(bright music) - Long before European explorers, like Hernando de Soto ever set foot in Georgia, the land was home to Mississippian Indians.

These indigenous people lived in a complex chiefdom society.

They built large towns along rivers, complete with residential zones, defense structures, and a central plaza that featured massive earthy mounds.

Their lives were deeply rooted in nature, shaped by farming, trading, storytelling, and art.

- [Narrator] Freeman Owle is a stone carver.

He turns simple rocks into works of art.

His great grandparents were Cherokee.

He knows that the pieces he creates will be around long after he is gone.

- Someday they will become an artifact, and I just was impressed by the length of time that the stone would remain intact and they would very seldom would ever deteriorate.

So my art will be here, and I will leave an impact upon the earth, even if it's just a piece of artwork.

Do you know what that is yet?

What is it?

- [Leslie] Mountains.

- [Owle] A mountain that's beautiful.

- [Narrator] 5-year-old Leslie has been carving right alongside her dad ever since she could hold a tool.

Most every piece they do is inspired by something in nature, like the owl that they are named after.

The native people have always felt close to nature.

So Freeman Owle shows his daughter these ancient skills, hoping to keep her rooted to the past.

= Pull a little bit like that.

You wanna try that?

I like to see her carve because I know that this is a form of relaxation.

It's a form of knowing that she is connected to the earth.

She will never be just a person who goes and gets a bottle of milk, all plastic, and she never thinks of the cow from which the milk came.

- [Narrator] They use the same type of stone their ancestors would've used thousands of years ago to make tools for hunting, bowls for cooking, art for ceremonies.

But the best stone could be hard to find.

So in time, the native people went on to invent pottery that gave them whole new ways to prepare and store food.

Amanda Swimmer uses the techniques of the first potters to create similar pieces today, and she's teaching her great granddaughter, Jill.

- Her mom or grandma used to make it, and I just like doing it.

- [Narrator] Southeastern Indians rarely painted or glazed their pottery.

Much of it was left plain.

The pots weren't intended to be pieces of art, they were functional, they were meant to be used.

But then later, some of the more experienced potters discovered that a simple design, a pattern, would make the pottery more interesting.

This bowl, for example, Amanda Swimmer calls this her lightning bowl.

- Well, I thought, you know how the lightning, you can just picture, it jumps when it's lightning and I just figured it out how the lightning goes.

So I just made that myself.

- [Narrator] Many experts believe that the native people added designs and decorations to those pots that were used by the village chief.

Art was a way to help set the chief apart from everyone else.

- Just because you tell somebody that you were born to be the chief doesn't mean they're gonna believe it.

But if you can also wear this beautiful finery and jewelry and eat out of pots that nobody else has, and if you have a retinue or a group of people that are producing art for you, then that kind of makes other people stand back and say, "Well, yeah, they are kind of important."

- [Narrator] This may have been the very beginning of the age of specialization, where people learn to do one thing and only one thing, but do it well.

Today you and I rely on people we don't know to do things we don't know how to do.

When we drink a carton of milk, we rely on farmers to milk the cows, workers to bottle the milk, truck drivers to deliver it to the store.

But centuries ago, native families had to do almost everything themselves.

Carve stone, make pots, weave baskets, grow and harvest, and then cook their own food.

- Indians in the prehistoric period in Georgia couldn't just go down to the local convenience store and get themselves a snack.

They couldn't go to the local clothes store and pick up some jeans.

If they needed something, they either had to produce it themselves or find someone who would trade them for what they had, whatever they needed.

- [Narrator] That's why family ties were so important to the Indians.

There was a lot of work to do, a lot to learn.

Just to survive, each generation had to pass skills and knowledge on to the next.

But the children needed to know more than how to make pottery or weapons or food.

They also had to learn about themselves, who they were and where they came from.

- There's no such land as this.

Tell the poor man it's gold.

- [Narrator] Driver Pheasant is an actor in the outdoor drama, "Unto These Hills."

The story of what happened to the Cherokees after DeSoto came.

- White Chief will stay.

He wants food.

- Food.

- [Narrator] In many ways, he carries on what are called oral traditions.

Before they had written language, the native people would tell stories to educate and entertain.

- Our stories are sacred myths and legends.

They explain the genesis stories, how the world was made, where the animals came from, and where the people came from itself.

So these were important to keep them alive, to explain these things to our children.

The Cherokee people never wore the big war bonnets like you see on television.

- [Narrator] Driver Pheasant also talks to school groups about his culture.

His biggest challenge is getting people not to stereotype Indians, not to think that they are all alike.

- Most of the time they think all Indians wear all these different colored feathers and that all Indians live in teepees.

- [Narrator] This is how Hollywood portrays Native Americans.

Images, perhaps accurate for many tribes out west, but not for the Indians of the Southeast.

Indians of the Southeast did not live in teepees.

They did not wear big feathered headdresses.

They were not all warlike and cruel.

- In order to learn about our people, you need to visit a reservation, go to museums or a village.

This way you can learn the truth about the Indian people.

- The tools, art, and stories, passed down through generations tell us something powerful.

The Mississippian way of life didn't disappear, it evolved.

Though European contact brought hardship and change, many Mississippian traditions lived on through the Muskogee Creek and Cherokee people.

Today, artists, actors, and storytellers carry forward this culture, reminding us that indigenous history isn't just a chapter in the past, it's a living, breathing legacy.