Muscogee (Creek)

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Muscogee

Muscogee portraits
Total population
50,000-60,000
Regions with significant populations
United States ( Alabama, Louisana, Oklahoma, Texas)
Languages
English, Creek
Religion
Protestantism, Four Mother's Society, other
Related ethnic groups
Muskogean peoples: Alabama, Coushatta, Miccosukee, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole

Micah Wesley, Muscogee Creek-Kiowa artist and DJ

The Muscogee (or Muskogee), also known as the Creek or Creeks, are a Native American people originally from the southeastern United States.^[1] Mvskoke is their name in traditional spelling. Modern Muscogees live primarily in Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Their language, Mvskoke, is a member of the Muscogee branch of the Muscogean language family. They were a part of the Mississippian culture, which was located throughout the Mississippi River valley. The early Spanish explorers, according to historian Walter Williams, encountered their antecedents.^[2] In the 19th century, Muscogees were known as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes" because they had integrated numerous cultural and technological practices of their European American colonial neighbors.

In 1795, along with the Seminoles, William Bowles formed a short-lived state in northern Florida known as the State of Muskogee. The Muscogee would be the first Native Americans to be civilized under George Washington's civilization plan. In 1811, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, with the help of a prophetic comet and earthquake, convinced the Muscogee to resist the efforts of American civilization. The Red Stick War began as a civil war within the Muscogee Nation, which would enmesh them in the War of 1812. After removal efforts, the Muscogee Nation would be moved to Indian Territory and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians would eventually be formed in Alabama.

[edit] Culture

Selocta (or Shelocta) was a Muscogee chief.

Muscogee people continue to preserve and share a vibrant tribal identity through events such as annual festivals, stick ball games, and language classes. The Stomp Dance and Green Corn Ceremony are both highly revered gatherings and rituals that have largely remained closed to non-tribal members and thus have maintained their traditional integrity.

[edit] Clans

While families include people who are directly related to each other, clans are composed of all people who are descendants of the same ancestral clan grouping. Mucogee Creeks are matrilineal, and each person belongs to the clan of his or her mother, who belongs to the clan of her mother. Fathers are important within the family system; but within the clan, it is the mother’s brother (the mother’s nearest blood relation) who functions as the primary teacher, protector, disciplinarian and role model. Clan members do not claim "blood relation" but consider each other family due to their membership in the same clan. The same titles are used for both family and clan relations. For example, clan members of approximately the same age consider each other as Brother and Sister, even if they have never met before.

[edit] Clothing

Ancestral Muscogee peoples wore clothing made of woven plant materials or animal skins, depending upon the climate. During the summer, they preferred lightweight fabrics woven from tree bark, grasses or reeds. During the harsh winters, animal skins and fur were used for their warmth.

During the 1600’s the influence of European fashion became apparent in Southeastern clothing styles. Cloth was more comfortable and colorful than buckskin and quickly became a popular trade item throughout the region. Bolts of cloth could be obtained in a variety of patterns and textures, and allowed an individualized style of dress to evolve. Muscogee people were soon incorporating trade novelties and trinkets such as bells, ribbons, beads and pieces of mirror.

[edit] History

[edit] Precontact

The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in the United States before the arrival of Europeans.

At least 12,000 years ago, Native Americans or Paleo-Indians appeared in what is today referred to as "The South."^[3] Paleo-Indians in the Southeast were hunter-gatherers who pursued a wide range of animals, including the megafauna, which became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age.^[3] The early historic Muscogee were probably descendants of the mound builders of the Mississippian culture along the Tennessee River in modern Tennessee^[4] and Alabama, and possibly related to the Utinahica of southern Georgia.

The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from 800 to 1500 C.E. At the time the Spanish made their first forays inland from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, many political centers of the Mississippians were already in decline, or gone.^[5] The region is best described as a collection of moderately-sized native chiefdoms (such as the Coosa chiefdom on the Coosa River) interspersed with completely autonomous villages and tribal groups.

More of a loose confederacy than a single tribe, the Muscogee lived in autonomous villages in river valleys throughout what are today the states of Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama and consisted of many ethnic groups speaking several distinct languages, such as the Hitchiti, Alabama, and Coushatta. Those who lived along the Ocmulgee River were called "Creek Indians" by British traders from South Carolina. Eventually the name was applied to all of the various inhabitants of Muscogee towns, which were divided into the Lower Towns of the Georgia frontier on the Chattahoochee River, Ocmulgee River, and Flint River, and the Upper Towns of the Alabama River Valley. The Mississippian culture is what the earliest Spanish explorers encountered, beginning on April 2, 1513, with Juan Ponce de León's Florida landing and the 1526 Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón expedition in South Carolina.

[edit] Spanish expedition (1540-1543)

Hernando de Soto and his men burn Mabila, after a surprise attack by Chief Tuskaloosa and his people, 1540 CE.

