline again and left the affected areas open for more immigration.
Georgia’s Celestial Serpent aligns with catastrophic comet impact on South Atlantic Coast in 539 AD
History shows this was a time of extreme cold weather, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and famine worldwide. It caused the transition into the Medieval Warm Period.
The third natural disaster we don't hear about in this area is the eruption of gas volcano Chimney Mountain approximately 1700 AD. Archeologists have found many abandoned Native towns in the area of the Blue Ridge Mountains, that were buried in 10-15 feet of alluvial sand. The towns seem to have been active from roughly 1000 AD to 1700 AD. This time frame fits nicely with the times between the meteor strikes of 1014 AD and the ash volcano eruption circa 1700 AD, and the population changes that would come with them. Explorer journals from before and after 1700 say two different things about the area - pre 1700 journals speak of the vast population of Natives and abundance of towns, post 1700 journals speak of no large towns and few residents. On maps created after 1700 of the Southeastern United States the mapmakers show abandoned native villages in the area of the southern Appalachian Mountains known as the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Mysterious event devastated the southern Blue Ridge Mountains around 1700 AD
You might be asking "How did a volcanic eruption in 1700 not get into my history books?" I can answer this from personal experience. My family lived through the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in Washington state in 1980 AD. My mother was actually camping with a group of people AT the mountain. They escaped when fireballs started flying into the camp and were able to hole up at a lodge on a nearby lake. The ash was a couple feet deep, making it nearly impossible to drive. They were airlifted out by helicopter a few days later. No deaths in their group, though. I was 165 miles/266 kilometers away from the mountain, visiting Seattle. I felt a slight tremor at the time of eruption. The ash fallout in Seattle was only a light dusting on everything. At my home in Olympia, 67 miles/108 kilometers from the mountain, the dusting was a little heavier. Maybe a millimeter thick. The winds blew most of the ash out to Eastern Washington, where the farmers were happy to get the ash fertilizer for their crops. The most affected areas of ash coverage outside the actual eruption zone were two to five inches deep. The larger, less affected areas were trace amounts to a half inch deep. Without modern communication, I would never have guessed a mountain erupted.
I have several maps in the next section. The ones from before 1700 have some pretty large lakes in the highlands of the Apalache. The maps from after 1700 no longer show the lakes in the same way, if at all. What happened to those lakes? Maybe filled in by ash? The big lake was called Theomi by the Natives, modern researchers say it is now the Okefenokee Swamp. The smaller lake with the twin waterfalls wasn't "discovered" until after the Civil War by 'Captain' John Nichols. It was the waterfalls and a creek (no lake anymore), which he named Anna Ruby Falls and Smith Creek. No more lake there until Smith Creek was dammed to create Smith Lake/Unicoi Lake in 1970.
THE KINGDOM OF APALACHE
Before the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, French and British explorers came to the Southeastern United States there was a unified Native American civilization known as the Kingdom of Apalache. It covered western North Carolina, western South Carolina, Georgia, northern Florida and the panhandle, eastern Alabama, eastern Tennessee and possibly eastern Kentucky. They had vassal tribes and trade connections on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Their last capital was in the Nacoochee River Valley north of present-day Atlanta. The entire area is still referred to as Appalachia today, and the mountains are called the Appalachian Mountains. These names are pretty much the only remnants of their legacy that remain in the English language. The French, Spanish and Dutch wrote about them and included them on maps, as they were earlier colonists and explorers. France even had a trade treaty with the Kingdom of Apalache. But the British, who came later, acted like they never existed and don't include the Kingdom of Apalache in colonial history.
The rulers/founders of this kingdom were the Parakusa or Paracas, a tall, strong and intelligent tribe that had migrated from Paracusa, Peru, soon after 1014 AD. Their language was part of the Panoan language family of Brazil and northern South America. They established themselves in the Georgia mountains, and built their kingdom through conquest, trade and intermarriage. They built high temples on mounds and encrusted the walls of their important buildings with mica, so they would shine like gold in the sun, that probably started the rumors about cities of gold. They terraced the mountainsides for growing food. They developed trade networks overland and by water with Native groups north, east, west, and south into parts of Mexico. I shall refer to them as the Apalachites.
Nearly all the tribes in the area were part of the Kingdom of Apalache, or trading partners with the Apalachites. I told you above that the coastal area had been depopulated in 539 AD and again in 1014 AD from the meteors and tsunamis. It was left open to many immigrants from many places. The area was a collection of many different tribes from different areas of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America that were relocating after the same catastrophe. There were also tribes that were descendants of Norse, Finnish/Sami, Welsh, Irish or African sailors or shipwrecks. Later on, there came different tribes that had been chased out of Mexico and Central America by violent tribes like the Aztecs or by natural disasters. The Europeans started (officially) coming to the New World in 1492. Some Caribbean tribes were able to escape Spanish slavery by fleeing to the mainland. Some South American and Central American tribes were able to escape from death at the hands of the Spanish by fleeing north to Florida and beyond. The Chontal Mayas escaped from the Yucatan peninsula on their large trade canoes. All these were welcomed into the Kingdom of Apalache, as long as they were peaceful, willing to intermarry, paid tribute, and didn't keep slaves. There was NO slavery allowed in the Kingdom of Apalache or in any surrounding tribes that wanted to be part of the Apalache Confederacy.
The Kingdom of Apalache was weakened by the actions of all the European explorers and settlers. They lost land to settlers and lost a lot of population to slavery. The Spanish were ruthless with their slave hunting activities. They worked their way up Florida and the coastal areas of the Southeast, depopulating every tribe they came across. The Kingdom proper shrank up to the mountains where the slavers didn't go. The French did not take slaves and were friends of the Apalache, but they weakened the religious and social structures by introducing Christianity. The British, when they came, took slaves. But they were very sneaky about it and hired Native tribes to take slaves for them from other Native tribes. The remnants of the vassal tribes became known as the Apalache Confederacy. The area of Apalache shrank on European-made maps, when it was even acknowledged at all.
Then there was a major smallpox epidemic in Southeastern North America in 1696. It wiped out approximately 90% of the native population. Around the same time Chimney Mountain erupted. These two deadly events so close together spelled the end for the Apalachites. The Kingdom of Apalache disintegrated, and the Apalache Confederacy reformed into the Creek Confederacy in 1717 from the remnants. Today's Creek people are the descendants of the Apalachites. It was never the same, of course. The high temples gleaming like gold with mica encrusted walls fell into disuse. The agricultural terraces on the mountainsides became overgrown rocky walls. The various tribal villages in the river valleys lost their individual identities as the scattered remnants of the tribes banded together. Mound villages fell into disrepair and skills were lost. This societal devastation allowed the Colonials to make further inroads into the Native lands with bad treaties, illegal real estate deals and war. The Indian Removal Act put the nail in the coffin of the memory of the Kingdom of Apalache, more on that later.
Here are some historical sources and maps to support and illustrate my research.
The History of the Caribby Islands, translated into English by John Davies, published in 1691, is probably the most comprehensive source to confirm the existence of the Kingdom of Apalache. It is the English translation of the fourth edition of the French book Histoire Naturelle des isles Antilles de l'Amerique by Charles de Rochefort, a French Hugenot minister who had lived in the Caribbean Islands, originally published in 1658. The book is detailed observations of the natural world and the Native tribes in the various Caribbean Islands, including the history of the Caribbian Indians. This fourth edition includes the information about the Kingdom of Apalache, that de Rochefort learned later. The author goes back to the origins of the Carribian tribes on the mainland of North America. Apparently, about 500 years before the time of the French exploration, the Caribbian Indians had a different name, Cofachites, and were living on the mainland outside of the Kingdom of Apalache. Where they lived was poor land that was difficult to find or grow food. They decided to attack the Apalachites and force them to let them live on fertile land. They drew the Apalachite forces away from the center of the kingdom and then snuck in over the mountains and occupied a central province. They were allowed to stay in the province as part of their peace treaty and given the name Caribbian, meaning stranger. Over time, the Apalachite priests converted half of the Caribbians to their religion and these people integrated into the Apalachites. The rest of the Caribbians left the mainland and went out to the islands, which were uninhabited. They populated all the islands which became known as the Caribbean Islands and Sea. De Rochefort attributes this knowledge of Carribian history to Native traditional stories. His later details on the Kingdom of Apalache he attributes to Englishman Richard Brigstock, who had lived for a time in the Kingdom of Apalache around 1660.
