s wanton] EAKLY HISTORY OF THE CREEK INDIAN'S 267 
The Kolomi 
The earliest mention of Kolomi town is contained in a letter of the 
Spanish lieutenant at Apalachee, Antonio Mateos, in 1686. 1 A trans- 
lation of this has been given in considering the history of the Ka- 
sihta. 2 The town was then probably on Ocmulgee River, where it 
appears on some of the very early maps, placed close to Atasi. From 
the failure of Mateos to mention Atasi it is possible that that town 
was not yet in existence. From later maps we learn that after the 
Yamasee war the Kolomi settled on the Chattahoochee. The maps 
show them in what is now Stewart County, Ga., but Colomokee Creek 
in Clay County may perhaps mark a former settlement of Kolomi 
people farther south. The name is often given on maps in the form 
"Colomino." 3 Still later they removed to the Tallapoosa, where, 
as appears from Bartram, they first settled upon the east bank but 
later moved across. 4 In all these changes they seem to have kept 
company with the Atasi. Their name appears in the lists of 1738, 
1750, 1760, and 1761. In 1761 their officially recognized trader was 
James Germany. 5 Bartram thus describes the town in 1777: 
Here are very extensive old fields, the abandoned plantations and commons of the 
old town, on the east side of the river; but the settlement is removed, and the new 
town now stands on the opposite shore, in a charming fruitful plain, under an elevated 
ridge of hills, the swelling beds or bases of which are covered with a pleasing verdure 
of grass; but the last ascent is steeper, and towards the summit discovers shelving 
rocky cliffs, which appear to be continually splitting and bursting to pieces, scat- 
tering their thin exfoliations over the tops of the grassy knolls beneath. The plain is 
narrow where the town is built; their houses are neat commodious birildings, a wooden 
frame with plastered walls, and roofed with Cypress bark or shingles; every habita- 
tion consists of four oblong square houses, of one story, of the same form and dimen- 
sions, and so situated as to form an exact square, encompassing an area or courtyard 
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; but the 
stores of the principal trader, and two or three Indian habitations, stand near the 
banks of the opposite shore on the site of the old Coolome town. The Tallapoose 
River is here three hundred yards over, and about fifteen or twenty feet deep; the 
water is very clear, agreeable to the taste, esteemed salubrious, and runs with a steady, 
active current. 
A little later Bartram called again and has the following to say 
regarding the trader, James Germany, mentioned above: 
[1] called by the way at the beautiful town of Coolome, where I tarried some time 
with Mr. Germany the chief trader of the town, an elderly gentleman, but active, 
cheerful and very agreeable, who received and treated me with the utmost civility 
and friendship; his wife is a Creek woman, of a very amiable and worthy character 
> Serrano y Sanz, Doc. Hist., pp. 194-195. 
» See p. 221. 
•This form of the name suggests a derivation from kulo, a kind of oak with large acorns, and omin, 
"where there are." 
• Bartram, Travels, p. 394. 
• MSS., Ayer Lib.; Miss. Prov. Arch., i, p. 94; Ga. Col. Docs., vm, p. 523. 
• Bartram, Travels, pp. 394-395. 