After castaway Cabeza de Vaca of the ill-fated Narváez expedition returned to Spain, he described to the Court of Hernando de Soto that the New World was the "richest country in the world." Hernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who led the first expedition into the interior of the North American continent. De Soto, convinced of the "riches", wanted Cabeza de Vaca to go on the expedition, but Cabeza de Vaca later declined his offer because of a payment dispute of a ship.^[6] From 1540–1543, Hernando de Soto travelled through Florida and Georgia, and then down into the Alabama and Mississippi area that would later be inhabited by the Muscogee.

De Soto had the best-equipped army at the time. His successes were well known throughout Spain, and many people from all backgrounds joined his quest for untold riches to be plundered in the New World. However, the brutalities of the de Soto expedition became known to the Muscogee ancestors, so they decided to defend their country. This battle, known as the Battle of Mabila, was a turning point for the de Soto venture; the battle "broke the back" of the campaign, and they never fully recovered.

The Muscogee were a confederacy of tribes consisting of Yuchi, Koasati, Alabama, Coosa, Tuskeegee, Coweta, Cusseata, Chehaw (Chiaha), Hitchiti, Tuckabatchee, Oakfuskee, and many others.^[7]

[edit] Rise of the Muscogee Confederacy

After the breakdown of Mississippian culture, the smaller southeastern tribes reorganized themselves politically. New tribes, villages, and alliances grew during the dramatic shifts in Moundbuilder society in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Muscogee Confederacy that European explorers and traders encountered in the late 18th century grew out of innumerable villages and contained at least eight distinct ethnic groups.

The most important leader in Muscogee society was the mico or village chief. Micos led warriors in battle and represented their villages, but had little coercive power, holding authority only insofar as they could persuade others to agree with their decisions. Micos ruled with the assistance of micalgi or lesser chiefs, and relied on various advisors, including a second in charge called the heniha, respected village elders, medicine men, and a tustunnuggee or ranking warrior, the principle military advisor, while the yahola officiated various rituals, especially administering the black drink imbibed in purification ceremonies. The most important social unit was the clan. Clans organized hunts, distributed lands, arranged marriages, and punished lawbreakers and the authority of the micos was greatly limited by the clan leaders, mostly elderly women, because clan membership was matrilineal. The Wind Clan was considered the first of the clans, and the overwhelming majority of micos belonged to this clan.^[8]

The Lower Creek Towns were mostly located on the Chattahoochee, Flint, and Apalachicola rivers, although some were located further east along the Ocmulgee and Oconee Rivers. They included Coweta, Cusseta (Kasihta, Cofitachiqui), Upper Chehaw (Chiaha), Hitchiti, Oconee, Ocmulgee, Okawaigi, Apalachee, Yamasee (Altamaha), Ocfuskee, Sawokli, and Tamali. The Upper Creek Towns were located on the Coosa, Tallapoosa and Alabama Rivers, and included Tuckabatchee, Abhika, Coosa (Kusa; the dominant people of East Tennessee and North Georgia during the Spanish explorations), Itawa (original inhabitants of the Etowah Indian Mounds), Hothliwahi (Ullibahali), Hilibi, Eufaula, Wakokai, Atasi, Alibamu, Coushatta (Koasati; they had absorbed the Kaski/Casqui and the Tali), and Tuskegee ("Napochi" in the de Luna chronicles).

Cusseta (Kasihta) and Coweta are still the two principal towns of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Traditionally, the Cusseta and Coweta bands are considered the earliest members of the Muscogee Nation.^[1]

[edit] British, French and Spanish Expansion

A raiding party against Spanish missions in Florida. The raids led to the depopulation of Florida, and, later, to the Yamasee War

Muscogee leader Tomochichi and nephew in 1733.

Yamacraw Creek Native Americans meet with the Trustee of the colony of Georgia in England, July 1734, Notice the Native American boy (in a blue coat) and woman (in a red dress) in European clothing.

The Muscogee confederacy was caught in the middle of three competing European superpowers—Britain, France and Spain. British colonization of the Americas began in the late 16th century, before reaching its peak after colonies were established throughout the Americas. British were one of the most important colonizers of the Americas and their American empire came to rival the Spanish American colonies in military and economic might.

In 1670 English West Indian planters established the colony of Carolina. Early colonists traded flintlocks, powder, axes, cloth, bells, glass beads and West Indian rum for white-tailed deer pelts coveted by the English leather industry and slaves for sugar plantations in Barbados. One of the indigenous groups involved in this trade were the Lower Creek towns who had moved east from the Chattahoochee River to escape Spanish missions. From 1704-06, Lower Creek and Yamassee warriors and Carolinian colonists raided the Spanish missions of the Florida interior; some 10,000 unarmed 'mission Indians,' the Timucua and Apalachee, were captured and sold into slavery in the Caribbean. With Florida depopulated, English slave-traders paid other tribes to attack and enslave their former allies, leading to the Yamassee War of 1715-17, one of the most most disruptive and transformational conflicts of colonial America. Yamassee, Catawba and Lower Creeks burned trade-posts and settlements and forced English colonists in the interior to seek refuge in the provincial capital of Charles Town. However, their revolt lost momentum as they ran low on gunpowder, and was put down by Carolinian provincial militia and their native allies, the Tuscarora and Cherokee, whose attacks led the Yamasee to seek refuge in Spanish Florida and drove the Lower Creeks west to the Chattahoochee.