---This story supports several points I brought up above regarding the tsunami of 1014 AD. The coastal area on the mainland would have gotten depopulated and the land would have been disturbed and become less fertile. This explains why the Cofachite tribe would be living in an area that could not support them. The islands also would have been depopulated by the tsunami, so this would explain why the Caribbians were able to move there when they left the Kingdom of Apalache.---
Here's an easy to read translation of the first part I just summarized for you. In the Archive original, which is two links down, this starts on page 210.
TheNewWorld.us | On the Nature of the Apalachites
The History of the Caribby Islands then goes into detail regarding the Kingdom of Apalache, where the other half of the Caribbian tribe stayed and intermarried. It gives details about the six provinces, geography, plants, animals, customs, warfare, leisure activities, child rearing, home life, language, religion and history. The author then writes about two French voyages of exploration that took place in 1562 and 1564, by French Hugenot Captain Rene de Laudonniere. I go into more detail about these voyages further below, with illustrations. Here is the book on Internet Archive. I could not find a clean translation of the part about the Apalachites, sorry. This account begins on page 228 of this Archive copy. Hint: most of the letters that look like an 'f' should be considered an 's'.
The history of the Caribby-islands : viz. Barbados, St Christophers, St Vincents, Martinico, Dominico, Barbouthos, Monserrat, Mevis, Antego, &c. in all XXVIII in two books : the first containing the natural; the second, the moral history of those islands : illustrated with several pieces of sculpture, representing the most considerable rarities therein described : with a Caribbian-vocabulary : Rochefort, Charles de, 1605-1683 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Let me show you some maps:
Here is a Dutch map from 1640 and the link if you want to look closer. You can see the numerous towns in the coastal plains. Above the lake you can see the name of the region as Apalache. No room to write it where all the towns are, because there are so many.
Category:Old maps of Spanish Florida - Wikimedia Commons
This Dutch map is from 1666, in Latin, showing the six provinces of the Kingdom of Apalache. Note the French coat of arms to the north of the Kingdom of Apalache, in the area that mentions gold and silver. This is during the time when the Kingdom of Apalache and the Kingdom of France had a trade agreement. In the pink circular province you can see it mentions the king and administration residing in the area. Most of the narrative on this map is about gold and silver. It shows that the Europeans were well aware of the gold and silver LONG before 1830 when the "discovery" of gold started the Georgia Gold Rush and resulted in the Indian Removal Act and the five forced migrations known as the Trail of Tears.
Jan Jansson, South-eastern coast of USA , 1666
Here is a Dutch map from 1706 that has the Kingdom of Apalache labeled and outlined. The greater Apalache Confederacy extended further west and south. The Apalachicola tribe on the Florida panhandle was killed off by 1704. For hundreds of years they had been the coastal access for the Apalachites. This map reflects that the Spanish considered that land theirs now.
https://www.amazon.com/Historic-Map-Amerikaans-Florida-Ferdinand/dp/B07RPLV8HZ?th=1
Here's a Dutch map from 1706 - 1707. The final collapse of the Kingdom of Apalache was in 1696 from the epidemic. All the cities on this map were part of the Kingdom. But in this map the Europeans have carved it up for themselves and instituted new border lines separating the once great Kingdom. Note that this uses the same underlying Dutch map from 1666, with new cities, boundaries and notations added to it.
Zee en Land togten der Franszen Geaan na en in t Americaans Gewest van Florida aller eerst door Joh Pontius ontdekt Leiden by Pieter van der Aa
Here's a French map from 1757 that still acknowledges the Kingdom of Apalache. This is before the American Revolution.
1757 Bellin Map of Carolina and Georgia
As the Kingdom fell apart, the Apalachites moved into their eastern and southern holdings. The Creek formed the Creek Confederacy from the disparate tribes remaining. The Cherokee were well established in the northern part of the previous Kingdom of Apalache. The Creek and Cherokee battled for many years, mainly due to influences by Europeans.
Here's a map from 1762. It is in English, produced for the American Gazetteer magazine. It was really hard to find a quality image of it. You will probably need to look at it in the link. There is a ton of information on this map - when battles were fought, when land was ceded by various countries or tribes, abandoned Native towns. The reason I put it here is to show how well known the Apalachite were to the people that lived in the area. This is over 60 years since the pandemic and the Chimney Mountain ash/gas eruption wiped out the Apalachite elite and caused the Kingdom of Apalache to fall apart. It's 45 years since the remnants became known as the Creek Confederacy. The only Europeans mentioning the Apalachite are the French. But this American Gazetteer map is very clear that the 'Apalachee' control a large area of land in the Southeast.
A new and correct map of the provinces of North & South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, 1762
Here's a later map from 1796 showing the remnants of the Kingdom of Apalache. This was a 100 years after the epidemic that caused the fall of the Kingdom of Apalache. They were forced east and south, ending up in Northern Florida and southern Alabama. The bay in the armpit of Florida is called the Bay of Apalache. Many of the cities have names similar to Apalache. Most interesting is the written commentary blurbs on the map. Here are some of those commentaries:
"Great Swamp of Owaquafenoga [Okefenokee] whose highland is inhabited by an old Apalachean tribe who keep the avenue secret"
"Antient country of the Timookas a tribe of the Old Apalahches"
"Remains of the Apalahche"
Many towns with Native names are marked "deserted" or "now uninhabited".
In present day Mississippi it notates the "Choctaw or Flathead Indians". They were a vassal tribe of the Apalache who bound their babies heads to look more like the ruling Apalache elite.
There's no mention of gold or silver on this map, even though it was known to be there. That would get revealed to the public close to 1830 to start the Georgia Gold Rush and force out the rest of the Natives. The closest thing to gold mentioned here is the "Yellow Land Iron Mines" near the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Here is the link to the high quality zoomable version.
https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/se...&trs=1&qvq=q:list_no="2310.088";lc:RUMSEY~8~1
Here's an article about the Apalache on the Florida Panhandle.
https://marinelab.fsu.edu/marine-ops/apalachee/history-of-the-apalachee-tribe/
Here's an article regarding the Kingdom of Apalache:
New Series: Southeastern North America during the Early Colonial Period
The Chronicles of Hernando de Soto mention the Apalache numerous times. De Soto creates some confusion because the area he mainly explored was that part of the Florida Panhandle where the 'Apalachee' tribe lived, a vassal tribe of Apalache with coastal access. De Soto heard rumors of a great Apalache province that was abundant in gold and food, but none of the Native guides could (or would) take him there. It was farther away than his guides had traveled on their own and had knowledge of.
Now I am going to get into some of the more unusual aspects of the Kingdom of Apalache and their rulers, the Paracas, from Paracusa, Peru. Some of these ideas may seem outrageous to you. But I give supporting evidence for them from several sources. Please read with an open mind.
The name Paracusa may sound familiar to you from the work of LA Marzulli regarding an ancient people with elongated skulls. The genetics of these people show that they originated in the area of modern-day Ukraine. They then migrated to the area of modern-day Syria. Then showed up next in Peru, where they are thought to have died out. What really happened is they migrated to what is now Northern Georgia. LA Marzulli, the lead researcher on the Paracusa elongated skulls, feels that they were actively chased out of Europe and then the Middle East, ending up in Peru, due to their taller height, head shape and long necks. Basically, because they were different. A significant fact about the skulls Marzulli has analyzed is that many lack a sagittal suture compared to modern humans, and all have a larger brain size. So anatomically different as well. But the presence of elongated skulls with and also without sagittal sutures in the same greater burial area indicates the inter-mixing of this Paracas with modern human. On page 311 of The History of the Caribby Islands, the Great King of Apalache is known as Paracuissis.
