Muscogee

Not to be confused with Greek.

Muscogee

Muscogee portraits
Regions with significant populations
United States ( Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas)
Languages
English, Creek
Religion
Protestantism, Four Mother's Society, other
Related ethnic groups
Muskogean peoples: Alabama, Coushatta, Miccosukee, 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. 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 descendants of the Mississippian culture peoples, who built earthwork mounds at their regional chiefdoms located throughout the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries. The greatest Mississippian center was built at Cahokia in present-day Illinois, which reached its peak about 1250 CE. Historian Walter Williams and others believe the early Spanish explorers encountered ancestors of the Muscogee when they visited Mississippian-culture chiefdoms in the Southeast in the mid-16th century. In the 19th century, the Muscogee were known as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes" because they had integrated numerous cultural and technological practices of their European American neighbors.

In 1795, William Bowles formed a short-lived state in northern Florida known as the State of Muskogee, which was also inhabited by the Seminole.

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, begun as a civil war within the Muscogee Nation, enmeshed them in the War of 1812.

During Indian Removal of 1830, most of the Muscogee Nation moved to Indian Territory. The Poarch Band of Creek Indians eventually formed in Alabama and was federally recognized, as have other Creek tribe communities in Louisiana and Texas.

Culture

Selocta (or Shelocta) was a Muscogee chief.

Muscogee people continue to preserve chaya 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. Non-tribal members are excluded as the tribe wants to preserve the traditional integrity of the ceremonies.

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. Like many Native American nations, the Muscogee Creek are matrilineal; 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 kinship titles are used for both family and clan relations. For example, clan members of approximately the same age consider each other Brother and Sister, even if they have never met before.

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, they used animal skins and fur for warmth.

During the 1600s, 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.

History

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." 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. The Woodland period from 1000 BCE to 1000 CE was marked by the development of pottery and the small-scale horticulture of the Eastern Agricultural Complex.

The Mississippian culture arose as the cultivation of Mesoamerican crops of corn and beans led to population growth. Increased population density gave rise of urban centers and regional chiefdoms, of which the greatest was the settlement known as Cahokia, in present-day Illinois. Stratified societies developed, with hereditary religious and political elites, and flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from 800 to 1500 C.E. The early historic Muscogee were probably descendants of the mound builders of the Mississippian culture along the Tennessee River in modern Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. They may have been related to the Utinahica of southern Georgia.

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. 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. The late 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.

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. 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.

Rise of the Muscogee Confederacy

The devastation of De Soto's expedition and the diseases it introduced wiped out most of the indigenous population, and led to the disappearance of the Mississippian culture. As the survivors regrouped, the Muscogee or Creek Confederacy was one of the largest entities that emerged.

A loose confederacy rather than a single tribe, the Muscogee lived in autonomous villages in river valleys throughout present-day Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, speaking several related Muskogean languages. Hitchiti was the most widely spoken in present-day Georgia; Hitchiti speakers were the first to be displaced by white settlers, and the language died out.

Muskogee was spoken from the Chattahoochee to the Alabama. Koasati (Coushatta) and Alibamu were spoken in the upper Alabama basin and parts of the Tennessee River. The Muscogee were a confederacy of tribes consisting of Yuchi, Koasati, Alabama, Coosa, Tuskeegee, Coweta, Cusseata, Chehaw (Chiaha), Hitchiti, Tuckabatchee, Oakfuskee, and many others.

The basin social unit was the town (idalwa). Abihka, Coosa, Cusseta (Kasihta) and Coweta are the four 'mother towns' of the Muscogee Confederacy. Traditionally, the Cusseta and Coweta bands are considered the earliest members of the Muscogee Nation. The Lower Towns, along the Chattahoochee, Flint, and Apalachicola rivers, and further east along the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers, were Coweta, Cusseta (Kasihta, Cofitachiqui), Upper Chehaw (Chiaha), Hitchiti, Oconee, Ocmulgee, Okawaigi, Apalachee, Yamasee (Altamaha), Ocfuskee, Sawokli, and Tamali.

The Upper Towns, located on the Coosa, Tallapoosa and Alabama rivers, were 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).