French Canadian explorers founded Mobile as the first capital of Louisiana in 1702, and took advantage of the Yamasee War to build Fort Toulouse at the confluence of the Tallapoosa and Coosa Rivers, near present-day Montgomery, Alabama in 1717, trading with the Alabama and Coushatta Upper Creeks. Fearing that the Lower Creeks would be come under French influence, the British reopened the deerskin trade, which antagonized the Yamassee, now allies of Spain, and led the French to instigate the Upper Creeks to raid the Lower Creeks. In May 1718, the shrewd 'Emperor' Brim, mico of the Lower Creek towns of Coweta, invited representatives of Britain, France, and Spain to his village and, in council with Upper and Lower Creek leaders, declared a policy of Muscogee neutrality in their colonial rivalry. That year, the Spaniards built the presidio of San Marcos at Apalachee, near present-day Tallahassee, Florida, and by 1721, the British had built Fort King George at the mouth of the Altamaha River. As the three European imperial powers established themselves on the Muscogee frontier, the Muscogee strategy of neutrality allowed them to hold the balance of power.

The colony of Georgia was created in 1732, and its first settlement, Savannah, was founded the following year, on a river-bluff where the Yamacraw, a small band of Lower Creeks and Yamassee who split with their tribes over the Yamassee War, allowed English trader John Musgrove to establish a trading post. His wife, Mary Musgrove, the daughter of an English trader who resided in Coweta and a Muscogee mother from the powerful Wind Clan who was closely related to 'Emperor' Brim, served as the principle translator for Georgia's founder and first Governor Gen. James Oglethorpe, and used her connections to foster peace between the Muscogee and the new colony.^[9]

In 1736, Spanish and British colonial officials signed a treaty establishing a neutral zone between the Altamaha and St. Johns River, guaranteeing hunting grounds for the deerskin trade and protecting Spanish Florida from the encroaching British. This neutral zone was occupied by fugitive Indian tribes. The largest of these groups was the Hitchiti-speaking Oconee Creeks, who had migrated west after the Yamasee War, where they clashed with the established Creek language-speaking towns. Led by Chief Secoffee (Cowkeeper), around 1750 they moved to the 'neutral zone,' where they would became the center of a new tribal confederacy, the Seminole, which would grow to include earlier refugees from the Yamasee War, remnants of the 'mission Indians,' and a large number of escaped African slaves.^[10]Their name came from the Spanish word cimarrones, which originally referred to a domestic animal that had reverted to the wild. Cimarrones was used by the Spanish in both the Caribbean and Florida to refer both to fugitive slaves—"maroon" emerges linguistically from this root as well—and American Indians who took refuge from European invaders, and in the Hitchiti language, which lacked an 'r' sound, it became simanoli, and eventually Seminole.

[edit] American Revolutionary War

With the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, white settlers moved inland, and in 1773 some Lower Creek and Cherokee chiefs ceded two million acres of land to Georgia. Indian discontent led to raids against back-country settlements, and the perception that the royal government favored the Indians and the deerskin trade led many back-country whites to join the Sons of Liberty. Fears of land-hungry settlers and need for access to European manufactured goods led the overwhelming majority of American Indians to side with the British. However, like many tribes, the Muscogee were divided by factionalism. In general they avoided sustained fighting, preferring to protect their sovereignty and trade through cautious participation. The political upheaval of the American Revolutionary War led to the decline of the deerskin trade, while enabling the Muscogee to acquire trade goods through military service.

The Upper Creeks allied with the British, fighting alongside the Cherokee under Dragging Canoe in the Chickamauga Wars against Patriot white settlers in what became Tennessee. George Galphin, a Scots-Irish fur-trader acting as an emissary of the revolutionary governments of Georgia and South Carolina, initially persuaded the Lower Creeks to remain neutral, although Savannah Loyalist Capt. William McIntosh recruited a group of Hitchiti to fight for the British, and the Lower Creeks nominally allied with Britain after the 1779 Capture of Savannah. Large numbers of Muscogee warriors fought on behalf of Britain during the Mobile and Pensacola campaigns of 1780-81, where Spain re-conquered British West Florida. Loyalist leader Thomas Brown, who raised a division of King's Rangers to contest Patriot control over the Georgia interior, served as royal superintendent of the Cherokee and Muscogee. He instigated Cherokee raids against the North Carolina back-country after the Battle of King's Mountain, and seized Augusta in March 1780, aided by a small Upper Creek war-party. Hoped for reinforcements from the Lower Creeks and local white Loyalists never came, and Georgia militia led by Elijah Clarke retook Augusta in 1781.^[11] In 1782, Upper Creek warriors led by Mico Emistesigo unsuccessfully tried to relieve the British garrison at Savannah, besieged by the Continental Army under Gen. 'Mad' Anthony Wayne.

