The Chief Tomochichi statue was conceived as the centerpiece of a park celebrating civil rights-era heroes. Its placement is being reconsidered, however, now that city council members have a fuller understanding of historical facts about the Muscogee man who signed a 1733 treaty launching the Georgia colony, Councilman Michael Julian Bond told The Associated Press.
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation, whose 93,000 citizens are descended from Georgia's original inhabitants, wasn't consulted before the $300,000 statue was unveiled pending a move to Atlanta's new Peace Park. Tribal historians were dismayed, calling it inappropriate and disrespectful.
“I don’t believe the city wants to be in a position where we are offending the Muscogee people, but we don’t own the statue now," Bond said Thursday. "We have not accepted the statue, which is being donated to us, as yet.”
The council's 2020 ordinance approving the park empowered an oversight committee to review every proposed element for historical “accuracy and authenticity,” but Bond said the city’s law department discovered last week, after inquiries from the AP, that its members never officially met in this capacity.
A review of scholarly works on the Muskogean-speaking Creek Indians would reveal that Chief Tomochichi had been banished by his people, lacked authority to give away land, and was known for delivering Native American enemies into human bondage. Tomochichi's promise to capture runaway African slaves and trade them to the British alive or dead is immortalized in Article Six of Georgia's founding treaty.