La Tama

Ocute, later known as Altamaha or La Tama and sometimes known conventionally as the Oconee province, was a Native American paramount chiefdom in the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of Georgia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Centered in the Oconee River valley, the main chiefdom of Ocute held sway over the nearby chiefdoms of Altamaha, Cofaqui, and possibly others.

The Oconee valley area was populated for thousands of years, and the core chiefdoms of Ocute emerged following the rise of the Mississippian culture around 1100. Ocute was invaded by the expedition of the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto in 1539. At that time, Ocute was locked in a longstanding war with the rival paramount chiefdom of Cofitachequi in present-day South Carolina. The chiefdom remained a significant regional power into the 17th century, although Altamaha eclipsed Ocute as the primary center, leading the Spanish to refer to the paramountcy as La Tama. In the 1660s the chiefdom fragmented due to slave raids by the English-allied Westo, though several of its towns relocated to Spanish Florida and formed part of the Yamasee confederacy.

Ocute was a sizable paramount chiefdom, a political organization in which multiple chiefdoms are subsumed under one political order. The core area comprised three chiefdoms located in the Oconee River valley in the Georgia Piedmont: Ocute, Altamaha, and Cofaqui. Each included a main town and mounds along with various associated settlements, with the chief of Ocute being paramount.Charles M. Hudson and his colleagues locate the main town of Ocute at the Shoulderbone mound site, northwest of Sparta, Georgia. Subsequent archaeological research has weakened this identification, as the site's population had declined by the mid-16th century, but it remains the best fit of the currently known sites. Altamaha was located downstream to the south at the Shinholser site. Cofaqui was to the north, evidently at the Dyar site near Greensboro. Ocute spoke a language later known as Yamasee, apparently a Muskogean tongue that may have been similar to Hitchiti.

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