Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Utoy Village


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. Consensus to keep and rename as Utoy, Georgia. Already renamed; I asked Carrite to do further rewriting.  DGG ( talk ) 18:15, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Utoy Village

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Apparently there was a Native American village at Utoy Creek, but that doesn't mean much. There were Native American villages all over North America back then; few, if any, were officially recognized. Fails WP:NGEO. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:56, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Georgia (U.S. state)-related deletion discussions. N ORTH A MERICA 1000 01:07, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spirit of Eagle (talk) 02:44, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep – There does appear to be evidence that the village existed. Officially recognized is irrelevant because Native American villages were never under the jurisdiction of US law. The treaties recognized territories, not villages. Doesn't matter, they were inhabited places. – Margin1522 (talk) 19:02, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Reply. According to NGEO, being inhabited isn't enough; "populated places without legal recognition are considered on a case-by-case basis" and revert to the standard "non-trivial coverage in multiple, independent reliable sources". See any? I don't. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:35, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm suggesting that a guideline about the notability of places "subdivisions, business parks, housing developments, informal regions of a state, unofficial neighborhoods, etc." is inappropriate when we are talking about a place and a culture that was never legally recognized until after the inhabitants had been forcibly relocated to somewhere else. There is enough material to write about the original inhabitants of what is now Fulton County, Georgia, e.g. here. – Margin1522 (talk) 04:00, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Rebuttal. There may or may not be enough material for Native Americans in Fulton County, Georgia. There is none for one specific village; all it says is "Garrett denoted 20 villages, most concentrated along the Chattahoochee River, Peachtree Creek, Nancy Creek, Utoy Creek and Camp Creek." Clarityfiend (talk) 05:22, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, this is a problem that occurs in AfD discussions – the nom suggests a narrow definition of the topic and wants to delete the article because he can't find sources for that topic. I'm assuming here that this article was created by someone who took the bus tour and visited the village. Granted, that is pretty weak in terms of WP:V. But there are sources for other things mentioned in the article, such as the local Native American culture, the Sandtown Trail, the treaty, the Civil War battle, the post office, and the postwar suburb. If we want sources for that stuff, let's tag it for sources. The article claims that this was the first area in the Atlanta region to be settled by Europeans, because the land had already been cleared by Native American farmers. If that's true, it seems notable to me.
 * I'll add that I'm especially reluctant to !vote delete because of the wording of the nomination. This may have been unintentional, but it seems to be suggesting a general principle – that Native American villages all over North America were insignificant and can be excluded from WP for lack of legal recognition from authorities who came later. I'm really reluctant to agree with that. – Margin1522 (talk) 23:04, 21 March 2015 (UTC)


 * You don't see a problem with verification? Nothing in the article is sourced (I wouldn't call an anonymously written paragraph or two reliable), and very little of the unreferenced stuff even has anything to do with the village. Nobody back then seems to have written much down about it or 99% of the other Native American settlements of the time. "In 1521, the village was likely visited by ... Ponce de León" simply because he was in the area?


 * A "narrow definition"? The article is titled "Utoy Village", not Things that happened or possibly happened somewhere in the vicinity of Utoy Village or where it used to be. "August 267th [sic] 1864 the Entire [sic] US Army moved down the Fairburn Road in the vicinity of the town of Utoy"? Somehow, I doubt the entire Union Army was on the move, but even ignoring this inaccuracy, so what? I'm pretty sure Sherman and his men marched past a lot of places on their March to the Sea. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:07, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, N ORTH A MERICA 1000 00:29, 28 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment - This is actually an interesting question. There is no doubt that there was a village or villages along Utoy Creek. Whether they were named "Utoy Village" is more dubious; this strikes me as modern nomenclature. I see that we have a Battle of Utoy Creek on WP, from the American Civil War. I see that there is a Utoy Cemetery that may well have enough sourcing in the world to merit a GNG pass. But "Utoy Village?" That I sort of doubt. While there were hundreds or thousands of first nations in the US and Canada and each different from one another, I know that in my region of the country "villages" were fairly temporary, with seasonal changes of location and probably moves of the winter camps from one place to another over time. It strikes me as unlikely that the same "Utoy Village" which "may" have been visited by Ponce de Leon was the same as the locale of later village or villages in that general area. There is evidence, I SEE, of an 1821 Utoy post office. So I think this is probably a "named inhabited place" in WP terms, albeit perhaps a ghost town. If you put all these things together, I think there is probably enough material for a piece on Utoy, Georgia. But "Utoy Village?" Not so sure... Carrite (talk) 16:43, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * It is starting to look like my above hunch is right. Here is Herr's Episodes of the Civil War, pg. 280: "...While these movements were being made the army of the Tennessee marched to the vicinity of Utoy village [note capitalization. -t.d.], where it was massed facing south, and forming the right of the army." — This is highly indicative of an inhabited place called Utoy, Georgia — and it would be very easy to integrate the aboriginal history of the vicinity into a historical narrative about the place. That strikes me as the correct decision under our notability rules, in which consensus has traditionally regarded all named, inhabited places of confirmed existence as presumably notable. Carrite (talk) 16:52, 29 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep and rename Utoy, Georgia. Rewrite existing content to form and integrate post 1820 history of the place (ghost town?) into the same page. Carrite (talk) 16:52, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * THIS indicates the Utoy cemetery is on the Georgia list of historic places and mentions the existence of a Utoy Primitive Baptist Church (now renamed). Apparently Utoy is part of Atlanta today. Carrite (talk) 17:03, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Pinging and  to see if they find my argument persuasive. Carrite (talk) 17:05, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Sure, I would be fine with that. The cemetery definitely exists, see also here. – Margin1522 (talk) 17:33, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * It's a bit flimsier than I'd like, but the Herr mention and the various other bits and pieces are, I suppose, enough, barely, maybe. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:42, 30 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment - If this closes as a Keep, will the closing administrator please ping me and I will put the full rewrite on my "to-do" list. Carrite (talk) 17:16, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.