09/05/2026
☕ GOOD MORNING FROM JULIETTE!! IT’S STORY TIME (a little early, and long, but worth the read)
THE HISTORY HOLLYWOOD DIDN'T TELL
Before There Was a Juliette......
Before the railroad came through in 1882. Before the mills lined the Ocmulgee. Before there was even a little town here called Juliette, there was the river. And there were people living around it.
Even its name carries the story. “Ocmulgee,” from the Muscogee (Creek) language, is commonly translated as “bubbling waters”. A name that has remained with this muddy water we love.
I love Native American history, and the older I get, the more I dig into the history right here at home, the more fascinated I become by just how much of that history is beneath our own feet. We tell Juliette's story beginning with the mills, the railroad, but our story didn't begin here. Native people had already lived, traveled, hunted, fished and built communities throughout the Ocmulgee River valley for thousands of years.
Just downriver, what we now call the Ocmulgee Mounds preserves evidence of more than 12,000 years of human history. And that history certainly didn't stop at the boundaries of what is now a National Historical Park. Archaeological records from right here in Monroe County tell a story I don't think many people know.
When archaeologists surveyed land around what would become Plant Scherer in 1976, they documented numerous stone mound sites. Two mounds were selected for further archaeological investigation. One of them sat on a high ridge overlooking Berry Creek, in an area that was scheduled to become an ash-disposal site. And this wasn't one mysterious pile of rocks. At archaeological site 9MO153 alone, 82 stone mounds were recorded.
Eighty-two.
Excavations took place from February through April of 1977. They determined that the mounds were of Native construction. Later archaeological work associated the site with the Woodland period, and evidence underneath the principal mound included burned human bone, leading archaeologists to believe the place had served a cremation/ceremonial burial ground.
The principal mound was roughly 6½ feet high and 33 feet across, with smaller stone mounds scattered along the surrounding slopes. And 9MO153 wasn't the only mound site documented in the area. UGA archaeological records list site after site in the Plant Scherer survey area containing stone mounds, some with only a few and others containing dozens. So when people around here say Native history is literally beneath our feet, it's true!
Unfortunately, these haven't been the only things taken from Juliette. And there is a difficult part of this history, too. The Berry Creek mound complex was excavated before development of the Plant Scherer property altered that landscape. Later University of Georgia archaeological records describe the site as having been excavated prior to its destruction during development of the generating facility. I think that's worth knowing.
Not because history should be used simply to make us angry, but because once a place like that is gone, we can't put it back. We can only preserve what was recorded and make sure we don't forget what was there.
And long before I ever knew there were reports documenting all of this, pieces of that much older history were still turning up around my own family. My Daddy used to find Native pottery in the river all the time, I found pieces as a child. And people are still finding them today. Pieces left behind by people whose names we'll never know.
Not long before my grandparent's place was taken over, Daddy found something else. Two arrowheads. One black. One white. Both on the same day. And somehow, the very next day, I was walking around looking for some along the old roadbed that once led toward town, and I found a Union soldier's button, and musket bullet remains. When Daddy was little, he found a cannon ball!! Think about what one little piece of ground was telling us that day.
An arrowhead from one chapter. A military button from another. An old road bed that generations before us once traveled. And our own family standing there generations later, picking those pieces of history back up.
History isn't stacked neatly into chapters underground. It's all there together. Layer upon layer. People lived here. They raised families here. They traveled these rivers and trails. They buried their dead. Wars came through. Roads were built. Mills came, railroads followed. Towns were named. And eventually Hollywood showed up. But long before any of that, this land already had a story.
There are also stories that have been passed around this area for generations. Stories of Native figures being seen in certain places. Stories of drums being heard when there was no one around to play them. Can I prove those stories? Yes and no, but the people who have seen and heard sure can tell it. Oral history and folklore are part of the history of a community, too.
So I want to record those stories for exactly what they are. The things people who lived here before us remembered, experienced and passed down. Because sometimes an old story leads us to something that can be documented. The more I research, the more I realize just how much we still don't know about the land we drive across every single day.
Native American history isn't only history. Native people didn't disappear when Georgia's history books moved on to another chapter. Their descendants are still here. Their cultures are still alive. Their traditions, art, music, storytelling and languages continue, the one's that aren't lost. And the next two weekends gives two wonderful opportunities, right here close to home, to go listen and learn from Native people themselves.
THIS WEEKEND — SEPTEMBER 5–6
The 36th Annual Indian Springs Native People Festival & Powwow will be held at Indian Springs in Flovilla. 9–5 Saturday & Sunday. Adults are $5 and children 17 and under are free.
There will be Native dancing and drumming, cultural demonstrations, arts and crafts, vendors and educational exhibits.
Then next weekend, SEPTEMBER 12–13. 10–5 Saturday & Sunday. Admission is FREE!!
The 34th Annual Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration will be held at Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon.
The celebration features Native artists, cultural demonstrations, storytelling, music, dance and traditional crafts, with representatives of the Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole and other Native peoples.
If you've never been, GO!
Take your children, take your grandchildren. Listen to the stories. Watch the demonstrations. Learn about the people whose ancestors knew this land thousands of years before any of us did.
And when you come home and drive back across the river, look at it a little differently. Think about 82 stone mounds on a ridge overlooking Berry Creek, think about the people who stood on this same ground centuries before anybody ever dreamed there would be a little ole place called Juliette.
Before there was a Whistle Stop,
before there was a railroad,
before there was a mill,
before there was a Juliette,
there was the Ocmulgee. There were people here. And their story matters, much more than we realize 💛
Now, ya'll go have your coffee and get out of the house and explore this weekend. Come see us!
📍River Lens and More
Where Juliette's people and stories live on....
