phases. The people at Lamar had a village associated with the mounds. They protected it by a constructed defensive palisade of logs placed vertically. They built rectangular houses, with roofs made of thatch or sod and clay-plastered walls, which were located around the mounds. This archeological site of a former settlement is now protected as the Lamar Mounds and Village Site. Lamar pottery was distinctive, stamped with complex designs like the pottery of the earlier Woodland peoples. It was unlike other pottery of the Macon Plateau culture. Many archaeologists believe the Lamar culture was related to the earlier Woodland inhabitants, who, after being displaced by the newer Mississippian culture migrants, developed a hybrid culture. Late Woodland Period characteristics extended into the Mississippian Period of 800 CE to 1600 CE. Spanish contact In 1540 the expedition of Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto recorded its travel through the chiefdom of Ichisi. Historians and archeologists believe this was likely what is now known as the Lamar site. The Spaniards left a trail of destruction in their wake as they explored the present-day Southeastern U.S. in a failed search for precious metals. Their deadliest legacy of unintended consequences was likely related to the pigs they brought as food supply. Escaping pigs became feral, disrupting local habitat and spreading Eurasian infectious diseases. As the American Indians had no acquired immunity to these new diseases, they suffered high fatalities. The rate of deaths caused social dislocations and likely contributed to a collapse of the Mississippian cultures. In the aftermath of De Soto's expedition, the Mississippian cultures declined and disappeared. Hierarchical chiefdoms crumbled. They were replaced by loose confederacies of clans and the rise of historic regional tribes. The clans did not produce the agricultural surpluses of the previous society, which had supported the former population density and development of complex culture. Agriculture had enabled the development of hierarchy in the larger population. Its leaders planned and directed the corvée labor system that raised and maintained the great earthen mounds. The culture supported artisans as well. Muscogee in the colonial era By the late 18th century, the largest Native American confederacy in present-day Georgia and Alabama was the Muscogee confederacy (known during the colonial and federal periods as the Muscogee Creek tribe). They were among the Muskogean-speaking peoples of the Southeast. They considered the ancient Mississippian mounds at Ocmulgee to be sacred and made pilgrimages there. According