After the war ended in 1783, the Muscogee discovered that Britain had ceded their lands to the now independent United States. That year, two Lower Creek chiefs, Hopoithle Miko (Tame King) and Eneah Miko (Fat King), ceded 800 square miles of land to the state of Georgia. Coushatta Upper Creek Mico Alexander McGillivray rose to prominence as he helped organize pan-Indian resistance to white encroachment, receiving arms from the Spanish in Florida to fight trespassers. The son of wealthy Scottish Loyalist fur trader and the French-Muscogee daughter of a commander of Fort Toulouse, McGillivray, known to his people as as Hippo ilk Mico 'Good Child King,' worked to create a sense of Muscogee nationalism and centralize Muscogee authority, struggling against village leaders who individually sold land to the United States. He also became a wealthy landowner and merchant, owning as many as sixty black slaves.

In 1784, he negotiated the Treaty of Pensacola with Spain, securing Muscogee rights to three million acres of land claimed by Georgia, and guaranteeing continued access to the British firm Panton, Leslie & Co. which controlled the deerskin trade, while making himself an official representative of the Kingdom of Spain.^[12] In 1786, a council in the village of Tuckabatchee decided to wage war against American intrusion onto Muscogee lands. War parties attacked white settlers along the Oconee River, and Georgia mobilized its militia. After a first attempt to negotiate a treaty ended with an enraged McGillivray storming out of the talks, President George Washington sent a special emissary, Col. Marinus Willet, who persuaded him to travel to New York City, then the capital of the U.S., and deal with the federal government directly. In the summer of 1790, McGillivray and 29 other Muscogee leaders signed the Treaty of New York on behalf of the 'Upper, Middle and Lower Creek and Seminole composing the Creek nation of Indians,' ceding a significant portion of the Muscogee lands to the federal government of the United States and promising to return fugitive slaves who sought refuge with the tribe, in return for federal recognition of Muscogee sovereignty. McGillivray died in 1793, however, and with the invention of the cotton gin white settlers on the Southwestern frontier who hoped to become cotton-planters clamored for Indian lands.

[edit] Muscogee and Choctaw land dispute (1790)

In 1790, the Muscogee and Choctaw were in conflict over land near the Noxubee River. The two nations agreed to settle the dispute by ball-play. With nearly 10,000 players and bystanders, they two nations prepared for nearly three months. After a long daylong struggle, the Muscogee won the game. A fight broke out and the two nations fought until sun down with nearly 500 dead and much more wounded.

[edit] State of Muskogee and William Bowles

William Augustus Bowles (1763-1805) was also known as Estajoca, his Muscogee name.

William Augustus Bowles was born into a wealthy Maryland Tory family, and joined the British Army as a foot soldier at 13, serving with the Maryland Loyalists Battalion as an ensign during the American Revolution, becoming an officer in Royal Navy by age 15. Cashiered for dereliction of duty after returning too late to his ship at Pensacola, Bowles escaped north and found refuge among the Hitchiti Muscogee towns of the lower Chattahoochee. He married two wives, one Cherokee and the other Hitchiti Muscogee, and became heir to a Muscogee chiefdom. In 1781, a 17-year old Bowles led Muscogee forces at the Battle of Pensacola. After seeking refuge in the Bahamas, he later travelled to London, where he was received by King George III as 'Chief of the Embassy for Creek and Cherokee Nations'; it was with British backing that he returned to train the Muscogee as pirates to attack Spanish ships.

In 1799, Bowles formed the State of Muskogee, with the support of the Chattahoochee Creeks and the Seminoles. Spanish attacks forced him to relocate to the chiefdom of Miccosuki, on the shores of a lake near present-day Tallahassee, ruled by Mico Kanache, his father-in-law and strongest ally. Bowles envisioned the State of Muskogee, with its capital at Miccosuki, encompassing large portions of present-day Florida, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and incorporating the Cherokee, Upper and Lower Creeks, Chickasaw and Choctaw. Bowles' first act was declaring the 1795 Treaty of San Ildefonso which drew the boundary between the U.S. and West Florida null-and-void, because the Indians were not consulted. He denounced the treaties Alexander McGillivray had negotiated with Spain and the U.S., threatening to declare war on the United States unless it returned Muscogee lands, and issuing a death sentence against George Washington's Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins, whose 'civilizing mission' brought trade goods and won the loyalty of the Lower Creeks. He built a tiny navy, and raided Spanish ships in the Gulf of Mexico, and, in 1800, declared war on Spain, briefly capturing the presidio and trading post of San Marcos de Apalache before being forced to retreat. Although a Spanish force that set out to destroy Mikosuke got lost in the swamps, a second attempt to take San Marcos ended in disaster, and Bowles was discredited, with the Seminole signed a peace treaty with Spain. The following year, he was betrayed by Lower Creek supporters of Hawkins at a tribal council, and was turned over to the Spanish, dying in prison in Havana, Cuba two years later.^[13]

[edit] Acculteration (19th century)

Benjamin Hawkins, seen on his plantation in this 1805 painting, teaches Creeks to use European technology.

