ong>ANSWER:

Tomochichi was the MICO, or chief, of the Yamacraw Indians. The Yamacraw were a small band of Lower Creek Indians that lived in coastal Georgia when Oglethorpe arrived with the colonists. When Oglethorpe selected Yamacraw Bluff as the site for the colony’s first settlement, Mico Tomochichi welcomed him and the colonists. Some of the colonists were ill from the long voyage and stayed in the house of John Musgrove in the Yamacraw village while permanent structures were built in the new town of Savannah. John Musgrove’s wife Mary Musgrove had an English FATHER and Creek mother and served as interpreter between the English and the Indians.

Mico Tomochichi was happy to have the colonists SETTLE near them because it was an opportunity for his people to trade with and to establish diplomatic connections with the English. As outcasts from the Lower Creek Confederacy, the Yamacraw needed an opportunity to show the value of his people to the other Creek communities. Disagreements over diplomatic relationships with the English and Spanish after the Yamasee War led to Tomochichi’s exile from the Lower Creeks and RELOCATION to the banks of the Savannah River.