The most important leader in Muscogee society was the mico or village chief. Micos led warriors in battle and represented their villages, but held authority only insofar as they could persuade others to agree with their decisions. Micos ruled with the assistance of micalgi or lesser chiefs, and 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. The yahola or medicine man officiated at 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. The authority of the micos was greatly limited by the clan leaders or mothers, mostly elderly women, because clan membership was matrilineal. The Wind Clan was considered the first of the clans. The majority of micos belonged to this clan.

British, French and Spanish Expansion

Further information: Yamasee War

A raiding party against Spanish missions in Florida passes the Ocmulgee trading-post.

Yamacraw 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.

Britain, France and Spain all established colonies in the present-day Southeastern U.S. Spain used missions to control the natives, the British and the French opted for trade over conversion. In the 17th century, Franciscan friars in Spanish Florida built missions along Apalachee Bay. In 1670 English settlers from Barbados founded Charles Town, capital of the new Province of Carolina; traders from Virginia and Carolina exchanged flintlocks, gunpowder, axes, bells, glass beads, cloth and West Indian rum for white-tailed deer pelts for the English leather industry and Indian slaves for Caribbean plantations. The Spanish and their 'mission Indians' burned most of the towns along the Chattahoochee after they welcomed Scottish explorer Henry Woodward in 1685. In 1690, the English built a trading post on the Ocmulgee River, known as Ochese-hatchee (creek), where a dozen towns relocated to escape the Spanish and acquire English trade-goods. They were known as the "Ochese Creek Indians", this was later shortened to "Creek Indians", and applied to all the Muscogee.

In 1704-06, Carolina Governor Col. James Moore led colonial militia and Ochese Creek and Yamasee warriors in raids that destroyed the Spanish missions of the Florida interior; they captured some 10,000 unarmed 'mission Indians,' the Timucua and Apalachee, and sold them into slavery. With Florida depopulated, English traders paid other tribes to attack and enslave the Yamasee, leading to the Yamassee War of 1715-17.

The Ochese Creeks joined the Yamasee, burning trade-posts and raiding back-country settlers. However, the revolt ran low on gunpowder and was put down by Carolinian militia and their Cherokee allies; the Yamasee took refuge in Spanish Florida, the Ochese Creeks fled west to the Chattahoochee. The Yamassee War ended the Indian slave trade, eclipsed by the African slave trade. British economic interest was redirected to the deerskin trade. French Canadian explorers had founded Mobile as the first capital of Louisiana in 1702, and took advantage of the war to build Fort Toulouse at the confluence of the Tallapoosa and Coosa in 1717, trading with the Alabama and Coushatta. Fearing they would come under French influence, the British reopened the deerskin trade with the Lower Creeks, antagonizing the Yamasee, now allies of Spain. The French instigated the Upper Creeks to raid the Lower Creeks. In May 1718, the shrewd 'Emperor' Brim, mico of the powerful Coweta band, 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 de Apalache on Apalachee Bay. In 1721 the British built Fort King George at the mouth of the Altamaha River. As the three European imperial powers established themselves along the borders of Muscogee lands, the latter's strategy of neutrality allowed them to hold the balance of power.

The colony of Georgia was created in 1732; its first settlement, Savannah, was founded in 1733, on a river-bluff where the Yamacraw, a small band allied with the British, had allowed John Musgrove to establish a trading post. His wife Mary Musgrove was the daughter of an English fur trader and a Muscogee mother from the powerful Wind Clan. Her mother was sister to 'Emperor' Brim. Mary Musgrove was the principal interpreter for Georgia's founder and first Governor Gen. James Oglethorpe. She used her connections to foster peace between the Muscogee and the new colony. The deerskin trade grew, and by the 1750s, Savannah exported up to 50,000 deerskins a year.

In 1736, Spanish and British officials established a neutral zone from the Altamaha to the St. Johns River in present-day Florida. They guaranteed Native hunting grounds for the deerskin trade and protected Spanish Florida from further British encroachment. Ca.1750 a group of Hitchiti moved to the neutral zone, after clashing with the Muskogee-speaking towns of the Chattahoochee, where they had fled after the Yamasee War.