This elongated skull and larger brain gave the Paracas more intelligence. They were also taller and stronger than the other natives around them. They had carried a cultural identity from continent to continent. They conquered the other immigrant tribes in their new home in the Southeast, then they had to hold onto the power and create the Kingdom of Apalache. I believe they did this by either appointing a Paracas chief to lead each vassal tribe, or by marrying their Paracas daughters to the reigning chief. This way each vassal tribe would gain an improvement to their bloodline. Over time, the Chief family of each tribe would become recognizably different from the commoner tribal members, in height, intelligence and head shape. This created an obvious elite within each tribe, with the very highest and purest elite ruling from their mountain stronghold. The commoners would try to imitate the long skulls of the elite by flattening their children's heads with boards and binding, like the Choctaw/Flathead tribe on the western edge of the Apalache Confederacy. Page 338 of the History of the Caribby Islands says that women flatten the heads of their newborns.
In the vassal tribes there was less access to Paracas blood, and this led to inbreeding between the tribal level elites. The chief would have the highest degree of Paracas blood. He might choose a wife from the elite of another tribe or from the tallest daughters of his chiefs. In the evidence I discovered (below), a chief's son even made children with his own mother to ensure the purest bloodline. I suggest that this inbreeding also led to a high rate of sexual birth defects, namely hermaphrodites. It is likely that children with high degrees of Paracas blood may have been sold or traded to other tribes as a source of income. The more children they had to sell, the more money they made. But only the perfect boys and perfect girls were saleable. The hermaphrodites stayed with the tribe and became a worker class.
The evidence I have found for this is laid out below in a series of prints called the LeMoyne - DeBry engravings. There is a set that that was printed with a narrative below each image, describing what the image is portraying and related facts about the tribe. Two series of lithographs were produced about the explorations of French Hugenot Captain Rene de Laudonniere. He visited the coast of North Carolina/Georgia in 1562 and 1564. The images from the first voyage are maps of the coastline they explored and the rivers they "discovered" and named. The images from the second voyage focused on the building of the French Fort Caroline, and also focus on the local Native American tribe. The artist LeMoyne documented the customs and habits of the tribe in a series of watercolors. Later, DeBry created lithographs with the image above and a commentary below. They were published by DeBry. Here's a link to the full collection, with translations. The translations hold some great information.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294774
These images are very important. The tribe's contact with Europeans was quite new. The French left that pillar on the voyage in 1562 and built their first French fort in the area in 1564 on the May/Altamaha River. The British would found Charles Town/Charleston on the coast north of this area much later, in 1670. The Catholic Spanish had built some missions on the coast to the south, that would later be destroyed by Natives. But overall, the Natives still lived as they had been living before the Europeans came. This tribe was a vassal tribe of the Apalache. I believe we can learn a lot about the Apalache elite by looking at the actions of the leaders/elite of this tribe.
I have to address the tribe that is shown in both sets of lithographs (one set from each voyage). Historians today call them the Timucua tribe and claim that they live in Florida where the Fort Caroline replica is. However, they are actually the Satile/Satila tribe from the coast of Carolina near Port Royal, as shown by the narratives below the maps. Part of the confusion is that the entire Southeastern United States was called Florida for hundreds of years by the Europeans. Some of the lithographs are titled to be in Florida, so they have been misrepresented as being a tribe on an island outside of Jacksonville, Florida. Also outside of Jacksonville is a Fort Caroline reproduction that is passed off as being the real Fort Caroline that was built by the French and destroyed by the Spanish. These historical lithographs have been used to try and legitimize it in the fake location. You can read more about the fake Fort Caroline in Florida here:
https://thenewworld.us/review-painter-in-a-savage-land/
https://apalacheresearch.com/2024/0...scheme-that-became-official-american-history/
The pillar from the 1562 voyage was erected on the island below, marked with an F. The map matches closest to the May/Altamaha River.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294772
Let me use these images and narratives to illustrate some unusual aspects of the leadership of tribes in the Kingdom of Apalache.
First is the colorized image of this lithograph that you are most likely to have seen before. Then is Plate VIII in the collection with the narrative.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294774
This is the last part of the translation of the inscription included with Plate VIII:
...The king, Athore, is a handsome man, wise, honourable and strong, more than half a foot taller than even the tallest of our men. His modest gravity lends majesty to his already noble bearing. He married his mother and had by her several children of both sexes whom he proudly introduced to us, striking his thigh as he did so. It might be added that after he married his mother his father, Satourioua, ceased to live with her.
Athor, the Satile chief, is more than half a foot taller than the Frenchmen. He also has an egg shaped head. It is touched up to look like a hat with feathers and animal tails, but it is his hair in a topknot on his protruding skull. You see that many of his subjects have the same hairstyle. I found this image at French Alamy. I think it was an earlier version created by LeMoyne, perhaps a pencil drawing he then watercolored. Then later on when DeVry was publishing the lithographs he developed from LeMoyne's drawings, the elongated skulls end up looking like hats. On this French version, you can clearly see the elongated skull of the chief, and the less elongated skulls of his tribe members to the left.
The last part of that narrative starts showing the breeding program that is in place in this tribe. The son is having children with his own mother by choice. The father, Satournioua, is still alive, and we find out that he is actually still Chief of the tribe, responsible for planning and carrying out battles with rival tribes and for diplomacy with the newly arrived Europeans. So, the son, Athor, is not really the chief, just the primary breeder. The only explanation that makes sense is that the son had a higher percentage of elite Panoan blood than the father had, due to his mother having a high percentage. Once Athor became old enough the father children, the pairing of him and his mother created offspring with a higher percentage than the offspring that his mother and father created together. The children the Athor had with his mother would have the highest possibility of being perfectly formed males and females that could be sold or married off, and the lowest possibility of being hermaphrodites.
Sometimes new blood needs to be introduced into the ruling bloodlines. The spouse would be chosen based on their tallness and their degree of noble (Paracas) blood. This picture and narrative illustrate a Queen Elect being brought to a King.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294803
When the king wishes to get married, he orders the most beautiful and the tallest girl from among the most noble families to be chosen...
In plate XIII, the French have allied with King Outina in a fight against his enemy Potanu. Note the presence of many large warriors and the extreme height of the two elite kings (not just chiefs, so more elite and with a higher percentage) in the middle of their troops.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294779
The great height of the Native chiefs and their families is corraborated by other sources. De Soto's expedition wrote about Chief Tuskaloosa and his son, from the area of modern-day Alabama. Here is an A.I. Summary:
"The Four Historical Chronicles
To illustrate just how massive Tuskaloosa was to the Spaniards, the chroniclers recorded a humorous but telling logistical problem: no normal horse could carry him. When de Soto tried to extend a customary gesture of status by offering the chief a horse to ride, Tuskaloosa's feet nearly dragged on the ground. The conquistadors frantically searched their camp and finally had to assign him the largest, heaviest pack horse they owned just to sustain his weight."
Another tall Native is known as Chief Wahunsenacawh, of the Powhatan Confederacy, father of Pocahontas, in the area of modern-day Virginia. This is near Jamestown, the British settlement. We know about him and his daughter due to their interactions with Captain John Smith. These interactions included help with food, several wars, Smith being captured at one point, the Chief's tall brother being captured at another point, and eventually Smith marrying Pocahontas and bringing her back to England. The images below are different depictions of this story. There are several examples of taller leaders or warriors and smaller commoners. Note that the tallest Natives also have elongated heads.
Here's a later example of the chief being significantly taller that the rest of this tribe. This is a delegation of members of the Creek Confederacy to England in 1734, when the British were trying to take over the land now known as Savannah, Georgia, from this tribe that was currently living there.
Back to the LeMoyne / DeBry lithographs and narratives. Here's the main reference to the abundance of hermaphrodites. They are briefly mentioned in two other plates as being used to carry items.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294783
In this country there are numerous hermaphrodites, a mixture of both sexes. They are considered odious by the Indians, but as they are robust and strong they are used to carry loads instead of beasts of burden. When the kings set out to war, it is the hermaphrodites who transport the supplies...They place the Indians, dead from either wounds or sickness, on a stretcher...they carry their dead to the place of burial...Persons with infectious diseases are carried to places reserved for them on the shoulders of the hermaphrodites who supply them with food until they are well again.
