Peter McQueen
Peter McQueen (c. 1780 – 1820) was a Creek Indian chief, trader and warrior from the tribal town of Talisi (Tallassee, among the Upper Towns in present-day Alabama.) He was one of the young men, known as Red Sticks, who supported a revival of traditional practices and opposed European-American settlement. The population in the Upper Towns comprised a majority of the Creek in the early nineteenth century. From open conflict with the Lower Towns, the Red Sticks became involved in warfare against the United States.
The Red Sticks were defeated by General Andrew Jackson with allied troops, Creek and Cherokee warriors at Horseshoe Bend in 1814, McQueen, along with many other Red Stick warriors, retreated into Florida. There he joined the recently formed Seminole and continued resistance to United States forces during the First Seminole War.
[edit] Early life and education
Peter McQueen was the son of a high-status Creek woman and a Scots-Irish fur trader, as was typical of many mixed-race alliances between Native Americans and European Americans in those years. He was born in the Talisi area.[1] Both cultures considered such marriages or unions as strategic alliances, as the traders brought goods of both practical use and prestige, and offered entree to European society.
As the Creek culture was matrilineal, McQueen derived his social status from his mother's family and clan. Traditionally, his maternal uncles were more important to a Creek boy than his father, as they, especially the elder one, would introduce him to men's ways and men's societies.
[edit] Career
Influenced by the thought of the Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa and his brother, the chief Tecumseh, McQueen was one of several young Creek prophets who envisioned the expulsion of the European Americans from Indian lands. He became aligned with the Red Stick faction of the Upper Creek, who were trying to resist assimilation and to restore traditional culture and religion. [1]
Conflicts between the Upper Creek towns, which had the majority of people, and the Lower Creek, who had adopted more European-American ways, developed into violence in 1813. The following year, McQueen commanded a party of Red Sticks at the Battle of Burnt Corn, where they finally defeated US soldiers. The Red Sticks were attacked while bringing back arms they had purchased in Pensacola, Florida from the Spanish. The next month, in August 1814 McQueen took part in the attack on Fort Mims and the resulting massacre of most of the refugees there. The Red Sticks killed a total of nearly 500 Lower Creek and European-American settlers.[1]
Together with numerous other Red Stick warriors, McQueen faced General Andrew Jackson with his several state militias, allied troops, and Lower Creek and Cherokee warriors at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend later in 1814. Defeated by Jackson's forces, many surviving Red Stick warriors, including McQueen, retreated into Florida. The Creek warriors became allied with the Seminole and continued their resistance to the US from deep within the Everglades.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Michael D. Green, The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1985, pp. 38-41, accessed 11 September 2011
- James O'Brien and Sean Michael O'Brien, In Bitterness and Tears: Andrew Jackson's Destruction of the Creeks and Seminoles (2003)
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