Led by Chief Secoffee (Cowkeeper), they became the center of a new tribal confederacy, the Seminole, which grew to include earlier refugees from the Yamasee War, remnants of the 'mission Indians,' and escaped African slaves. Their name comes from the Spanish word cimarrones, which originally referred to a domestic animal that had reverted to the wild. Cimarrones was used by the Spanish and Portuguese to refer to fugitive slaves—"maroon" emerges linguistically from this root as well—and American Indians who fled European invaders. In the Hitchiti language, which lacked an 'r' sound, it became simanoli, and eventually Seminole.

American Revolutionary War

With the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, France lost its North American empire, and British-American settlers moved inland. In 1773 some Lower Creek and Cherokee chiefs ceded two million acres of land to Georgia. Indian discontent led to raids against back-country settlers, 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, and, in general, 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 present-day Tennessee. This alliance was orchestrated by Coushatta Mico Alexander McGillivray, son of Lachlan McGillivray, a wealthy Scottish Loyalist fur-trader and planter whose plantations were confiscated by the revolutionary government of Georgia. His ex-partner, Scots-Irish Patriot fur-trader George Galphin, initially persuaded the Lower Creeks to remain neutral, although Loyalist Capt. William McIntosh led a group of pro-British Hitchiti, and most of the Lower Creeks nominally allied with Britain after the 1779 Capture of Savannah. 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, was 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 an 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. In 1782, an Upper Creek war-party trying to relieve the British garrison at Savannah was routed by Continental Army troops 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. Alexander McGillivray led pan-Indian resistance to white encroachment, receiving arms from the Spanish in Florida to fight trespassers. The bilingual and bicultural McGillivray worked to create a sense of Muscogee nationalism and centralize political 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, recognizing Muscogee control over three million acres of land claimed by Georgia, and guaranteeing access to the British firm Panton, Leslie & Co. which controlled the deerskin trade, while making himself an official representative of Spain. In 1786, a council in Tuckabatchee decided to wage war against white settlers on Muscogee lands. War parties attacked settlers along the Oconee River, and Georgia mobilized its militia. McGillivray refused to negotiate with a state that had confiscated his father's plantations, but 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 directly with the federal government. 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 large portion of their 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 and promises to evict white settlers on Creek lands. McGillivray died in 1793, and with the invention of the cotton gin white settlers on the Southwestern frontier who hoped to become cotton-planters clamored for Indian lands. In 1795, Elijah Clarke and several hundred followers defied the Treaty of New York and established the short-lived Trans-Oconee Republic on Muscogee lands.

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, the 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.

State of Muskogee and William Bowles

Further information: State of Muskogee

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

William Augustus Bowles was born into a wealthy Maryland Tory family, enlisting with the Maryland Loyalists Battalion at age 14 and becoming an ensign 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 Lower Creek towns of the Chattahoochee basin. 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 travelled to London. 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. He established his capital at Miccosuki, a village on the shores of Lake Miccosukee near present-day Tallahassee. It was 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 1796 Second 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, who 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 Mikosuki got lost in the swamps, a second attempt to take San Marcos ended in disaster. After a European armistice led to the loss of British support, Bowles was discredited. The Seminole signed a peace treaty with Spain. The following year, he was betrayed by Lower Creek supporters of Hawkins at a tribal council. They turned Bowles over to the Spanish, and he died in prison in Havana, Cuba two years later.

Acculturation (19th century)

Further information: Five Civilized Tribes

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. 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. 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." 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. 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 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 Lower Creeks ceded their lands east of the Ocmulgee to Georgia, with the exception of the sacred burial mounds of the Ocmulgee Old Fields. They allowed a Federal Road linking New Orleans to Washington, D.C. to be built through their territory. A number of Muscogee chiefs acquired slaves and created cotton plantations, grist mills and businesses along the Federal Road. In 1806, Fort Benjamin Hawkins was built on a hill overlooking the Ocmulgee Old Fields, to protect expanding settlements and serve as a reminder of U.S. rule.

Hawkins was disheartened and shocked by the outbreak of the Creek War, which destroyed his life work of improving the Muscogee quality of life. Hawkins saw much of his work toward building a peace destroyed in 1812. A faction of Muscogee joined the Pan-American Indian movement of Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh, rejecting accommodation with white settlers and adaptation of European-American culture. Although Hawkins personally was never attacked, he was forced to watch an internal civil war among the Muscogee develop into a war with the United States.

