BUSHNELL] NATIVE VILLAGES AND VILLAGE SITES 79 
Creek homes, but in general arrangement it was evidently quite 
similar to many others. Whether the custom was very ancient may 
never be known, and to what extent it prevailed among the Lower 
Creek towns has not been ascertained, but it was the regular custom 
at Kulumi, a town of the Upper Creeks which formerly stood on the 
right bank of the Tallapoosa, in Montgomery County, Alabama, and 
undoubtedly the structures in the many neighboring villages were 
similarly placed. Kulumi, the Coolome of Bartram’s narrative, 
stood on the bank of the Tallapoosa. The ‘‘new town,”’ the build- 
ing of which had very lately been completed, stood on the west side 
of the stream, while on the opposite side were the old fields and a few 
Indian habitations marking 
the position of ‘‘old Coolome ‘ | : | 
town.”’ Regarding the build- é a 
ings of the ‘‘new town,” it 
was said: a 
“Their houses areneatcom- @ 
modious buildings, a wooden 
frame with plaistered walls, é 
and roofed with Cypress bark 
or shingles; every habitation pase] 
consists of four oblong square Fig. 8.—Home of the chief at Apalachicola. 
houses, of one story, of the same form and dimensions, and so situated 
as to form an exact square, encompassing an area or court yard of 
about a quarter of an acre of ground, leaving an entrance into it at 
each corner. Here is a beautiful new square or areopagus, in the 
centre of the new town.’’ (Bartram, W., (2), p. 395.) 
Leaving Kulumi, he continued up the river to Atasi, which stood on 
the left bank of the stream in the present Macon County, Alabama. 
The evening of his arrival, together with many traders, he went 
to the “‘great rotunda” and here were assembled ‘‘the greatest 
number of ancient venerable chiefs and warriors” he had ever seen 
together. There they remained the greater part of the night, 
drinking cassine and smoking tobacco. The rotunda was ‘“‘a vast 
conical building or circular dome, capable of accommodating many 
hundred people.’’ It was constructed and furnished within as were 
similar structures among the Cherokee, but much larger than any he 
had seen among the latter tribe. There were “people appointed to 
take care of it, to have it daily swept clean, and to provide canes for 
fuel, or to give light.”” (Bartram, W., (2), p. 449.) 
On the right bank of the Tallapoosa, a short distance above 
Kulumi, was the ancient town of Tukabatchi, occupying a level valley 
about 23 miles below the falls. Hawkins stopped here on December 
16, 1796, and entered in his journal: ‘‘I this day paid a visit to the 
