On the outskirts of Blakely, County Seat of Early County, and commanding a view of a beautiful stretch of landscape, rises the famous old Indian Mound, supposed to have been made by the Creek Indians, who hunted and fished and roved so happily through the tall pines and magnolias, the great oaks and low marshes. While tradition associates this particular mound with the Creeks and Cherokees, it has been argued by scientists that it must have been built by a race of people who preceded the Indians and were partly civilized; however, that may be, the visitor to Early has missed a rare bit of romance and historic thought, who fails to see the Indian Mound, reminiscent as it is of the sacredness of a brave race, now almost extinct.

The Mound is fully seventy-five feet high and is almost five hundred feet in circumference. It is covered with large trees of oak and the same dense foliage of bamboo, pine and cedar as that which grows so profusely over the surrounding country as far as the eye can reach. The picturesque and fertile valleys below have now become a favorite place for pleasure seekers each spring, for picnic grounds and camping, and the Indian Mound cannot fail to impress the most heedless as it rises mysteriously and majestic. Parties in search of buried treasures have penetrated the Mound to a depth of fifty feet, but nothing has ever been found except human bones. Then later scientists have sunk a shaft in the very center of this Mound to a great depth and have reached a mass of bones five feet in thickness. Nothing to throw light upon the builders of this huge old relic has ever been unearthed but bones, and the people of the County, with interested visitors, have nearly all associated the site with the Indians who inhabited so thickly this part of Georgia before Early County was created.

Early County was created by Legislature, October 1818, and included then the Counties of Baker, Calhoun, Decatur, Miller, Mitchell and Dougherty. It was named in honor of George Peter Early, Chief Executive of Georgia in 1813. Governor Early, previous to the purchase of these lands from the Indians, had rendered great service to the white settlers here in protecting them from the Indians, in both their treaties with the Indians and in protection to their lives. In gratitude for this service Early County was named.

While it has never been positively decided whether the Mound Builders or the Indians are the original makers of Indian Mound, it stands a grim memorial of a dead and gone race, worthy of a visit, with its great trees yellow with age, and weeds and moss overgrown, the only epitaphs to the mystery within its depths.—Mrs. Walter Thomas, Regent, Governor Peter Early Chapter, D.A.R.