It says that the Natives considered the hermaphrodites 'odious'. Is this because they were imperfect failures in the eyes of the tribe? They couldn't be sold and thereby enrich the tribe. They couldn't birth children of their own. But they still had the tallness and strength of the tribal elite, so they were relegated to the roles of packhorse and assistant, and made to deal with sick people because it was okay for the hermaphrodites to get sick themselves (or maybe they had stronger immune systems). From looking at the lithograph plates, it appears the hermaphrodites had to wear their hair long and down, and were not allowed to wear the topknot the rest of the tribe did.
---The idea that inbreeding can cause hermaphrodites and/or disfigurement of the sexual organs brings up some other questions. Is this why some "bloodline" families like the Hapsburgs, Rothschilds, Bourbon-Orleans, and Ptolemys kept marrying into themselves? Were the children starting to become disfigured? Did the family have to keep this a secret to avoid embarrassment, so they only married themselves? I suppose a few children were fathered by men other than their mothers' husbands, due to fertility issues. Also, is this the reason behind historical eunichs and their elevated status as advisors to kings? Are they the children of the bloodlines that were born as hermaphrodites? Is this why Baphomet is represented as a hermaphrodite? And is this why transsexuality is being pushed so hard today?...Just asking for a friend...---
The next unusual thing about the Natives with the blood of the Apalachites is how long their lives were. This plate speaks of the great age these people reached.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294794
...One of their chiefs asserted to me that he was three hundred years old and that his father, whom he pointed out to me, was fifty years older than he. It is true to say that on looking at him, he seemed all skin and bones. The Indians put us Christians to shame, for we, by over-indulgence in food and drink, shorten our lives considerably...
The great age that these people live to is also brought up several times in the History of the Carriby Islands. Page 228 of the History of the Caribby Islands gives credence to the Carribian history with the Apalachite by telling the reader that they live to 200 years, and thereby the history is within their tribal memory. "And to confirm this, we may aver that there are many men and women among them who can give an exact account of the first arrival of the Spaniards in America, as if it had happened but yesterday: So that the remembrance of the departure of the Carébbians out of Florida, and the wars they have had there, being yet fresh among the Apalachites, those who have heard them discourse, conjecture that it may be about five hundred years since those things came to pass." Also, page 342 of the History of the Caribby Islands speaks of great age they reach and that they continue to bear children up into 90 years old, and some Natives are over a hundred years old with not a grey hair.
My research has shown that they also had different nutritional needs, mainly an increased need for protein. It is possible that part of the reason they were chased out of the Old World is due to cannibalizing other people. Regardless of their history, in 1564 the chief required a sacrifice from his subjects - their firstborn child. This child is clubbed to death after a ritual by the women. The narrative here doesn't specify what is done with the infant afterwards. The only reasonable explanation to waste a life of a subject like that is that it is not wasted, but eaten. Early legends of the Americas speak of human flesh and blood being consumed for strength or ceremony. Rumors say that it is the origin of Brunswick Stew.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294800
The Indian custom is to offer as a sacrifice to their chief, their first-born son. On the appointed day the chief goes to a place specially assigned for the purpose and there sites down on a bench...The mother of the child squats in front of this, her face covered by her hands, lamenting the death of her first-born. The most distinguished of her relations or friends offers the child respectfully to the king...When the ceremonies are over, he seizes the child and, in honour of the chief, slays it on the wooden stump, in the presence of the assembled company. We saw this sacrifice carried out.
This is an etching made of the Temple of the Sun in the Kingdom of Apalache at the capital, which was called Melilot by the explorers. The modern-day location is about a mile north of Helen, Georgia, United States, in the Nacoochee River Valley near Anna Ruby Falls. It appeared in the fourth edition of Histoire Naturelle des isles Antilles de l'Amerique by Charles de Rochefort. This edition goes into great detail about the Kingdom of Apalache as told by Englishman Richard Brigstock. This etching is based on a drawing by Brigstock in 1653.
Starting on page 238 of The History of the Carriby Islands, Brigstock describes a ceremony that was held four times a year in the Temple of the Sun. All of the people would trek up the hill/mound and gather in the Temple, which was described as a great cave with a hole in the top that would let in the sun. Parts of the Temple were lined with reflective white stones. The priests would perform a ceremony, the Sun would come, the world would be renewed. I believe that the ray shown between the sky and the Temple represents this ceremony. The ceremony also included ritual washing by the attendees, similar to anointing oneself with Holy Water when coming in and out of a Catholic cathedral.
But it is also possible that the ray is going out of the temple, towards the sky. There are ancient Egyptian writings about Sun Stones that cast light. The priests that tended them lived for 200-300 years.
The Apalache capital Meliot identified by Richard Thornton as the Nacoochee Valley in North Georgia depicted by Edouard Graeves in 1653.
I want to expand on the degree of intermarriage that was happening all over the New World - North and South America and the islands. Every boat that came would have been mostly men. This includes explorers, traders, pirates, shipwrecks, slaveboats, etc. Of course, these men are going to want women, whether by rape or marriage, and the women that were around were the Natives. And later on, the Africans. So, every Native community that interacted with the Europeans/Colonials would become mixed race. The biracial children of rape were probably enslaved and died. The biracial children of consenting unions, however, added a layer to both Native and Western society that had not previously existed. The children of these unions would likely become bilingual, which would give them advantages in dealings between Europeans/Colonials and Natives. If the family lived with the Natives, they would be likely to rise up in the tribe in status and in wealth. Pretty soon the leadership of each tribe would have a significant degree of European blood. Which would mean at least some degree of European thinking that could affect decisions. If the mixed family lived among the Colonials, their bilingualism would also give them advantages in trade and communication. Today when Natives get their DNA checked, they are frequently shocked at how little Native blood they have compared to European, Jewish, South American and African blood.
Here is a Spanish "Casta Painting" that illustrates the many different nuances of mixed races in South and Central America. It mattered what percentage of Spanish, Native, or African blood a person had and which caste they belonged to. Laws were very specific about who had what rights, and even what clothing one could wear. Very different from the mixing in North America. There is also an article about Casta Painting.
https://www.indigenousmexico.org/ar...-system-a-historical-and-cultural-perspective
THE NATURAL DISASTERS
There are three natural disasters that happened in the Southeastern United States that are not talked about. These had a lot to do with changes in population levels in the area. Two of these were meteor or debris impacts off the coast, causing tsumanis and smaller meteor/debris impacts inland. The third disaster was the Chimney Mountain gas/ash volcanic explosion. I don't have undisputable mainstream evidence of these events, just circumstantial, but we all know that mainstream evidence is NOT the same thing as Truth.
The first of these is the tsunami that hit the entire East coast of the North America about 536-539 AD, as the result of the impact of a meteor or chunk of volcanic debris in the water off the coast of modern-day Georgia. The geological remnant of this is the Eastern Fall Line or South Atlantic Ridge, a cliff that crosses several states, where the coastal plains stop abruptly. The debris ridge is as high as 85 feet in some areas. When you look up the geological history of the Fall Line, it says it is related to erosion and happened long before mankind. That may be the case. If so, it provided the perfect barrier to halt the progress of the tsunami caused by the meteor/debris in 539 AD. This tsunami wiped out the indigenous people that were previously living in the area, leaving it open for immigration from Mexico, Central and South America, and the earliest European explorers (that history doesn't teach us about). Archeologists talk of the Swift Creek Culture disappearing from the Southeast around this time, and the Hopewell Culture of the Midwest experiencing a sharp decline, as they would when all their trading partners on the coast were wiped out. After 600 AD, new types of buildings and pottery appeared in the Southeast, similar to the people of Campeche, Mexico, who seem to have declined in their original homeland around the same time, apparently immigrating to the now-open areas. The Itza Maya people migrated north following the trail of the meteor and looking for the impact site. This led them to the Nacoochee River Valley, where one of the meteor fragments had impacted. It has been shown that energy and magnetics are different at the sites of meteor impacts; this is likely what drew them here to establish their new homeland. They set up their headquarters in the Nacoochee Valley and built the effigy Sky Serpent Mound to commemorate the celestial connection. (The famous Serpent Mound of Ohio is also built at the site of a meteor impact.)
