Altamaha

Altamaha was a town in the Oconee River valley and a centre of the late Mississippian chiefdom of Ocute. Its people lived among agricultural settlements and earthwork centres in the wooded interior of Georgia. In 1540, as Hernando de Soto's expedition travelled through the region, inhabitants of Altamaha carried the Spaniards across a river in dugout canoes. The army continued toward Ocute and Cofaqui.

In the seventeenth century Altamaha became a leading centre of the province known to the Spanish as La Tama. Raids by the Westo in the 1660s drove its communities from the interior. Some moved west toward the Chattahoochee, while others joined people on the coast. Altamaha remained the name of a town among the communities that later became known as the Yamasee.