George Washington, the first U.S. President, and Henry Knox, the first U.S. Secretary of War, proposed a cultural transformation of the Native Americans.^[14] Washington believed that Native Americans were equals but that their society was inferior. He formulated a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process, and it was continued under President Thomas Jefferson.^[15] Noted historian Robert Remini wrote, "[T]hey presumed that once the Indians adopted the practice of private property, built homes, farmed, educated their children, and embraced Christianity, these Native Americans would win acceptance from white Americans."^[16] Washington's six-point plan included impartial justice toward Indians; regulated buying of Indian lands; promotion of commerce; promotion of experiments to civilize or improve Indian society; presidential authority to give presents; and punishing those who violated Indian rights.^[17] The Muscogee would be the first Native Americans to be "civilized" under Washington's six-point plan. The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole would follow the Muscogee's efforts to implement Washington's new policy of civilization.

In 1796, Washington appointed Benjamin Hawkins as General Superintendent of Indian Affairs dealing with all tribes south of the Ohio River. He personally assumed the role of principal agent to the Muscogee. He moved to the area that is now Crawford County in Georgia. He began to teach agricultural practices to the tribe, starting a farm at his home on the Flint River. In time, he brought in slaves and workers, cleared several hundred acres and established mills and a trading post as well as his farm.

For years, Hawkins met with chiefs on his porch and discuss matters. He was responsible for the longest period of peace between the settlers and the tribe, overseeing 19 years of peace. In 1805, the Muscogee ceded their lands east of the Ocmulgee to Georgia, with the exception of the ceremonial grounds of the Ocmulgee Old Fields, and allowed a Federal Road linking New Orleans to Washington, D.C. to be built through their territory. A fort was built in 1806 to protect expanding settlements, located just east of modern Macon, Georgia, was named Fort Benjamin Hawkins.

Hawkins was disheartened and shocked with the Creek War, which destroyed his life work of improving Muscogee quality of life. Hawkins saw much of his work toward building a peace destroyed in 1812. A group of Muscogee, led by Tecumseh, was encouraged by British agents to resistance against increasing settlement by whites. Although he personally was never attacked, he was forced to watch an internal civil war among the Muscogee, the war with a faction known as the Red Sticks, and their eventual defeat by Andrew Jackson.

[edit] A comet, earthquakes, and Tecumseh (1811)

The Great Comet of 1811, as drawn by William Henry Smyth

A comet appeared in March 1811. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh, whose name meant "shooting star,"^[18] traveled to Tuckabatchee, where he told the Muscogee that the comet signaled his coming. McKenney reported that the Tecumseh would prove that the Great Spirit had sent him by giving the Muscogee a sign. Shortly after Tecumseh left the Southeast, the sign arrived as promised in the form of an earthquake.

On December 11, 1811, the New Madrid Earthquake shook the Muscogee lands and the Midwest. While the interpretation of this event varied from tribe to tribe, one consensus was universally accepted: the powerful earthquake had to have meant something. The earthquake and its aftershocks helped the Tecumseh resistance movement by convincing, not only the Muscogee, but other Native American tribes as well, that the Shawnee must be supported.

The New Madrid Earthquake was interpreted by the Muscogee to support the Shawnees' resistance.

The Muscogee who joined Tecumseh's confederation were known as the Red Sticks. Stories of the origin of the Red Stick name varies, but one is that they were named for the Muscogee tradition of carrying a bundle of sticks that mark the days until an event occurs. Sticks painted red symbol war.^[19]

[edit] Red Stick rebellion

Menawa was one of the principle leaders of the Red Sticks, and after the war continued to oppose white encroachment on Muscogee lands, visiting Washington, D.C. in 1826 to protest the Treaty of Indian Springs. Painted by Charles Bird King.

The Creek War of 1813-1814, also known as the Red Stick War, began as a civil war within the Muscogee Nation, only to become enmeshed within the War of 1812. Inspired by the fiery eloquence of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh and their own religious leaders, Red Stick leaders such as William Weatherford (Red Eagle), Peter McQueen, and Menawa won the support of the Upper Creek towns. They sought to resist white encroachment on Muscogee lands and the 'civilizing programs' administered by Benjamin Hawkins, and clashed with many of the leading chiefs of the Muscogee Nation, most notably the Lower Creek leader William McIntosh, Hawkins' most powerful ally. Before the Muscogee Civil War began, the Red Sticks attempted to keep their activities secret from the old chiefs. They were emboldened when Tecumseh rallied his followers and joined with a British invasion to capture Fort Detroit in August 1812.

