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Mary Musgrove

c. 1700 to 1765

Muscogee Creek interpreter and trader in early Georgia

Native nations and Indigenous peoples

Mary Musgrove, whose Muscogee name was Coosaponakeesa, was the daughter of a Muscogee Creek mother and an English trader from Charles Town. Raised in both worlds and fluent in Creek and English, she was already running a trading post on the Savannah River when the colonists arrived in 1733.

She became the interpreter between James Oglethorpe and the Yamacraw leader Tomochichi, and for years she was the person the young colony depended on to keep the peace with the Creek towns. Without her, the negotiations that allowed Savannah to be founded could hardly have happened. On the Savannah walk, stand on the bluff by City Hall, above the river, where the first settlers came ashore and where her trading post stood near the Yamacraw town.

Where to meet them

Savannah

Sources

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