78 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 69 
Hitchiti town of Apalachicola, on the left bank of the river some 
miles southward, belonged to the latter. Visited by Bartram, it was 
described as being ‘‘the mother town or Capital of the Creek or Mus- 
cogulge confederacy: sacred to peace; no captives are put to death 
or human blood spilt here. And when a general peace is proposed, 
deputies from all the towns in the confederacy assemble at this 
capital... Andon the contrary the great Coweta town ... is 
called the bloody town, where the Micos, chiefs, and warriors assemble 
when a general war is proposed; and here captives and state male- | 
factors are put to death.’’ (Bartram, W., (2), p. 387.) 
At this time the town had already become less important than in 
earlier days, and Bartram ‘‘viewed the mounds or terraces, on which 
formerly stood their town house or rotunda and square or areo- 
pagus,’’ while near by was an ‘‘extensive oblong square yard or 
artificial level plain,’’ evidently the ancient chunky yard. Bartram 
places this town 12 miles below Coweta but Hawkins ((1), p. 64) 
shows it to have been at least 22 miles below the falls. 
A log house, as constructed by the Creeks toward the close of the 
eighteenth century, is shown in plate 13. This is after Schoolcraft, 
who referred to it as ‘‘The Creek house in its best state of native 
improvement in 1790.’ The original drawing was made by J. C. 
Tidball, U.S. A. (Schoolcraft (1), V, p. 394.) 
Homes among the Creeks did not always consist of a single house but 
usually of a group of four structures, and this was clearly described 
by Bartram when speaking of the chief of ‘‘the town of the Apala- 
chians,”’ that is, the Hitchiti town of Apalachicola, previously men- 
tioned. Bartram wrote: 
‘His villa was beautifully situated and well constructed. It was 
composed of three oblong uniform frame buildings, and a fourth, 
four-square, fronting the principal house or common hall, after this 
manner, encompassing one area. The hall was his lodging house, 
large and commodious; the two wings were, one a cook-house, the 
other a skin or ware-house; and the large square one was a vast 
open pavilion, supporting a canopy of cedar roof by two rows of 
columns or pillars, one within the other. Between each range of 
pillars was a platform, or what the traders call cabins, a sort of sofa 
raised about two feet above the common ground, and ascended by 
two steps; this was covered with checkered mats of curious manu- 
facture, woven of splints of canes dyed of different colors; the middle 
was a four-square stage or platform, raised nine inches or a foot 
higher than the cabins or sofas, and also covered with mats. In 
this delightful airy place we were received.’’ (Bartram, W., (1), pp. 
37-38.) 
The plan accompanying this account is reproduced in figure 8. 
This ‘‘villa’’ was probably far more elaborate than the majority of 
