benches, and mats for walls and floors. River shoals abounded in freshwater mussels and turtles. The Mississippians built v-shaped rock weirs to pen and channel catfish, drum and gar, which they caught in rivercane baskets. Researchers have found remains of more than 100 rock weirs along the Etowah River. One has been restored within the grounds of the historic site. Post-contact Archaeological research on the subject is not conclusive, but the Etowah site may be the same as a village of a similar name visited by Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto in 1540. The chroniclers of the de Soto Expedition made no mention of any large mounds in their record of visiting a town named Itaba. Itaba means "boundary" or trail crossing in the Alabama language. The English name for the mounds, Etowah, was derived from an archaic Muscogee place name, Etalwa. Etalwa probably originally referred to the solar cross symbol. In the modern Muskogee language it means "town." Until studies of the late 20th century were published, most European-American people in Georgia believed Etowah to have been built by the well-known historic Cherokee. But, the Cherokee did not arrive in this part of Georgia until the late 18th century, two to seven centuries after the mounds were constructed. Most scholars believe that the mound complex was likely built by people of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture. They are considered ancestral to the historic Muscogee, long known as the Creek people. Most of the peoples of the Creek Confederacy were removed to Indian Territory in the 1830s. Since that time, the Creek descendants have formed two federally recognized tribes: the largest is the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma; the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama is the only federally recognized tribe in the state. Both consider Etalwa, or Etowah, to be their most important ancestral town. The official title of the Creek Nation's Principal Chief is Etalwa Mikko (the Muskogee word for chief is miko). A new, large-scale model of Etalwa is on permanent display in the rotunda of the Muskogee (Creek) Capitol in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. History of excavation and studies Missionary Elias Cornelius visited the site in 1817 and described it in his journal published by Bela Bates Edwards in 1833. He realized a mound must have been over two hundred years old, due to the size of trees growing on it, but had little idea of its