Creek Indians Research Articles

A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, The Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South by Peter Cozzens (review)

A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, The Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South by Peter Cozzens (review)

The Old Federal Road in Alabama: An Illustrated Guide by Kathryn H. Braund, Gregory A. Waselkov, and Raven M. Christopher

Reviewed by: The Old Federal Road in Alabama: An Illustrated Guide by Kathryn H. Braund, Gregory A. Waselkov, and Raven M. Christopher Christine E. Sears The Old Federal Road in Alabama: An Illustrated Guide. By Kathryn H. Braund, Gregory A. Waselkov, and Raven M. Christopher. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2019. 176 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-8173-5930-0. The Old Federal Road in Alabama is a vivid and witty travel companion. The first part tells the history of the Old Federal Road and the second lays out a guide for touring Alabama’s Old Federal Road. The work blends historical context with the experiential to connect us to a time during which the “land and its people were remade” (93). The first section draws on recent scholarship on Creek Indians in the Southeast to provide a succinct and inclusive history of the ancient path that would one day become a road. The foundation was “laid by Indian feet” (7) which used the path for generations. Deer skin traders and native peoples traversed the footpath up to the Seven Years’ War. At war’s end in 1763, the Spanish and French were ejected while the British set up trading posts in Mobile and Pensacola, making “formerly minor paths to the Gulf Coast … major routes” (11). After the American Revolution, American settlers charged into what are now Georgia and Tennessee, straining Creek-US relations. The US government demanded road and waterways through Creek territory while pushing a “civilization policy” (12) to transform Creeks and other Indians into settled farmers. Creeks, through whose land much of the Old Federal Road passed, farmed proficiently and had already selectively adopted many Anglo practices. The authors give ample time to Creek resistance to Americans passing through and squatting on their land, as well as to those Creeks who leveraged the needs of travelers for their own gain. The broad outlines of nineteenth-century changes are likely familiar, but the authors, by anchoring their work around the road, add important depth to that outline. Readers will not be surprised that the Louisiana Purchase instigated a transformation along the worn path. But not just Anglo settlers journeyed to the new territory. The federal government and military needed improved access to the territory for communication and defense, particularly in regard [End Page 256] to the real prize of the Purchase, the port of New Orleans. Further, the Creek were not completely sidelined by Anglo immigration in the early 1800s. Many travelers hired Creek Indians as post riders. Creeks, like Samuel Moniac, constructed houses on the route to provide fresh horses, fodder, and a stopping place on the unpopulated roadway. The year 1811 proved a pivot point in pushing the “barely tolerable path” (5) to a wheel-worthy road. Importantly, the authors highlight the federal government’s role in this change. In 1811, the US Army widened the trail and built bridges along it. In the early 1800s, the government forced Creeks to cede much of their land. And whites increasingly owned the inns and stage stops along the road while Creeks were relegated to menial jobs. The Old Federal Road, the authors note, was a “conduit that enabled both immigration and deportation” (90), moving Creek inhabitants out and cotton planters with enslaved peoples in. The United States had transformed the area from Creek territory to the Cotton South. The work is enlivened with carefully chosen illustrations that are equally inclusive. A detailed 1773 French map of Louisiana (10) highlights existing Indian trails, including some that became the Alabama Old Federal Road. An 1802 Georgia passport giving a white man permission to travel through Creek Nation territory (17) indicates Creek control of their land. Multiple illustrations of Creek Indians give faces and form to Creeks living along the path (64-65). Photos of the contemporary landscape add life to the tour guide section of the work. My favorite is the photo of an evening primrose (139), a flower written about by William Bartram, who traveled to the area in 1775. The lovely primrose grows only around Stockton, Alabama. The book’s second part is sub-divided into three sections—into the Eastern, Central, and Southern segments...

Beyond Cuckoo’s Nest, or Composing one’s book

The author reflects on her personal acquaintance and pen friendship with Zoe C. Escobar (1948–2021), an American ‘one-book writer.’ Escobar’s own biography and the writing process behind Beyond Cuckoo’s Nest: The Art and Life of William ‘Sonny’ Sampson, Jr., her book on the Muscogee Creek Indian cowboy, actor and artist, are presented in the form of lively conversations between herself and the author of the article, accompanied by depictions of the private life of Native Americans in the period spanning the second half of the 20th and the early 21st cc. The article particularly focuses on the origin of the nonprofit American Indian Registry for the Performing Arts in Hollywood, founded by Escobar, who also served as its first executive director, as well as Escobar’s personal and work relationship with the actor, artist and Native Americans’ spiritual leader Will Sampson, whose most memorable role was that of Chief Bromden in M. Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The author of the article chooses the format of a case study to explore several technical aspects of the creative process and construct Z. Escobar’s and W. Sampson’s psychological portraits.