The Secret Tectonic Past of the North American Atlantic Coast
Science agrees that there were worldwide weather changes, earthquakes and multiple volcanic eruptions around the year 539 AD. It was thought to be triggered by the 'Ilopango Catclysm', which was the eruption of a volcano in Central America. It caused the decline of many cultures in the area, including a dark age known as the 'Maya Hiatus'. The eruptions may have been originally been triggered by meteors.
Volcanic winter of 536 - Wikipedia
The second meteor impact came around 945-1015 AD. This was more in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but still caused a lesser tsunami, and left meteor fragments and debris scattered over the Caribbean and Southeastern areas. The Atlantic coast of Europe also experienced tidal waves/tsunamis from this. This is the geologic event that destroyed the North Carolina barrier islands. Of course, this caused a major population decline again and left the affected areas open for more immigration.
Georgia’s Celestial Serpent aligns with catastrophic comet impact on South Atlantic Coast in 539 AD
History shows this was a time of extreme cold weather, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and famine worldwide. It caused the transition into the Medieval Warm Period.
The third natural disaster we don't hear about in this area is the eruption of gas volcano Chimney Mountain approximately 1700 AD. Archeologists have found many abandoned Native towns in the area of the Blue Ridge Mountains, that were buried in 10-15 feet of alluvial sand. The towns seem to have been active from roughly 1000 AD to 1700 AD. This time frame fits nicely with the times between the meteor strikes of 1014 AD and the ash volcano eruption circa 1700 AD, and the population changes that would come with them. Explorer journals from before and after 1700 say two different things about the area - pre 1700 journals speak of the vast population of Natives and abundance of towns, post 1700 journals speak of no large towns and few residents. On maps created after 1700 of the Southeastern United States the mapmakers show abandoned native villages in the area of the southern Appalachian Mountains known as the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Mysterious event devastated the southern Blue Ridge Mountains around 1700 AD
You might be asking "How did a volcanic eruption in 1700 not get into my history books?" I can answer this from personal experience. My family lived through the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in Washington state in 1980 AD. My mother was actually camping with a group of people AT the mountain. They escaped when fireballs started flying into the camp and were able to hole up at a lodge on a nearby lake. The ash was a couple feet deep, making it nearly impossible to drive. They were airlifted out by helicopter a few days later. No deaths in their group, though. I was 165 miles/266 kilometers away from the mountain, visiting Seattle. I felt a slight tremor at the time of eruption. The ash fallout in Seattle was only a light dusting on everything. At my home in Olympia, 67 miles/108 kilometers from the mountain, the dusting was a little heavier. Maybe a millimeter thick. The winds blew most of the ash out to Eastern Washington, where the farmers were happy to get the ash fertilizer for their crops. The most affected areas of ash coverage outside the actual eruption zone were two to five inches deep. The larger, less affected areas were trace amounts to a half inch deep. Without modern communication, I would never have guessed a mountain erupted.
I have several maps in the next section. The ones from before 1700 have some pretty large lakes in the highlands of the Apalache. The maps from after 1700 no longer show the lakes in the same way, if at all. What happened to those lakes? Maybe filled in by ash? The big lake was called Theomi by the Natives, modern researchers say it is now the Okefenokee Swamp. The smaller lake with the twin waterfalls wasn't "discovered" until after the Civil War by 'Captain' John Nichols. It was the waterfalls and a creek (no lake anymore), which he named Anna Ruby Falls and Smith Creek. No more lake there until Smith Creek was dammed to create Smith Lake/Unicoi Lake in 1970.
THE KINGDOM OF APALACHE
Before the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, French and British explorers came to the Southeastern United States there was a unified Native American civilization known as the Kingdom of Apalache. It covered western North Carolina, western South Carolina, Georgia, northern Florida and the panhandle, eastern Alabama, eastern Tennessee and possibly eastern Kentucky. They had vassal tribes and trade connections on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Their last capital was in the Nacoochee River Valley north of present-day Atlanta. The entire area is still referred to as Appalachia today, and the mountains are called the Appalachian Mountains. These names are pretty much the only remnants of their legacy that remain in the English language. The French, Spanish and Dutch wrote about them and included them on maps, as they were earlier colonists and explorers. France even had a trade treaty with the Kingdom of Apalache. But the British, who came later, acted like they never existed and don't include the Kingdom of Apalache in colonial history.
The rulers/founders of this kingdom were the Parakusa or Paracas, a tall, strong and intelligent tribe that had migrated from Paracusa, Peru, soon after 1014 AD. Their language was part of the Panoan language family of Brazil and northern South America. They established themselves in the Georgia mountains, and built their kingdom through conquest, trade and intermarriage. They built high temples on mounds and encrusted the walls of their important buildings with mica, so they would shine like gold in the sun, that probably started the rumors about cities of gold. They terraced the mountainsides for growing food. They developed trade networks overland and by water with Native groups north, east, west, and south into parts of Mexico. I shall refer to them as the Apalachites.
Nearly all the tribes in the area were part of the Kingdom of Apalache, or trading partners with the Apalachites. I told you above that the coastal area had been depopulated in 539 AD and again in 1014 AD from the meteors and tsunamis. It was left open to many immigrants from many places. The area was a collection of many different tribes from different areas of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America that were relocating after the same catastrophe. There were also tribes that were descendants of Norse, Finnish/Sami, Welsh, Irish or African sailors or shipwrecks. Later on, there came different tribes that had been chased out of Mexico and Central America by violent tribes like the Aztecs or by natural disasters. The Europeans started (officially) coming to the New World in 1492. Some Caribbean tribes were able to escape Spanish slavery by fleeing to the mainland. Some South American and Central American tribes were able to escape from death at the hands of the Spanish by fleeing north to Florida and beyond. The Chontal Mayas escaped from the Yucatan peninsula on their large trade canoes. All these were welcomed into the Kingdom of Apalache, as long as they were peaceful, willing to intermarry, paid tribute, and didn't keep slaves. There was NO slavery allowed in the Kingdom of Apalache or in any surrounding tribes that wanted to be part of the Apalache Confederacy.
The Kingdom of Apalache was weakened by the actions of all the European explorers and settlers. They lost land to settlers and lost a lot of population to slavery. The Spanish were ruthless with their slave hunting activities. They worked their way up Florida and the coastal areas of the Southeast, depopulating every tribe they came across. The Kingdom proper shrank up to the mountains where the slavers didn't go. The French did not take slaves and were friends of the Apalache, but they weakened the religious and social structures by introducing Christianity. The British, when they came, took slaves. But they were very sneaky about it and hired Native tribes to take slaves for them from other Native tribes. The remnants of the vassal tribes became known as the Apalache Confederacy. The area of Apalache shrank on European-made maps, when it was even acknowledged at all.
Then there was a major smallpox epidemic in Southeastern North America in 1696. It wiped out approximately 90% of the native population. Around the same time Chimney Mountain erupted. These two deadly events so close together spelled the end for the Apalachites. The Kingdom of Apalache disintegrated, and the Apalache Confederacy reformed into the Creek Confederacy in 1717 from the remnants. Today's Creek people are the descendants of the Apalachites. It was never the same, of course. The high temples gleaming like gold with mica encrusted walls fell into disuse. The agricultural terraces on the mountainsides became overgrown rocky walls. The various tribal villages in the river valleys lost their individual identities as the scattered remnants of the tribes banded together. Mound villages fell into disrepair and skills were lost. This societal devastation allowed the Colonials to make further inroads into the Native lands with bad treaties, illegal real estate deals and war. The Indian Removal Act put the nail in the coffin of the memory of the Kingdom of Apalache, more on that later.
Here are some historical sources and maps to support and illustrate my research.
