"Migration of South American Nephites and Lamanites to North and Central America" By George Potter

 

Robert Starling, CEO of the film production company, Trefoil Productions recently sent me an article by People of One Fire of the National Alliance of Muskogean scholars (www.peopleofonefire.com). 

The article was titled: 
Totonac, Maya, Arawak, Tupi-Guarani and Qeuchua Mercantile Words in the Indigenous Languages of the Southeastern United States (May 27, 2013). 

The article claims to provide evidence that the South Atlantic Coastal indigenous peoples had trading alliances with Mesoamerican peoples and as far away as ancient Peru. If true, the evidence supports the Nephi Project's theory that the Nephites and Lamanites of ancient South America not only traded with, but mixed their DNA with indigenous peoples far north of Panama. The ancient Peruvians had trading ships which were known to have carried goods and migrants to the Polynesian Islands, and undoubtedly the entire length of the west Pacific coast and up the Atlantic seaboard. Like those aboard Hagoth's fleet, these pioneers spread the seed of Lehi thoughout the Americas and the isles of the sea. Quoting from the article:

Dr. Jerald T. Milanich is the curator of Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida.

In several publications he wrote during the 1990s, Dr. Milanich speculated that the Timucua Indians might not have been a distinct ethnic group, but rather descended from separate bands of hybrid traders, who frequented the South Atlantic Coast so often that they eventually settled there.  In one of his latest publications, Milanich commented that the Natives around Charlesfort (South Carolina) and Fort Caroline portrayed by 16th century artist, Jacques Le Moyne, displayed South American cultural traits, not those traditionally associated with Southeastern Indians.

Dr. Milanich was correct on both counts.  He was oh so on the money.   The proofs of his hunches were always there right in the faces of anthropologists . . . in the etymology of the word, Timucua.  

French Huguenot Captain René de Laudonniére observed that the Native Provinces around Port Royal Sound, SC observed a form of the Green Corn Festival, but worshiped the South American and Calusa sun god, Toya?   Their kings were called a Paracus [Peru].  That is a Moche [Peru] title and ethnic name.

....In 2012, Towns County, GA families who always thought of themselves as Cherokees, or even were members of the Eastern Band of Cherokees, were found to carry Quechua [Peru], Maya and a trace of probable Muskogean DNA indicators, but absolutely no similarity to the DNA profiles of Cherokees on the North Carolina reservation, +/- 50 miles away?  Towns County is east of Track Rock Gap and Brasstown Bald Mountain.  Some "card-carrying Towns County "Cherokees" carried as much as 25% Quechua-Maya DNA.  A recent, comprehensive DNA study of the reservation found the NC Cherokees to be primarily a Middle Eastern & Mediterranean population - probably descended from 17th century Spanish Sephardic colonists.

...SO . . . what French Captain René Goulaine de Laudonniére wrote down as Thamagoa, would be written as Tamacoa in contemporary anthropological English, or in the Creek languages, Tvmvkoa.  Then we have a OMG moment.  "Tama" - pronounced Tä/ : mä/ - means to barter, buy or trade in Totonac.  "Koa" means "people or ethnic group" in several Arawak and South American languages.  It means exactly the same as the name of theTamatli, a very powerful branch of the Itsate Creeks on the Altamaha River in SE Georgia, whose capital as Tama.  Apparently, Tamacoa was a generic Arawak label for "merchant people" and did not necessarily correspond to one ethnic group.

While the names of the villages along the coast of South Carolina, Georgia and northeastern Florida have generally been treated as being "untranslatable" by anthropologists, they actually have meanings.  However, some are Muskogean, some are Maya, some are Calusa, some are Arawak, some are Wareo [Peru], some are Tupi-Guarani [Brazil] and some are Quechua [Peru].  This fact strongly suggests that at various times in the past, bands of wandering peoples came both from the west and the south to occupy unclaimed islands or habitable terrain.  It was a polyglot region that absorbed and modified cultural traditions from many parts of the Americas.