Back “Poarch” Politics: States, “States,” and Indigenous Sovereignty in Alabama

AbstractThe Poarch Band of Creek Indians provides a complex look into the negotiation of heritage from a tribal nation. While Poarch operates a successful gaming business, Alabama has not been supportive of this exertion of sovereignty, particularly given its location in the Bible Belt. While Poarch has always operated legally under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (1988), Alabama has often attempted to deny the Poarch Creeks the rights to gaming that it may freely grant business owners with relationships to state government officials. Given that scholars have argued that there is a shift toward heritage “as a discourse and system of values” (Geismar 78), this paper explores how Poarch has differentiated their system of values from others seeking to operate gaming facilities in Alabama. Through the examination of the PR campaigns put forth by the tribe this paper will consider how each of these examples has contributed to showcasing Poarch Creek heritage and the Poarch Creek system of values to the larger Alabama public. I argue that the Poarch Creeks have been forced to present a type of heritage and values that are palatable in larger Alabamian politics and able to sway public opinion, particularly of the religious right.

Kevin Kokomoor. Of One Mind and Of One Government: The Rise and Fall of the Creek Nation in the Early Republic; Bryan C. Rindfleisch. George Galphin’s Intimate Empire: The Creek Indians, Family, and Colonialism in Early America.

K<scp>evin</scp> K<scp>okomoor</scp>. <i>Of One Mind and Of One Government: The Rise and Fall of the Creek Nation in the Early Republic</i>; B<scp>ryan</scp> C. R<scp>indfleisch</scp>. <i>George Galphin’s Intimate Empire: The Creek Indians, Family, and Colonialism in Early America</i>.

George Galphin's Intimate Empire: The Creek Indians, Family, and Colonialism in Early America

George Galphin's Intimate Empire: The Creek Indians, Family, and Colonialism in Early America

“More Advantageous to Be with Spaniards”: Gunpowder and Creek–Spanish Encounters in Cuba, 1763– 1783

This research investigates Creek Indian and Spanish encounters in Cuba, exploring the ways in which Natives looked beyond the Southeast for access to commodities following the Seven Years’ War. It uses gunpowder as a lens to examine how ongoing Creek–Spanish relations shaped gender dynamics, personal relationships, local-level politics, and cultural structures within the Confederacy while simultaneously impacting Spanish geopolitics in the Atlantic World. This research seeks to better understand how Creek efforts to acquire gunpowder through formal processes of encounter and exchange in Cuba benefited both the aims of Indigenous leaders and Spanish officials during an era of change for both cultures.

A pattern of violence: Muscogee (Creek Indian) women in the eighteenth century and today’s MMIWG – the missing and murdered indigenous women & girls

ABSTRACT This article details how the current epidemic of violence against Indigenous women in North America – as well as Native-led movements like Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls (MMIWG) – is connected to and rooted in the historical past. Using the case of the Muscogee (Creek) peoples and their interactions with the Spanish, French, English, and Americans in the eighteenth-century, this manuscript grapples with the acts of sexual violence enacted by Euro-Americans, how Muscogee men and women responded to such violence, and the legacies of such violence today. The author intends to spark a conversation among historians, particularly scholars of the American South, to finally extend the conversations about sexual violence to the history of Indigenous Peoples.

