The Creek are an American Indian people originally from the southeastern United States, also known by their original name Muscogee (or Muskogee), the name they use to identify themselves today.^[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 Creek branch of the Muskogean language family. The Seminole are close kin to the Muscogee and speak a Creek language as well. The Creeks were considered one of the Five Civilized Tribes.

History

Creek Indians are well known for there mound building ancestors, as mentioned and explained in this next article.

Selocta (or Shelocta) was a Muscogee chief.

The Lower Towns included Coweta, Cusseta (Kasihta, Cofitachiqui), Upper Chehaw (Chiaha), Hitchiti, Oconee, Ocmulgee, Okawaigi, Apalachee, Yamasee (Altamaha), Ocfuskee, Sawokli, and Tamali. The Upper Towns 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 the two principal towns of the Creek Nation to this day. Traditionally the Cusseta and Coweta bands are considered the earliest members of the Creek Nation.^[3]

Revolutionary era

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

Like many Native American groups east of the Mississippi and Louisiana Rivers, Creeks were divided over which side to take in the American Revolutionary War. The Lower Creeks remained neutral; the Upper Creeks allied with the British and fought the Americans.

After the war officially ended in 1783, the Creeks discovered Great Britain had ceded Creek lands to the new United States. The state of Georgia began to expand into Creek territory. Creek statesman Alexander McGillivray rose to prominence as he organized pan-Indian resistance to this encroachment and received arms from the Spanish in Florida to fight trespassing Georgians. McGillivray worked to create a sense of Creek nationalism and to centralize Creek authority, struggling against village leaders who individually sold land to the United States. With the Treaty of New York in 1790, McGillivray ceded a significant portion of Creek lands to the United States under the administration of George Washington in exchange for federal recognition of Creek sovereignty within the remaining territory. However, McGillivray died in 1793, and Georgia continued to expand into Creek territory.

English adventurer William Augustus Bowles was elected director general of the State of Muskogee by a congress of Creeks and Seminoles in 1799. With both Spain and the USA claiming the land Bowles hoped to be able to create their own independent nation, the State of Muskogee.

First to Civilize

Benjamin Hawkins, seen here on his plantation, teaches Creek Native Americans how to use European technology. Painted in 1805.

George Washington (first U.S. President) and Henry Knox (first U.S. Secretary of War) proposed the cultural transformation of Native Americans.^[4] Washington believed that Native Americans were equals but that their society was inferior. He formulated a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process, and Thomas Jefferson continued it.^[5] Noted historian Robert Remini wrote "they 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."^[6] 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.^[7]

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 Creeks. 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, he would meet 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. When a fort was built, in 1806, to protect expanding settlements, just east of modern Macon, Georgia, it was named Fort Benjamin Hawkins.

Hawkins was dis-heartened and shocked with the Creek War which destroyed his life work of improving Creek Native Americans quality of life. Hawkins saw much of his work toward building a peace destroyed in 1812. A group of Creeks, led by Tecumseh were 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 Creeks, the war with a faction known as the Red Sticks, and their eventual defeat by Andrew Jackson.

Red Stick War

Menawa visited 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 Creek 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, Creeks from the Upper Towns, known to the Americans as Red Sticks, sought to aggressively resist white immigration and the "civilizing programs" administered by U.S. Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins. Red Stick leaders William Weatherford (Red Eagle), Peter McQueen and Menawa violently clashed with the Lower Creeks led by William McIntosh, who were allied with the Americans.

On August 30, 1813, Red Sticks led by Red Eagle attacked the American outpost of Fort Mims near Mobile, Alabama, where white Americans and their Indian allies had gathered. The Red Sticks took the fort, and a bloody clash ensued, as prisoners — including women and children — were killed. Nearly 250 people were killed, spreading panic throughout the American southwestern frontier.

In response to the massacre at Fort Mims, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Mississippi Territory sent armies deep into Creek country. Outnumbered and poorly armed, the Red Sticks put up a desperate fight from their wilderness strongholds. On March 27, 1814, General Andrew Jackson's Tennessee militia, aided by the 39th U. S. Infantry Regiment and Cherokee and Creek allies, finally crushed Red Stick resistance at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River.

Flag of the dissolved Creek Nation located in Alabama, Georgia, and parts of Tenessee.

