Tomo-Chi-Chi Monument
The original Tomo-Chi-Chi Monument, which paid tribute to the Chief of the Yamacraw Indians, and friend and ally to Jame Oglethorpe and the first Georgia colonists, was a pyramid of stone which was placed over his burial site in the center of Wright Square. Some 150 years later, it was decided that his burial site was the most fitting place for the monument to William Washington Gordon, founder and president of the Central of Georgia Railroad. Tomo-Chi-Chi’s gravesite was bulldozed in the early 1880s, and the monument to Gordon erected in its place.
It is said that Gordon’s widow felt bad about the desecration of the Indian Chief’s grave, and worked with the Colonial Dames of the State of Georgia to obtain a granite boulder from the Stone Mountain Monument Company to memorialize the life and death of the man who was indispensable to the founding and success of the Georgia Colony. This massive granite boulder stands in the southeast corner of Wright Square.
The Tomo-chi-chi Monument bears a plaque with this text:
Tomo-Chi-Chi, Mico of the Yamacraws, a tribe of the Creek, Indian Nation, is buried in this square. He has been called a cofounder, with Oglethorpe, of Georgia. He was a good friend of the English, a friendship indispensable to the establishment of the Colony as a military outpost against Spanish invasion. He negotiated with Oglethorpe the treaty, formally ratified on May 21, 1733, pursuant to which Georgia was settled. Mary Musgrove, half-breed niece of Emperor grim of the Creek Indians, acted as interpreter between Oglethorpe and Tomo-Chi-Chi and lent her great influence to the signing of that treaty and to the treaties negotiated by Oglethorpe with other tribes of the Creek Nation.
In 1734, at the age of 84, with his wife, Senauki, Tomo-Chi-Chi visited the English Court and was received by the King and by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a man of fine physique, tall and of great dignity.
He died October 5, 1739 at Yamacraw Indian Village, and at his request was brought to Savannah to rest among his English friends. He was buried here with military honors.
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