In February 1813, a small party of Red Sticks, led by Little Warrior, was returning from Detroit when they killed two families of settlers along the Ohio River. Hawkins demanded that the Muscogees turn over Little Warrior and his six companions. Instead of handing the marauders over to the federal agents, the old chiefs decided to execute the war party themselves. This decision was the spark which ignited the civil war between the Muscogees.^[20] The first clashes between Red Sticks and the American whites took place on July 21, 1813, when a group of American soldiers from Fort Mims (near present-day Mobile, Alabama) stopped a party of Red Sticks who were returning from West Florida, where they received munitions from the Spanish governor at Pensacola. The Red Sticks fled the scene, and the soldiers looted what they found. The Creeks, who saw the Americans' looting, retaliated with a surprise attack. The Battle of Burnt Corn, as the exchange became known, broadened the Creek Civil War to include American forces.

On August 30, 1813, Red Sticks led by Red Eagle William Weatherford attacked Fort Mims, where white settlers and their Indian allies had gathered. The Red Sticks captured the fort by surprise, and a massacre ensued, as the Red Sticks killed their white captives, including women and children, sparing only black slaves who they took as captured booty. After the deaths of nearly 250 at the fort, settlers across the American southwestern frontier were in a panic.

The Red Stick victory spread panic throughout the Southeastern United States, and the cry 'Remember Fort Mims!' took hold as an enraged public demanded revenge. With Federal troops tied up on the northern front against the British in Canada, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Mississippi Territory militias invaded the Upper Creek towns, joined by their Indian allies, the Lower Creeks under William McIntosh and the Cherokees under Major Ridge. Outnumbered and poorly armed, being too far removed from Canada to receive British aid, the Red Sticks put up a desperate fight. On March 27, 1814, General Andrew Jackson's Tennessee militia, aided by the 39th U. S. Infantry Regiment and Cherokee and Lower Creek warriors, finally crushed the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River. Though the Red Sticks had been soundly defeated and about 3,000 Upper Muscogee died in the war, the remnants held out several months longer.

[edit] Muscogee diaspora (1814)

Depiction of Red Eagle's surrendering to Andrew Jackson after the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Jackson was so impressed with Weatherford's boldness that he let him go.

In August 1814, exhausted and starving, the Red Sticks surrendered to Jackson at Wetumpka (near the present city of Montgomery, Alabama). On August 9, 1814, the Muscogee nation was forced to sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which ended the war and required them to cede some 20 million acres (81,000 km²) of land—more than half of their ancestral territorial holdings—to the United States. Even those who had fought alongside Jackson were compelled to cede land, since Jackson held them responsible for allowing the Red Sticks to revolt. The state of Alabama was carved largely out of their domain and was admitted to the United States in 1819.

Many Muscogee refused to surrender and escaped to Florida. Some allied themselves with Florida Indians (who eventually become collectively called the Seminole) and the British against the Americans. They were involved on both sides of the Seminole War in Florida.

[edit] Seminole War

The Red Stick refugees who arrived in Florida after the Creek War tripled the Seminole population, and strengthened the tribe's Muscogee characteristics.^[23] In 1814, British forces landed in West Florida and began arming the Seminoles. The British built a fort on the Appalachicola at Prospect Bluff, and after the end of the War of 1812, encouraged runaway slaves to occupy it. The 'Negro Fort' was viewed by Southern planters as a grave threat, and in 1816 it was destroyed by a U.S. invasion, aided by the Lower Creeks. The Seminoles continued to welcome fugitive black slaves and raid American settlers, leading the U.S. to declare war in 1817. The following year, General Andrew Jackson invaded Florida with an army that included over 1,000 Lower Creek warriors, destroying Seminole towns and capturing Pensacola. Jackson's victory forced Spain to sign the Adams–Onís Treaty in 1819, ceding Florida to the U.S. In 1823, a delegation of Seminole chiefs met with the new U.S. governor of Florida, expressing their opposition to proposals that would reunite them with the Muscogee, partly because many Muscogee were slave-catchers, and it was feared that they would re-enslave their Black Seminole allies. Instead, the Seminole agreed to move onto a reservation in inland central Florida.

[edit] Treaties of Indian Springs

Charles Bird King's portrait of William McIntosh.