The History of the Caribby Islands, translated into English by John Davies, published in 1691, is probably the most comprehensive source to confirm the existence of the Kingdom of Apalache. It is the English translation of the fourth edition of the French book Histoire Naturelle des isles Antilles de l'Amerique by Charles de Rochefort, a French Hugenot minister who had lived in the Caribbean Islands, originally published in 1658. The book is detailed observations of the natural world and the Native tribes in the various Caribbean Islands, including the history of the Caribbian Indians. This fourth edition includes the information about the Kingdom of Apalache, that de Rochefort learned later. The author goes back to the origins of the Carribian tribes on the mainland of North America. Apparently, about 500 years before the time of the French exploration, the Caribbian Indians had a different name, Cofachites, and were living on the mainland outside of the Kingdom of Apalache. Where they lived was poor land that was difficult to find or grow food. They decided to attack the Apalachites and force them to let them live on fertile land. They drew the Apalachite forces away from the center of the kingdom and then snuck in over the mountains and occupied a central province. They were allowed to stay in the province as part of their peace treaty and given the name Caribbian, meaning stranger. Over time, the Apalachite priests converted half of the Caribbians to their religion and these people integrated into the Apalachites. The rest of the Caribbians left the mainland and went out to the islands, which were uninhabited. They populated all the islands which became known as the Caribbean Islands and Sea. De Rochefort attributes this knowledge of Carribian history to Native traditional stories. His later details on the Kingdom of Apalache he attributes to Englishman Richard Brigstock, who had lived for a time in the Kingdom of Apalache around 1660.
---This story supports several points I brought up above regarding the tsunami of 1014 AD. The coastal area on the mainland would have gotten depopulated and the land would have been disturbed and become less fertile. This explains why the Cofachite tribe would be living in an area that could not support them. The islands also would have been depopulated by the tsunami, so this would explain why the Caribbians were able to move there when they left the Kingdom of Apalache.---
Here's an easy to read translation of the first part I just summarized for you. In the Archive original, which is two links down, this starts on page 210.
TheNewWorld.us | On the Nature of the Apalachites
The History of the Caribby Islands then goes into detail regarding the Kingdom of Apalache, where the other half of the Caribbian tribe stayed and intermarried. It gives details about the six provinces, geography, plants, animals, customs, warfare, leisure activities, child rearing, home life, language, religion and history. The author then writes about two French voyages of exploration that took place in 1562 and 1564, by French Hugenot Captain Rene de Laudonniere. I go into more detail about these voyages further below, with illustrations. Here is the book on Internet Archive. I could not find a clean translation of the part about the Apalachites, sorry. This account begins on page 228 of this Archive copy. Hint: most of the letters that look like an 'f' should be considered an 's'.
The history of the Caribby-islands : viz. Barbados, St Christophers, St Vincents, Martinico, Dominico, Barbouthos, Monserrat, Mevis, Antego, &c. in all XXVIII in two books : the first containing the natural; the second, the moral history of those islands : illustrated with several pieces of sculpture, representing the most considerable rarities therein described : with a Caribbian-vocabulary : Rochefort, Charles de, 1605-1683 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Let me show you some maps:
Here is a Dutch map from 1640 and the link if you want to look closer. You can see the numerous towns in the coastal plains. Above the lake you can see the name of the region as Apalache. No room to write it where all the towns are, because there are so many.
Category:Old maps of Spanish Florida - Wikimedia Commons
This Dutch map is from 1666, in Latin, showing the six provinces of the Kingdom of Apalache. Note the French coat of arms to the north of the Kingdom of Apalache, in the area that mentions gold and silver. This is during the time when the Kingdom of Apalache and the Kingdom of France had a trade agreement. In the pink circular province you can see it mentions the king and administration residing in the area. Most of the narrative on this map is about gold and silver. It shows that the Europeans were well aware of the gold and silver LONG before 1830 when the "discovery" of gold started the Georgia Gold Rush and resulted in the Indian Removal Act and the five forced migrations known as the Trail of Tears.
Jan Jansson, South-eastern coast of USA , 1666
Here is a Dutch map from 1706 that has the Kingdom of Apalache labeled and outlined. The greater Apalache Confederacy extended further west and south. The Apalachicola tribe on the Florida panhandle was killed off by 1704. For hundreds of years they had been the coastal access for the Apalachites. This map reflects that the Spanish considered that land theirs now.
https://www.amazon.com/Historic-Map-Amerikaans-Florida-Ferdinand/dp/B07RPLV8HZ?th=1
Here's a Dutch map from 1706 - 1707. The final collapse of the Kingdom of Apalache was in 1696 from the epidemic. All the cities on this map were part of the Kingdom. But in this map the Europeans have carved it up for themselves and instituted new border lines separating the once great Kingdom. Note that this uses the same underlying Dutch map from 1666, with new cities, boundaries and notations added to it.
Zee en Land togten der Franszen Geaan na en in t Americaans Gewest van Florida aller eerst door Joh Pontius ontdekt Leiden by Pieter van der Aa
Here's a French map from 1757 that still acknowledges the Kingdom of Apalache. This is before the American Revolution.
1757 Bellin Map of Carolina and Georgia
As the Kingdom fell apart, the Apalachites moved into their eastern and southern holdings. The Creek formed the Creek Confederacy from the disparate tribes remaining. The Cherokee were well established in the northern part of the previous Kingdom of Apalache. The Creek and Cherokee battled for many years, mainly due to influences by Europeans.
Here's a map from 1762. It is in English, produced for the American Gazetteer magazine. It was really hard to find a quality image of it. You will probably need to look at it in the link. There is a ton of information on this map - when battles were fought, when land was ceded by various countries or tribes, abandoned Native towns. The reason I put it here is to show how well known the Apalachite were to the people that lived in the area. This is over 60 years since the pandemic and the Chimney Mountain ash/gas eruption wiped out the Apalachite elite and caused the Kingdom of Apalache to fall apart. It's 45 years since the remnants became known as the Creek Confederacy. The only Europeans mentioning the Apalachite are the French. But this American Gazetteer map is very clear that the 'Apalachee' control a large area of land in the Southeast.
A new and correct map of the provinces of North & South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, 1762
Here's a later map from 1796 showing the remnants of the Kingdom of Apalache. This was a 100 years after the epidemic that caused the fall of the Kingdom of Apalache. They were forced east and south, ending up in Northern Florida and southern Alabama. The bay in the armpit of Florida is called the Bay of Apalache. Many of the cities have names similar to Apalache. Most interesting is the written commentary blurbs on the map. Here are some of those commentaries:
"Great Swamp of Owaquafenoga [Okefenokee] whose highland is inhabited by an old Apalachean tribe who keep the avenue secret"
"Antient country of the Timookas a tribe of the Old Apalahches"
"Remains of the Apalahche"
Many towns with Native names are marked "deserted" or "now uninhabited".
In present day Mississippi it notates the "Choctaw or Flathead Indians". They were a vassal tribe of the Apalache who bound their babies heads to look more like the ruling Apalache elite.
There's no mention of gold or silver on this map, even though it was known to be there. That would get revealed to the public close to 1830 to start the Georgia Gold Rush and force out the rest of the Natives. The closest thing to gold mentioned here is the "Yellow Land Iron Mines" near the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Here is the link to the high quality zoomable version.
https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/se...&trs=1&qvq=q:list_no="2310.088";lc:RUMSEY~8~1
Here's an article about the Apalache on the Florida Panhandle.
https://marinelab.fsu.edu/marine-ops/apalachee/history-of-the-apalachee-tribe/
Here's an article regarding the Kingdom of Apalache:
New Series: Southeastern North America during the Early Colonial Period
The Chronicles of Hernando de Soto mention the Apalache numerous times. De Soto creates some confusion because the area he mainly explored was that part of the Florida Panhandle where the 'Apalachee' tribe lived, a vassal tribe of Apalache with coastal access. De Soto heard rumors of a great Apalache province that was abundant in gold and food, but none of the Native guides could (or would) take him there. It was farther away than his guides had traveled on their own and had knowledge of.
Now I am going to get into some of the more unusual aspects of the Kingdom of Apalache and their rulers, the Paracas, from Paracusa, Peru. Some of these ideas may seem outrageous to you. But I give supporting evidence for them from several sources. Please read with an open mind.