Though the Red Sticks had been crushed — altogether, about 3,000 Upper Creeks died in the war — the remnants of the Upper Creek resistance held out for several months. In August 1814, exhausted and starving, they surrendered to Jackson at Wetumpka (near the present city of Montgomery, Alabama). On August 9, 1814, the Creeks were forced to sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which ended the conflict and required them to cede some 20 million acres (81,000 km˛) of land—more than half of their ancestral territorial holdings—to the United States. Even those Creek who had fought alongside Jackson were compelled to cede territory, because Jackson held them responsible for allowing the Red Sticks to rise up. The state of Alabama was carved out of this domain and was admitted to the United States in 1819.

Many Creeks, who refused to surrender, escaped to Florida in the aftermath of the war, some of them allied with Florida Indians (who eventually become collectively called the Seminoles) and British against the Americans. They were involved in both sides of the Seminole War in Florida.

Present

A Creek U.S. Army soldier preparing frybread during a 2004 pow-wow in Iraq.

Most Muscogees were removed to Indian Territory, although some remained behind. There are Muscogees in Alabama living near Poarch Creek Reservation in Atmore (northeast of Mobile), as well as Creeks in essentially undocumented ethnic towns in Florida. The Alabama reservation includes a bingo hall and holds an annual powwow on Thanksgiving. Additionally, Muscogee descendants of varying degrees of acculturation live throughout the southeastern United States. The tribal government operates a budget in excess of $106 million, has over 2,400 employees, and maintains tribal facilities and programs in eight administrative districts. The nation operates several significant tribal enterprises, including the Muscogee Document Imaging Company; travel plazas in Okmulgee, Muskogee and Cromwell, Oklahoma; construction, technology and staffing services; and major casinos in Tulsa and Okmulgee. The tribal population is fully integrated into the larger culture and economy of Oklahoma, with Muscogee Nation citizens making significant contributions in every field of endeavor, while continuing to preserve and share a vibrant tribal identity through events such as annual festivals, ball-games, and language classes. The Stomp Dance and Green Corn Ceremony are both highly revered gatherings and rituals that have largely remained non public and not by coincidence "Pure". The Nation's historic old Council House, built in 1878 and located in downtown Okmulgee, was completely restored in the 1990s and now serves as a museum of tribal history.

Famous Creek

• Lt. Col. Ernest Childers, First American Indian to Receive World War II Congressional Medal of Honorhttp://www.medalofhonor.com/ErnestChilders.htm
• William McIntosh, Lower Creek Mico http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McIntosh http://chiefmcintosh.com/
• Acee Blue Eagle, artist.
• Johnnie Diacon, artist, Thlopthlocco Tribal Town (Raprakko Etvlwv), Deer Clan (Ecovlke).
• Joy Harjo, Native American poet.
• Retha Gambaro, artist.
• Suzan Shown Harjo
• Jim Pepper, jazz musician.
• Will Sampson, film actor, noted for his performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).
• Synyster Gates, lead guitar player from the band Avenged sevenfold has Creek ancestry.
• Frank Van Zant, who also went by the name Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder. He built and lived in the Thunder Mountain Indian Monument in Imlay, Nevada.^[8]
• Jack Jacobs, football player
• James McHenry, Confederate Major, Methodist minister, and important Creek leader
• Cynthia Leitich Smith, Children's book author noted for "Jingle Dancer"
• Thomas Francis Meagher, Jr. (cousin of Brig. Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher) Creek Historian, Rough Rider
• Micah Ian Wright, film, television & videogame writer, chair of the Writers Guild of America's American Indian Writers Committee.
• Carrie Underwood, country singer.
• William Harjo LoneFight, noted Native American author, entrepreneur and nationally known expert in the revitalization of Native American Languages and Cultural Traditions.

See also

• Cherokee Indians
• African-Native Americans
• Creek language
• Creek mythology
• Native American tribe
• Native Americans in the United States
• Gallery of Native Americans with facial hair
• Ocmulgee National Monument
• One-Drop Rule
• Opothleyahola
• List of sites and peoples visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition

Notes

1. ↑ Transcribed documents Sequoyah Research Center and the American Native Press Archives
2. ↑
3. ↑ Transcribed documents Sequoyah Research Center and the American Native Press Archives
4. ↑
5. ↑
6. ↑
7. ↑
8. ↑ Background of Thunder Mountain Monument, thundermountainmonument.com, Retrieved on 2007-11-26.

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

External links

• Perdido Bay Tribe of Creek Indians
• 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
• Lewis and James McHenry
• "Fife Family Cemetery," ''Southern Spaces'' -- a short film on Creek Christian burial practices

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