William McIntosh, Mico of the Lower Creeks, led the Lower Creek warriors who fought alongside the U.S. in the Creek War and the First Seminole War. The son of the Loyalist officer of the same name who had recruited a band of Hitchiti to the British cause, McIntosh never knew his white father, but had family ties to Georgia's planter elite, and after the wars became a wealthy cotton-planter. While the Upper Creeks continued to maintain distinctly traditional political and social institutions, the Lower Creeks had been thoroughly transformed by intermarriage and the adoption of Euro-American culture. In the late 1810s and early 1820s McIntosh helped create a centralized police force called 'Law Menders,' establish written laws, and form a National Council. However, his knowledge of white society led him to view displacement as inevitable, and the McIntosh-faction, the mixed-race elite of the Muscogee, were amenable to proposals for Indian removal, hoping to establish themselves as landowners on a frontier safely removed from white settlers. In 1821, McIntosh signed away Lower Creek lands east of the Flint River at the first Treaty of Indian Springs, and as a reward was granted 1,000 acres at the treaty site, where he built a hotel to attract tourists to local hot springs. The Creek National Council responded by proscribing the death penalty for tribesmen who surrendered additional land. However, Georgian settlers were pouring into Indian lands, and in 1825 McIntosh signed the second Treaty of Indian Springs at his hotel with his first cousin Georgia Governor George Troup, a leading advocate of Indian removal. The treaty surrendered the last Lower Creek lands to Georgia, and agreed to the relocation of the Muscogee to the Arkansas River, with McIntosh pocketing a considerable sum of money in the process. Troup promised to protect McIntosh, but in April, the Law Menders, led by the old Red Stick Menawa, killed McIntosh and burned his upper Chattahoochee plantation. A delegation of the Creek National Council, led by Chief Opthleyahola, traveled to Washington D.C., convincing President John Quincy Adams that the treaty was invalid, and negotiating the more favorable Treaty of Washington (1826), in which the tribe ceded their lands to Georgia in return for $200,000 but were not required to move west. Troup ignored the new treaty and ordered the eviction of the Muscogee from their remaining lands in Georgia without compensation, mobilizing state militia after Adams threatened federal intervention.

[edit] Removal (1834)

In the aftermath of the Treaty of Fort Jackson and the Treaty of Washington (1826), the Muscogee were confined to a small strip of land in present-day east central Alabama. Following the Indian Removal Act, in 1832 the Creek National Council signed the Treaty of Cusseta, ceding their remaining lands east of the Mississippi to the U.S., and accepting relocation to the Indian Territory. Most Muscogee were removed to Indian Territory during the Trail of Tears in 1834, although some remained behind. Some Muscogee in Alabama live near Poarch Creek Reservation in Atmore (northeast of Mobile), and Muscogee live in essentially undocumented ethnic towns in Florida. The Alabama reservation includes a casino and 16-story hotel. The Creek tribe holds an annual powwow on Thanksgiving. Additionally, Muscogee descendants of varying degrees of acculturation live throughout the southeastern United States.

[edit] American Civil War (1861)

Members of the Creek Nation in Oklahoma around 1877. Notice the European and African ancestry members.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Opothleyahola refused to form an alliance with the Confederacy, unlike many other tribes, including many of the Lower Creeks. Runaway slaves, free blacks, Chickasaw and Seminole Indians began gathering at Opothleyahola's plantation, where they hoped to remain neutral in the conflict between the North and South. On August 15, 1861, Opothleyahola and tribal chief Micco Hutko contacted President Abraham Lincoln to request help for the Union loyalists. On September 10, they received a positive response stating the United States government would indeed assist them. The letter directed Opothleyahola to move his people to Fort Row in Wilson County, Kansas, where they would receive asylum and aid.^[24]

[edit] Treaties

Ceded area as deemed by the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814.

Land was the most valuable asset Native Americans held in collective stewardship. Muscogee land was systematically obtained through treaties, legislation, and warfare. Treaties, like the Treaty of San Lorenzo, indirectly affected the Muscogee. The treaties were:

[edit] Muscogee tribes today

The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana are a tribe of Muscogee people, descended from the Koasati, as are the Alabama-Coushatta Tribes of Texas.

[edit] Federally recognized tribes in Oklahoma

Muscogee Creek bike messenger, originally from Okmulgee, Oklahoma

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation is a federally recognized Indian Nation. Their headquarters is in Okmulgee, Oklahoma and their current Principal Chief is A. D. Ellis.^[25]

Three Muscogee tribal towns are federally recognized tribes: Alabama-Quassarte, Kialegee, and Thlopthlocco. Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town is headquartered is Wetumka, Oklahoma and its chief is Tarpie Yargee.^[26] Kialegee Tribal Town is also headquartered in Wetumka, and Jennie Lillard is the current mekko or chief.^[26] The Thlopthlocco Tribal Town is headquartered in Okemah, Oklahoma. Vernon Yarholar is the tribe's mekko.^[27]

[edit] Federally recognized tribes in Alabama

Eddie L. Tullis led the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in their petitioning the United States government to recognize a government-to-government relationship. On August 11, 1984, these efforts culminated in the United States Government, Department of Interior, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs acknowledging that the Poarch Band of Creek Indians exists as an "Indian Tribe." The Tribe is the only Federally recognized Tribe in the State of Alabama. On November 21, 1984, 231.54 acres (0.9370 km²) of land were taken into trust. On April 12, 1985, 229.54 acres (0.9289 km²) were declared a Reservation.