The name Paracusa may sound familiar to you from the work of LA Marzulli regarding an ancient people with elongated skulls. The genetics of these people show that they originated in the area of modern-day Ukraine. They then migrated to the area of modern-day Syria. Then showed up next in Peru, where they are thought to have died out. What really happened is they migrated to what is now Northern Georgia. LA Marzulli, the lead researcher on the Paracusa elongated skulls, feels that they were actively chased out of Europe and then the Middle East, ending up in Peru, due to their taller height, head shape and long necks. Basically, because they were different. A significant fact about the skulls Marzulli has analyzed is that many lack a sagittal suture compared to modern humans, and all have a larger brain size. So anatomically different as well. But the presence of elongated skulls with and also without sagittal sutures in the same greater burial area indicates the inter-mixing of this Paracas with modern human. On page 311 of The History of the Caribby Islands, the Great King of Apalache is known as Paracuissis.
This elongated skull and larger brain gave the Paracas more intelligence. They were also taller and stronger than the other natives around them. They had carried a cultural identity from continent to continent. They conquered the other immigrant tribes in their new home in the Southeast, then they had to hold onto the power and create the Kingdom of Apalache. I believe they did this by either appointing a Paracas chief to lead each vassal tribe, or by marrying their Paracas daughters to the reigning chief. This way each vassal tribe would gain an improvement to their bloodline. Over time, the Chief family of each tribe would become recognizably different from the commoner tribal members, in height, intelligence and head shape. This created an obvious elite within each tribe, with the very highest and purest elite ruling from their mountain stronghold. The commoners would try to imitate the long skulls of the elite by flattening their children's heads with boards and binding, like the Choctaw/Flathead tribe on the western edge of the Apalache Confederacy. Page 338 of the History of the Caribby Islands says that women flatten the heads of their newborns.
In the vassal tribes there was less access to Paracas blood, and this led to inbreeding between the tribal level elites. The chief would have the highest degree of Paracas blood. He might choose a wife from the elite of another tribe or from the tallest daughters of his chiefs. In the evidence I discovered (below), a chief's son even made children with his own mother to ensure the purest bloodline. I suggest that this inbreeding also led to a high rate of sexual birth defects, namely hermaphrodites. It is likely that children with high degrees of Paracas blood may have been sold or traded to other tribes as a source of income. The more children they had to sell, the more money they made. But only the perfect boys and perfect girls were saleable. The hermaphrodites stayed with the tribe and became a worker class.
The evidence I have found for this is laid out below in a series of prints called the LeMoyne - DeBry engravings. There is a set that that was printed with a narrative below each image, describing what the image is portraying and related facts about the tribe. Two series of lithographs were produced about the explorations of French Hugenot Captain Rene de Laudonniere. He visited the coast of North Carolina/Georgia in 1562 and 1564. The images from the first voyage are maps of the coastline they explored and the rivers they "discovered" and named. The images from the second voyage focused on the building of the French Fort Caroline, and also focus on the local Native American tribe. The artist LeMoyne documented the customs and habits of the tribe in a series of watercolors. Later, DeBry created lithographs with the image above and a commentary below. They were published by DeBry. Here's a link to the full collection, with translations. The translations hold some great information.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294774
These images are very important. The tribe's contact with Europeans was quite new. The French left that pillar on the voyage in 1562 and built their first French fort in the area in 1564 on the May/Altamaha River. The British would found Charles Town/Charleston on the coast north of this area much later, in 1670. The Catholic Spanish had built some missions on the coast to the south, that would later be destroyed by Natives. But overall, the Natives still lived as they had been living before the Europeans came. This tribe was a vassal tribe of the Apalache. I believe we can learn a lot about the Apalache elite by looking at the actions of the leaders/elite of this tribe.
I have to address the tribe that is shown in both sets of lithographs (one set from each voyage). Historians today call them the Timucua tribe and claim that they live in Florida where the Fort Caroline replica is. However, they are actually the Satile/Satila tribe from the coast of Carolina near Port Royal, as shown by the narratives below the maps. Part of the confusion is that the entire Southeastern United States was called Florida for hundreds of years by the Europeans. Some of the lithographs are titled to be in Florida, so they have been misrepresented as being a tribe on an island outside of Jacksonville, Florida. Also outside of Jacksonville is a Fort Caroline reproduction that is passed off as being the real Fort Caroline that was built by the French and destroyed by the Spanish. These historical lithographs have been used to try and legitimize it in the fake location. You can read more about the fake Fort Caroline in Florida here:
https://thenewworld.us/review-painter-in-a-savage-land/
https://apalacheresearch.com/2024/0...scheme-that-became-official-american-history/
The pillar from the 1562 voyage was erected on the island below, marked with an F. The map matches closest to the May/Altamaha River.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294772
Let me use these images and narratives to illustrate some unusual aspects of the leadership of tribes in the Kingdom of Apalache.
First is the colorized image of this lithograph that you are most likely to have seen before. Then is Plate VIII in the collection with the narrative.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294774
This is the last part of the translation of the inscription included with Plate VIII:
...The king, Athore, is a handsome man, wise, honourable and strong, more than half a foot taller than even the tallest of our men. His modest gravity lends majesty to his already noble bearing. He married his mother and had by her several children of both sexes whom he proudly introduced to us, striking his thigh as he did so. It might be added that after he married his mother his father, Satourioua, ceased to live with her.
Athor, the Satile chief, is more than half a foot taller than the Frenchmen. He also has an egg shaped head. It is touched up to look like a hat with feathers and animal tails, but it is his hair in a topknot on his protruding skull. You see that many of his subjects have the same hairstyle. I found this image at French Alamy. I think it was an earlier version created by LeMoyne, perhaps a pencil drawing he then watercolored. Then later on when DeVry was publishing the lithographs he developed from LeMoyne's drawings, the elongated skulls end up looking like hats. On this French version, you can clearly see the elongated skull of the chief, and the less elongated skulls of his tribe members to the left.
The last part of that narrative starts showing the breeding program that is in place in this tribe. The son is having children with his own mother by choice. The father, Satournioua, is still alive, and we find out that he is actually still Chief of the tribe, responsible for planning and carrying out battles with rival tribes and for diplomacy with the newly arrived Europeans. So, the son, Athor, is not really the chief, just the primary breeder. The only explanation that makes sense is that the son had a higher percentage of elite Panoan blood than the father had, due to his mother having a high percentage. Once Athor became old enough the father children, the pairing of him and his mother created offspring with a higher percentage than the offspring that his mother and father created together. The children the Athor had with his mother would have the highest possibility of being perfectly formed males and females that could be sold or married off, and the lowest possibility of being hermaphrodites.
Sometimes new blood needs to be introduced into the ruling bloodlines. The spouse would be chosen based on their tallness and their degree of noble (Paracas) blood. This picture and narrative illustrate a Queen Elect being brought to a King.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294803
When the king wishes to get married, he orders the most beautiful and the tallest girl from among the most noble families to be chosen...
In plate XIII, the French have allied with King Outina in a fight against his enemy Potanu. Note the presence of many large warriors and the extreme height of the two elite kings (not just chiefs, so more elite and with a higher percentage) in the middle of their troops.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294779
The great height of the Native chiefs and their families is corraborated by other sources. De Soto's expedition wrote about Chief Tuskaloosa and his son, from the area of modern-day Alabama. Here is an A.I. Summary:
"The Four Historical Chronicles
- The Journal of Rodrigo Ranjel: As de Soto's personal secretary, Ranjel kept a detailed daily log. He explicitly wrote that Tuskaloosa was so exceptionally tall that he "seemed a giant" compared to the Spanish soldiers. He also noted that the chief's son was equally tall. [1, 2]
- The Narrative of the Gentleman of Elvas: Written by an anonymous Portuguese knight who traveled with de Soto, this was the first published account of the expedition (1557). Elvas detailed Tuskaloosa's physical appearance, describing him as "tall of person, muscular, lean, and symmetrical," and noted the profound fear and respect he commanded from neighboring nations. [1, 2, 3, 4]
- The Relation of Luis Hernández de Biedma: Serving as the expedition's official factor (financial officer), Biedma's reports focused heavily on resources, but he still took time to document Tuskaloosa's unusual, towering height, reinforcing the accounts of the other men. [1, 2]
- "La Florida" by Garcilaso de la Vega: Though published later in 1605, de la Vega compiled intensive interviews from living expedition survivors. His text provides the specific detail used by modern historians to estimate the chief's actual height: he wrote that Tuskaloosa stood "a foot and a half taller than the Spaniards." Given that the average 16th-century Spanish male stood roughly 5'4" to 5'6", this description places Tuskaloosa at 6'10" to 7 feet tall. [1, 2, 3, 4]
To illustrate just how massive Tuskaloosa was to the Spaniards, the chroniclers recorded a humorous but telling logistical problem: no normal horse could carry him. When de Soto tried to extend a customary gesture of status by offering the chief a horse to ride, Tuskaloosa's feet nearly dragged on the ground. The conquistadors frantically searched their camp and finally had to assign him the largest, heaviest pack horse they owned just to sustain his weight."