A comet, earthquakes, and Tecumseh (1811)

Further information: Great Comet of 1811

Further information: 1812 New Madrid earthquake

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," 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 Indians were filled with great terror ... the trees and wigwams shook exceedingly; the ice which skirted the margin of the Arkansas river was broken into pieces; and the most of the Indians thought that the Great Spirit, angry with the human race, was about to destroy the world.

— - Roger L. Nichols, The American Indian

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.

Red Stick rebellion

Further information: Creek War

Further information: Fort Mims massacre

Menawa was one of the principal leaders of the Red Sticks. After the war, he 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, 1837.

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, and encouraged by British traders, Red Stick leaders such as William Weatherford (Red Eagle), Peter McQueen, and Menawa won the support of the Upper Creek towns. Allied with the British, they opposed 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 Mico William McIntosh, Hawkins' most powerful ally. Their opponents, who sought peaceful relations with white settlers, were known as the White Sticks. 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 Duck River, near Nashville. 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. 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 (north of 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 U.S. soldiers looted what they found, allowing the Red Sticks to regroup and retaliate with a surprise attack that forced the Americans to retreat. 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 carried out a massacre, killing men, women and children. They spared only the black slaves whom they took as captured booty. After the Indians killed nearly 250 at the fort, settlers across the American southwestern frontier were in a panic.

On the morning of August 30, 1813, few of Fort Mims’ defenders stirred in the steaming heat. In the forested shade, the Creeks watched and waited. The fort’s main gate, located on the east side of the stockade, had not been closed by the garrison troops ... No sentries occupied the blockhouse.

— A Short History of the Ft. Mims Massacre of 1813 during the Creek Indian War

The Red Stick victory spread panic throughout the Southeastern United States, and the cry "Remember Fort Mims!" was popular among the public wanting revenge. With Federal troops tied up on the northern front against the British in Canada, the Tennessee, Georgia, and the Mississippi Territory militias were commissioned and invaded the Upper Creek towns. They were joined by 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, 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.

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, 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. It ended the war and required the tribe 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 created largely from the Red Sticks' domain and was admitted to the United States in 1819.

WHEREAS an unprovoked, inhuman, and sanguinary war, waged by the hostile Creeks against the United States, hath been repelled, prosecuted and determined, successfully, on the part of the said States, in conformity with principles of national justice and honorable warfare-- And whereas consideration is due to the rectitude of proceeding dictated by instructions relating to the re-establishment of peace: Be it remembered, that prior to the conquest of that part of the Creek nation hostile to the United States, numberless aggressions had been committed against the peace, the property, and the lives of citizens of the United States ...

— Treaty of Fort Jackson, 1814

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

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. 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 Upper and Lower Creeks, partly because the later tribes intended to enslave the Black Seminoles. Instead, the Seminole agreed to move onto a reservation in inland central Florida.

Treaties of Indian Springs

Charles Bird King's portrait of William McIntosh.

Mico William McIntosh 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. 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, but later in the decade, he came 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.

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.

By 1836, when extensive Creek removal was underway, Eneah Emathala emerged as leader of the Lower Creeks ... their desire was only to be left alone in their homeland ... Gen. Winfield Scott was ordered to capture Eneah Emathala ... Captured with Emathala were some one thousand other person ... their [racial] colors were black, red, and white ...

— Burt & Ferguson- Indians of the Southeast: Then and Now

American Civil War (1861)

See also: Indian Territory in the American Civil War

Members of the Creek Nation in Oklahoma around 1877. They included men of mixed Creek, European and African ancestry.

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. They became known as Loyalists, and many were members of the traditional Snake band in the latter part of the century.

Because the majority of the Creek did support the Confederacy, the US government required a new treaty with the nation in 1866. It required the emancipation of slaves (who were then called Creek Freedmen) and admitting them as full members and citizens of the Creek Nation. It also set aside part of the Creek lands for assignment to the freedmen. Many of the tribe resisted these changes, and the loss of lands contributed to problems for the nation in the late nineteenth century.