[edit] Influential Muscogee leaders

• Mary Musgrove (c. 1700-1765) served as a cultural liaison between colonial Georgia and her Native American community.
• Alexander McGillivray (1750–1793) was a leader of the Muscogee during the American Revolution.
• James McHenry (1753-1816), Confederate Major, Methodist minister, and important Creek leader.
• William Augustus Bowles (1763-1805), also known as Estajoca, was a Maryland-born English adventurer and organizer of Native American attempts to create their own state outside of Euro-American control.
• Menawa (c. 1765-1836) was one of the principal leaders of the Red Sticks during the Creek Wars.
• William McIntosh (c. 1775-1825) led part of the pro-American forces that dealt with the Red Sticks.
• William Weatherford (c. 1781-1824) led the Creek War offensive against the United States. He was also known as Red Eagle.
• Opothleyahola (c. 1798-1863) fought against the United States government during Seminole Wars and for the Union during the American Civil War.
• Ernest Childers (1918-2005) was a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army and the first Native American to receive World War II Medal of Honor.
• Suzan Shown Harjo (b. 1945), (Muscogee-Cheyenne) activist, policymaker, journalist, and poet

[edit] Famous Muscogee

• Fred Beaver (1911-1980), (Muscogee) painter and muralist
• Samuel Benton Callahan (1833-1911), represented the Creek and Seminole nations in the Second Confederate Congress
• Acee Blue Eagle (1909-1959), (Muscogee-Pawnee-Wichita) artist, actor, author, and director of art at Bacone College
• Joy Harjo (b. 1959), (Muscogee-Cherokee) Native American poet and jazz musician
• Joan Hill (b. 1930), (Muscogee-Cherokee) artist
• Blackhawk Walters (b.1951), (Muscogee-Cherokee-Choctaw) Four Time World Kickboxing Champion, 8th Degree Black Belt, musician, singer-songwriter, author, actor.
• Jack Jacobs (1919-1974), football player
• William Harjo LoneFight (b. 1966), author, President of Native American Services, languages and cultural activist
• Jim Pepper (1941-1992), jazz musician
• Will Sampson (1933-1987), film actor, noted for his performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Cynthia Leitich Smith (b. 1967), children's book author noted for Jingle Dancer
• Carrie Underwood (b. 1983), country singer^[28][29]
• Micah Ian Wright (b. 1974), film, television and video game writer, chair of the Writers Guild of America's American Indian Writers Committee

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

[edit] Suggested Media

• First Frontier, Docu-drama, Auburn University Educational Television, 1987. The docu-drama covers the encounter with Hernando DeSoto to the era of Indian Removal; the film focuses on the Creek peoples.
• Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World. Robbie Ethridge, 2003, The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807854956

[edit] References

• Braund, Kathryn E. Holland (1993). Deerskins & Duffels: The Creek Indian Trade with Anglo-America, 1685-1815. Indians of the Southeast. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. OCLC 45732303. 
• Jackson, Harvey H. III (1995). Rivers of History-Life on the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Cahaba and Alabama. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0817307710. 
• Swanton, John R. (1922). Early History of the Creek Indians and their Neighbors. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 73. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. OCLC 18032096. 
• Swanton, John R. (1928). "Social Organization and the Social Usages of the Indians of the Creek Confederacy". Forty-Second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. pp. 23–472. OCLC 14980706. 
• Walker, Willard B. (2004). "Creek Confederacy Before Removal". in Raymond D. Fogelson (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 14: Southeast. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 373–392. OCLC 57192264. 
• Worth, John E. (2000). "The Lower Creeks: Origins and Early History". in Bonnie G. McEwan (ed.). Indians of the Greater Southeast: Historical Archaeology and Ethnohistory. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. pp. 265–298. OCLC 49414753. 

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Muscogee

• Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma (official site)
• Creek Nation Indian Territory Project
• LostWorlds.org | Ocmulgee Mounds: Creek/Muskogee Origins
• Creek (Muskogee) by Kenneth W. McIntosh -- Encyclopedia of North American Indians
• History of the Creek Indians in Georgia
• Poarch Creek Indians in Alabama
• Poarch Band of Creek Indians
• Comprehensive Creek Language materials online
• Southeastern Native American Documents, 1763-1842.
• New Georgia Encyclopedia entry
• Encyclopedia of Alabama article
• Lewis and James McHenry
• "Fife Family Cemetery," Southern Spaces -- a short film on Creek Christian burial practices
• Perdido Bay Tribe of Creek Indians, unrecognized Creek organization
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Creek
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Creek, Lower