Another tall Native is known as Chief Wahunsenacawh, of the Powhatan Confederacy, father of Pocahontas, in the area of modern-day Virginia. This is near Jamestown, the British settlement. We know about him and his daughter due to their interactions with Captain John Smith. These interactions included help with food, several wars, Smith being captured at one point, the Chief's tall brother being captured at another point, and eventually Smith marrying Pocahontas and bringing her back to England. The images below are different depictions of this story. There are several examples of taller leaders or warriors and smaller commoners. Note that the tallest Natives also have elongated heads.
Here's a later example of the chief being significantly taller that the rest of this tribe. This is a delegation of members of the Creek Confederacy to England in 1734, when the British were trying to take over the land now known as Savannah, Georgia, from this tribe that was currently living there.
Back to the LeMoyne / DeBry lithographs and narratives. Here's the main reference to the abundance of hermaphrodites. They are briefly mentioned in two other plates as being used to carry items.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294783
In this country there are numerous hermaphrodites, a mixture of both sexes. They are considered odious by the Indians, but as they are robust and strong they are used to carry loads instead of beasts of burden. When the kings set out to war, it is the hermaphrodites who transport the supplies...They place the Indians, dead from either wounds or sickness, on a stretcher...they carry their dead to the place of burial...Persons with infectious diseases are carried to places reserved for them on the shoulders of the hermaphrodites who supply them with food until they are well again.
It says that the Natives considered the hermaphrodites 'odious'. Is this because they were imperfect failures in the eyes of the tribe? They couldn't be sold and thereby enrich the tribe. They couldn't birth children of their own. But they still had the tallness and strength of the tribal elite, so they were relegated to the roles of packhorse and assistant, and made to deal with sick people because it was okay for the hermaphrodites to get sick themselves (or maybe they had stronger immune systems). From looking at the lithograph plates, it appears the hermaphrodites had to wear their hair long and down, and were not allowed to wear the topknot the rest of the tribe did.
---The idea that inbreeding can cause hermaphrodites and/or disfigurement of the sexual organs brings up some other questions. Is this why some "bloodline" families like the Hapsburgs, Rothschilds, Bourbon-Orleans, and Ptolemys kept marrying into themselves? Were the children starting to become disfigured? Did the family have to keep this a secret to avoid embarrassment, so they only married themselves? I suppose a few children were fathered by men other than their mothers' husbands, due to fertility issues. Also, is this the reason behind historical eunichs and their elevated status as advisors to kings? Are they the children of the bloodlines that were born as hermaphrodites? Is this why Baphomet is represented as a hermaphrodite? And is this why transsexuality is being pushed so hard today?...Just asking for a friend...---
The next unusual thing about the Natives with the blood of the Apalachites is how long their lives were. This plate speaks of the great age these people reached.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294794
...One of their chiefs asserted to me that he was three hundred years old and that his father, whom he pointed out to me, was fifty years older than he. It is true to say that on looking at him, he seemed all skin and bones. The Indians put us Christians to shame, for we, by over-indulgence in food and drink, shorten our lives considerably...
The great age that these people live to is also brought up several times in the History of the Carriby Islands. Page 228 of the History of the Caribby Islands gives credence to the Carribian history with the Apalachite by telling the reader that they live to 200 years, and thereby the history is within their tribal memory. "And to confirm this, we may aver that there are many men and women among them who can give an exact account of the first arrival of the Spaniards in America, as if it had happened but yesterday: So that the remembrance of the departure of the Carébbians out of Florida, and the wars they have had there, being yet fresh among the Apalachites, those who have heard them discourse, conjecture that it may be about five hundred years since those things came to pass." Also, page 342 of the History of the Caribby Islands speaks of great age they reach and that they continue to bear children up into 90 years old, and some Natives are over a hundred years old with not a grey hair.
My research has shown that they also had different nutritional needs, mainly an increased need for protein. It is possible that part of the reason they were chased out of the Old World is due to cannibalizing other people. Regardless of their history, in 1564 the chief required a sacrifice from his subjects - their firstborn child. This child is clubbed to death after a ritual by the women. The narrative here doesn't specify what is done with the infant afterwards. The only reasonable explanation to waste a life of a subject like that is that it is not wasted, but eaten. Early legends of the Americas speak of human flesh and blood being consumed for strength or ceremony. Rumors say that it is the origin of Brunswick Stew.
https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/294800
The Indian custom is to offer as a sacrifice to their chief, their first-born son. On the appointed day the chief goes to a place specially assigned for the purpose and there sites down on a bench...The mother of the child squats in front of this, her face covered by her hands, lamenting the death of her first-born. The most distinguished of her relations or friends offers the child respectfully to the king...When the ceremonies are over, he seizes the child and, in honour of the chief, slays it on the wooden stump, in the presence of the assembled company. We saw this sacrifice carried out.
This is an etching made of the Temple of the Sun in the Kingdom of Apalache at the capital, which was called Melilot by the explorers. The modern-day location is about a mile north of Helen, Georgia, United States, in the Nacoochee River Valley near Anna Ruby Falls. It appeared in the fourth edition of Histoire Naturelle des isles Antilles de l'Amerique by Charles de Rochefort. This edition goes into great detail about the Kingdom of Apalache as told by Englishman Richard Brigstock. This etching is based on a drawing by Brigstock in 1653.
Starting on page 238 of The History of the Carriby Islands, Brigstock describes a ceremony that was held four times a year in the Temple of the Sun. All of the people would trek up the hill/mound and gather in the Temple, which was described as a great cave with a hole in the top that would let in the sun. Parts of the Temple were lined with reflective white stones. The priests would perform a ceremony, the Sun would come, the world would be renewed. I believe that the ray shown between the sky and the Temple represents this ceremony. The ceremony also included ritual washing by the attendees, similar to anointing oneself with Holy Water when coming in and out of a Catholic cathedral.
But it is also possible that the ray is going out of the temple, towards the sky. There are ancient Egyptian writings about Sun Stones that cast light. The priests that tended them lived for 200-300 years.
The Apalache capital Meliot identified by Richard Thornton as the Nacoochee Valley in North Georgia depicted by Edouard Graeves in 1653.
I want to expand on the degree of intermarriage that was happening all over the New World - North and South America and the islands. Every boat that came would have been mostly men. This includes explorers, traders, pirates, shipwrecks, slaveboats, etc. Of course, these men are going to want women, whether by rape or marriage, and the women that were around were the Natives. And later on, the Africans. So, every Native community that interacted with the Europeans/Colonials would become mixed race. The biracial children of rape were probably enslaved and died. The biracial children of consenting unions, however, added a layer to both Native and Western society that had not previously existed. The children of these unions would likely become bilingual, which would give them advantages in dealings between Europeans/Colonials and Natives. If the family lived with the Natives, they would be likely to rise up in the tribe in status and in wealth. Pretty soon the leadership of each tribe would have a significant degree of European blood. Which would mean at least some degree of European thinking that could affect decisions. If the mixed family lived among the Colonials, their bilingualism would also give them advantages in trade and communication. Today when Natives get their DNA checked, they are frequently shocked at how little Native blood they have compared to European, Jewish, South American and African blood.
Here is a Spanish "Casta Painting" that illustrates the many different nuances of mixed races in South and Central America. It mattered what percentage of Spanish, Native, or African blood a person had and which caste they belonged to. Laws were very specific about who had what rights, and even what clothing one could wear. Very different from the mixing in North America. There is also an article about Casta Painting.
https://www.indigenousmexico.org/ar...-system-a-historical-and-cultural-perspective