The Loyalists among the Creeks tended to be traditionalists. They formed the core of a band that became known as the Snakes, which also included many freedmen. They resisted the extinguishing of tribal government and break-up of communal tribal lands enacted by Congress with the Dawes Commission of 1892. These efforts were part of the US government's attempt to impose assimilation on the tribes, and also to remove barriers to the Indian Territory's achieving statehood. European-American settlers had moved into the area and pressed for statehood and access to some of the tribal lands.

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:

Treaty	Year	Signed with	Where	Purpose	Ceded Land
Treaty of Savannah	1733	Colony of Georgia	?	?	?
Treaty of Coweta Town	1739	Colony of Georgia	?	?	?
Treaty of Savannah	1757	Colony of Georgia	?	?	?
Treaty of New York	1790	United States	New York City	Boundaries defined, Civilization of Creek, Animosities to cease	?
Treaty of Colerain	1796	United States	Colerain (Camden County, Georgia)	Boundary lines, Animosities to cease	?
Treaty of Fort Wilkinson	1802	United States	Fort Wilkinson	Land cession	?
Treaty of Washington	1805	?	?	?	?
Treaty of Fort Jackson	1814	United States	Fort Jackson near Wetumpka, Alabama	Land cession	23 million acres (93,000 km2)
Treaty of the Creek Agency	1818	?	?	?	?
Treaty of the Indian Spring	1821	?	?	?	?
Treaty of Indian Springs	1825	?	?	?	?
Treaty of Washington	1826	?	?	?	?
Treaty of the Creek Indian Agency	1827	?	?	?	?
Treaty of Washington	1832	?	?	?	?
Treaty With The Creeks	1833	?	?	?	?
Treaty With The Creeks	1838	?	?	?	?
Treaty With The Creeks And Seminole	1845	?	?	?	?
Treaty With The Creeks	1854	?	?	?	?
Treaty With The Creeks, Etc.,	1856	?	?	?	?
Treaty With The Creeks	1866	?	?	?	?

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.

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.

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. Kialegee Tribal Town is also headquartered in Wetumka, and Tiger Hobia is the current mekko or chief. The Thlopthlocco Tribal Town is headquartered in Okemah, Oklahoma. George Scott is the tribe's mekko.

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.

State Recognized Tribes

Alabama:
Cher-O-Creek Intra Tribal Indians
Ma-Chis Lower Creek Indian Tribe of Alabama (petitioned for federal recognition 6/27/83, acknowledgment declined 8/18/88)[1]
Star Clan of Muscogee Creeks

Georgia:
Lower Muskogee Creek Tribe (East of the Mississippi) (petitioned for federal recognition 2/2/72, acknowledgment declined 12/21/81) [2]

Non-Recognized Tribes

Alabama:
Principal Creek Indian Nation East of the Mississippi (petitioned 6/10/86)

Florida:
Creeks East of the Mississippi (petitioned 3/21/73, acknowledgment denied 12/21/81)
Florida Tribe of East Creeks
Perdido Bay Tribe of Southeastern Lower Muscogee Creeks Indians [3]

Texas:
Creek Indians of Texas at Red Oak

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).
• James McHenry (1818–1883), 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

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
• 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
• France Winddance Twine, sociologist
• Carrie Underwood (b. 1983), country singer

Up and Coming Artists

• Cynthia Goodrich (b. 1960), (Muscogee Wind Clan-Choctaw) noted for her dancing performance in The Spirit of Pocahontas Stage Show at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. Studied ballet under renowned Oklahoma Native American Prima Ballerina Moscelyn Larkin and her husband Roman Jasinksi of the Tulsa Civic Ballet.

See also

• African-Native Americans
• Battle of Burnt Corn
• Chickamauga wars
• Creek mythology
• List of sites and peoples visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition
• Ocmulgee National Monument
• One-Drop Rule
• Opothleyahola
• Stomp dance

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

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.) (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 14: Southeast. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 373–392. OCLC 57192264. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Worth, John E. (2000). "The Lower Creeks: Origins and Early History". In Bonnie G. McEwan (ed.) (ed.). Indians of the Greater Southeast: Historical Archaeology and Ethnohistory. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. pp. 265–298. OCLC 49414753. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)

External links

• 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