Description
The Hitchiti were a Muskogean-speaking tribe formerly residing chiefly in a town of the same name on the east bank of the Chattahoochee River, 4 miles below Chiaha, in west Georgia. They spoke the Hitchiti language, which was mutually intelligible with Mikasuki; both tribes were part of the loose Creek confederacy. The latter language is still spoken by the Miccsukee tribe of Florida, as well as many Seminole. The ancestors of at least some of the people in the area may have been there as early as 12,000 years ago. A variant of the Lamar regional culture, with influences from the Fort Walton culture to the south, developed in the towns along the Chattahoochee between 1300 and 1400.
Language
They spoke the Hitchiti language, which was mutually intelligible with Mikasuki; both tribes were part of the loose Creek confederacy.
Culture
The Hitchiti were absorbed into and became an integral part of the Creek Nation, though preserving to a large extent their own language and customs. Similarly, those Mikasuki-speakers who joined the Lower Creek migrations to Florida maintained their culture. For years after being included among the Seminole, which formed from remnant peoples in Florida, in 1962 they gained federal recognition as the Miccsukee Tribe of Indians in Florida. Each town had a plaza or community square, around which were grouped the houses—rectangular structures with four vertical walls of poles plastered over with mud to form wattle. The roofs were pitched and covered with either bark or thatch, with smoke holes left open at the gables. The plaza was the gathering point for such important religious observances as the Busk, or Green Corn, ceremony, an annual first-fruits and new-fire rite.