George Galphin's Intimate Empire: The Creek Indians, Family, and Colonialism in Early America by Bryan C. Rindfleisch

George Galphin's Intimate Empire: The Creek Indians, Family, and Colonialism in Early America by Bryan C. Rindfleisch

George Galphin’s Intimate Empire: The Creek Indians, Family, and Colonialism in Early America by Bryan C. Rindfleisch

George Galphin’s Intimate Empire: The Creek Indians, Family, and Colonialism in Early America by Bryan C. Rindfleisch

Bending Their Way Onward: Creek Indian Removal in Documents

Bending Their Way Onward: Creek Indian Removal in Documents

Bending Their Way Onward: Creek Indian Removal in Documents ed. by Christopher D. Haveman

Bending Their Way Onward: Creek Indian Removal in Documents ed. by Christopher D. Haveman

The Failure of Political Centralization: Mad Dog, the Creek Indians, and the Politics of Claiming Power in the American Revolutionary Era

The Failure of Political Centralization: Mad Dog, the Creek Indians, and the Politics of Claiming Power in the American Revolutionary Era

My Land Is My Flesh: Silver Bluff, the Creek Indians, and the Transformation of Colonized Space in Early America

My Land Is My Flesh: Silver Bluff, the Creek Indians, and the Transformation of Colonized Space in Early America

Natives, Women, Debtors, and Slaves: Christian Priber's American Utopia

Natives, Women, Debtors, and SlavesChristian Priber's American Utopia Eric E. Bowne (bio) and Crystal A. Bowne (bio) Between 1736 and 1743 Christian Gottlieb Priber, a German lawyer and intellectual living among the Overhill Cherokees, attempted to form a republic of Indian nations that has been variously described as a "lost utopia" or a "new red empire."1 Priber married into the family of a prominent Cherokee leader and came to be an influential man himself, advising the Overhill towns to embrace both French and British traders but not to part with any more of their land. He also taught them how to build and operate their own steelyards so as not to be cheated by European merchants, and he promised to bring someone to the Cherokee country who could teach them how to make their own gunpowder. In 1738, after having received a number of inflammatory letters from Priber (which he signed as secretary of state), the Charles Town council sent forces to arrest the German, but the Cherokees would not allow it. For the next five years Priber worked to establish his vision of society, a society that embraced liberty and equality for all its members—male and female; black, white, and red; princes, paupers, and slaves alike. Priber was finally apprehended by the English in 1743 while attempting to recruit the Creek Indians into his "empire," and he was taken along with all his papers to Fort Frederica on the Georgia coast, where he apparently "died in Goal."2 Priber, a man who, on the one hand, "spoke Latin, French, Spanish, and German fluently and English brokenly" and had the education and upbringing to entertain the gentlemen of Frederica and, on the other hand, "ate, drank, slept, danced, dressed, and painted himself with the Indians, so that it was not easy to distinguish him from the natives," has long intrigued students of southern colonial history.3 Yet although [End Page 56] Priber has been referenced in dozens of secondary sources throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, only four papers of original scholarship concerning Priber have been published in English, the most recent of which appeared over forty years ago.4 Those papers give us a tantalizing glimpse of Priber's history, motives, and actions but leave much unanswered. To be sure, some of our questions are unanswerable, but the available evidence, sparse as it is, can be taken further. We can begin to tackle some of the most important questions by contextualizing Priber's story. What was Priber really trying to do, and what were his inspirations? Why did he choose to carry out his experiment in America among the Cherokees? How did Priber gain acceptance among his Native hosts? What did the Cherokees think of him, and how did they influence his vision? Why did South Carolina officials fear him? How close did Priber come to succeeding, and what stopped him? The primary sources regarding Priber are limited in the extreme. In addition to being briefly mentioned in a number of colonial records, letters, and newspapers, Priber is discussed in more detail in only half a dozen sources. Ludovick Grant, an English trader with a factory in the Overhill towns, sent an account of the German to the council in Charles Town, informing them of the politics he was espousing among the people of the nation.5 Antoine Bonnefay spent a considerable amount of time with Priber between February 13 and April 29, 1743, while Bonnefay was a prisoner of the Cherokees.6 The published journal of his experiences includes the fullest description of Priber's plan that remains, along with a few tantalizing hints of the German's history.7 James Adair, an English trader who corresponded with him for part of a year in 1738–39, devoted three pages to Priber in his book The History of the American Indians, published in 1775, including a detailed (perhaps eye-witness) description of the second failed attempt to arrest the German in 1739.8 A journalist known only by his nom de plume, Americus, spoke with Priber at length over a period of several months during his captivity at Fort Frederica in 1743–44. The...

Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South by Christopher D. Haveman

Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South by Christopher D. Haveman

Picturing Indian Territory: Portraits of the Land that Became Oklahomaed. by B. Byron Price

Reviewed by: Picturing Indian Territory: Portraits of the Land that Became Oklahomaed. by B. Byron Price Sam Ratcliffe Picturing Indian Territory: Portraits of the Land that Became Oklahoma. Edited by B. Byron Price. ( Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Pp. 160. Illustrations, bibliography, index.) This engaging book provides a valuable visual overview of life in Indian Territory, while also chronicling the activities of well- and lesser-known painters there. In the first of the book's three essays, "Indian Territory, 1819–1861: Romanticism and the Spirit of Discovery," James Peck demonstrates how artists reflected the interplay of Romanticism and scientific inquiry that characterized American military expeditions in the West, though occasionally over-interpreting a few of their works. The vanguard of these, Thomas Nuttall, Samuel Seymour, and Titian R. Peale, focused on geographical features and wildlife. Fifteen years later, George Catlin arrived to gather material for much of his career's artistic output. Another well-known painters of American Indian life, John Mix Stanley, in three years of intermittent visits, not only executed Indian portraits but also produced International Indian Council (Held at Tallequah [sic], Indian Territory, in 1843), a companion to his Tehuacana Creek Indian Council of the same year in Texas. Heinrich Baldwin Moellhausen, a draftsman and topographer and the last significant artist to work in the territory before the Civil War, concentrated on architectural and natural features. In the second essay, "Indian Territory, 1861–1907: Turmoil and Transition," B. Byron Price notes that while the area was of relatively little strategic value in the Civil War, it soon saw conflict between the U.S. Army and various tribes. Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer's surprise attack on an Indian village on the Washita River in November 1868 was illustrated by Harper's Weekly correspondent Theodore Davis as well as by other publications. Four months later, artist Vincent Colyer arrived as a member of the U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners. In addition to several Indian portraits, his pencil sketches and watercolors depicted distinctive landforms and at least one military installation. Railroads soon facilitated reporting from the region, as exemplified by James W. Champney's illustrations in Scribner's Monthly (1873) and others by Paul Frenzeny and Jules Tavernier in Harper's Weekly (1874). In what would become western Oklahoma, CarlJ. A. Hunnius, a German artist, sketched forts and settlements while on an 1876 surveying trip. American magazines sent a trio of artist-reporters in 1888: Frederic Remington (Century Magazine), Rufus Zogbaum (who worked for Harper's Weekly and was considered Remington's equal), and [End Page 335] the somewhat lesser-known George Foster (Leslie's). Price notes the symbiotic relationship between army and artist, exemplified by artist Henry Farny's joining General Nelson Miles on an inspection tour of the territory in 1894. Centering his activity at Fort Sill, Farny produced several portraits, including one of Geronimo, autographed by the sitter. Three years later, the president of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History sent his nephew, E. A. Burbank, to execute a portrait of Geronimo. Finally, Price discusses the earliest efforts of homegrown Oklahoma artists and of New Jersey artist Charles Schreyvogel's paintings depicting Custer's "Battle of the Washita," which Remington criticized as inaccurate. The third essay, Mark Andrew White's "On to Oklahoma: Reportage, Spectacle, and Statehood," focuses on "land runs" in the 1880s and 1890s that opened the territory to settlement by non-Indians. Using newspaper and magazine illustrations, White details the frequent efforts by "boom-ers" to settle there illegally and on their confrontations with the U.S. military. "Reportage" bled into "spectacle" when Buffalo Bill included the colorful boomer David Payne in advertising for his Wild West show. Such spectacle reached its zenith in 1888 when the Wichita (Kansas) Board of Trade enlisted one of Buffalo Bill's most popular performers, Major Gordon William Lillie ("Pawnee Bill"), to renew efforts to open Oklahoma to settlement. However, Congress acted first, authorizing the first of five land runs in April 1889. White uses promotional literature, city views, and photographs effectively to convey the speed and skill with which settlers built new towns like Guthrie and Oklahoma City. Depictions of western Oklahoma...

Christopher D. Haveman. Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South.

Christopher D. Haveman. Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South.

The Triumph of the Ecunnau-Nuxulgee: Land Speculators, George M. Troup, State Rights, and the Removal of the Creek Indians from Georgia and Alabama, 1825–38

The Triumph of the Ecunnau-Nuxulgee: Land Speculators, George M. Troup, State Rights, and the Removal of the Creek Indians from Georgia and Alabama, 1825–38

Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South

Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South