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Interestingly one tradition held that during the Green Corn Ceremony some brass and copper plates were on display among some bands of the Creek Nation. Among some groups, such as the Tuckabahchee and the Seminole, the Green Corn Ceremony was the time when sacred objects, such as brass and copper plates and medicine bundles, were renewed and publicly displayed. Among the Seminole, this is the time when the medicine bundle is renewed. http://www.nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/951/the-green-corn-ceremony A more detailed account of the brass and copper plates is given by Albert James Pickett’s HISTORY OF ALABAMA. http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cmamcrk4/pktfm.html More spacifically: http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cmamcrk4/pkt3.html#anchor280524 In 1759 the Tukabatchee (Tukabatchee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) brought with them to the Tallapoosa some curious brass plates. On 27th July, 1759, at the Tookabatcha Square, William Balsolver, a British trader, made inquiries concerning Tukabatchee (Creek) ancient relics, of an old Indian Chief, named Bracket, near a hundred years of age. There were two plates of brass and five of copper. The Indians esteemed them so much they were preserved in a private place, known only to a few chiefs, to whom they were annually entrusted. They were only on display once a year, and that was upon the occasion of the Green Corn Celebration. On the fourth day of the ceremony the plates were introduced in what was termed the "brass plate dance". Then one of the high Prophets carried one before him, under his arm, ahead of the dancers. Next to him the head warrior carried another plate, and then others followed with the remainder of the plates, bearing aloft, at the same time white canes feathers, with the feathers of a swan at the tops.

The copper plates varied in size but one was reported to be a foot and a half long, and seven inches wide. The two brass plates were eighteen inches in diameter, about the thickness of a dollar with markings stamped upon its face. Formerly, the Tukabatchee tribe had many more of these relics, of different sizes and shapes, with letters and inscriptions upon them, which were given to their ancestors by the Great Spirit, who instructed them that they were only to be handled by particular men, who must at the moment be engaged in fasting. On July 27, 1759, Chief Bracket further related, that several of these plates were then buried under the Micco's cabin in Tookabatcha, and had lain there ever since the first settlement of the town. Formerly it was the custom to place one or more of the plates in the grave by the side of a deceased chief of pure Tukabatchee blood, and that no other Indians in the whole Creek Nation had such sacred relics. (1) Similar accounts of these plates were obtained from four other British traders. (2) The town of Tookabatcha became, in later times, the capital of the Creek Nation; and many reliable citizens of Alabama have seen these mysterious pieces at the Green Corn Dances, upon which occasions they were used precisely as in the more ancient days.(3) In the autumn of 1836, the inhabitants of Tookabatcha (Alabama), took up the line of march for their new home in the Arkansas Territory. The plates were transported thence by six Indians, remarkable for their sobriety and moral character, at the head of whom was Chief, Spoke-Oak, Micco. Medicine, made expressly for their safe transportation, was carried along by these warriors. Each one had a plate strapped behind his back, enveloped nicely in buckskin. They carried nothing but the plates and medicine, and marched the whole distance to Arkansas, one before the other, one mile ahead of the main group. The plate carriers communicated with no one but themselves, and walked with a solemn religious air.(4) Another tradition is that the Shawnee gave these plates to the Tukabatchee, as tokens of their friendship, with an injunction that they would annually introduce them in their religious observances of the new corn season. But the opinion of Opothleoholo, one of the most gifted chiefs of the later Creeks, corroborated the general tradition that they were gifts from the Great Spirit. (5) Barent Dubois believed that, when De Soto trooped through Florida, that they had armaments of copper and brass. During this time it is believed by Dubois that the Indians may have obtained copper from De Soto to make hatchets and ornaments made of that metal. Dubois, who had long lived among the Tukabatchee, believed that these plates originally formed some portion of the armor or musical instruments of De Soto’s group, and that the Indians stole them, as they did the shields, in the Talladega country, and hence he accounts for the Roman letters on them.

(Plates) http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cmamcrk4/pkt3.html#anchor280524 (1) Adair's "American Indians," pp. 178-179. (2) Adair's "American Indians" p. 179. (3) Conversations with Barent Dubois, Abraham Mordecai, James Moore, Capt. William Walker, Lacklan Durant, Mrs. Sophia McComb, and other persons who stated that these plates had Roman characters upon them, as well as they could determine from the rapid glances which they could occasionally bestow upon them, while they were being used in the "brass plate dance." (4) Conversations with Barent Dubois. (5) Conversations with Opothleoholo in 1833.