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The Creeks 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. Mvskoke is their name in traditional spelling. Modern Muscogees live primarily in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Florida. 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 are one of the Five Civilized Tribes.
Flag of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation
Removal to the West
After the War of 1812, some Creek leaders such as William McIntosh signed a number of treaties that ceded more and more land to Georgia. Eventually, the Creek Confederacy enacted a law that made further land cessions a capital offense. Nevertheless, on February 12, 1825, McIntosh and other chiefs signed the Treaty of Indian Springs, which gave up most of the remaining Creek lands in Georgia. [1]
McIntosh was a cousin of Georgia governor George Troup, who saw the Creeks as a threat to white expansion in the region, and had been elected for the Democratic party on a platform of Indian removal. McIntosh's motives have been variously interpreted. Some believed he had been bribed to sell out his people; others insisted he had realized that the Creeks were going to lose their lands eventually, and that he got the best possible deal for them. [2] After the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty, McIntosh was assassinated (31 May 1825) by Creeks led by Menawa. (Major Ridge of the Cherokees later made the same choices as McIntosh, and paid the same price.)
The Creek National Council, led by Opothle Yohola, protested to the United States that the Treaty of Indian Springs was fraudulent. President John Quincy Adams was sympathetic, and eventually the treaty was nullified in a new agreement, the Treaty of Washington (1826). [3] Writes historian R. Douglas Hurt: "The Creeks had accomplished what no Indian nation had ever done or would do again — achieve the annulment of a ratified treaty."1
However, Governor Troup of Georgia ignored the new treaty and began to forcibly remove the Indians under the terms of the earlier treaty. At first, President Adams attempted to intervene with federal troops, but Troup called out the militia, and Adams, fearful of a civil war, conceded. As he explained to his intimates, "The Indians are not worth going to war over."
Although the Creeks had been forced from Georgia, with many Lower Creeks moving to the Indian Territory, there were still about 20,000 Upper Creeks living in Alabama. However, the state moved to abolish tribal governments and extend state laws over the Creeks. Opothle Yohola appealed to the administration of President Andrew Jackson for protection from Alabama; when none was forthcoming, the Treaty of Cusseta was signed on 24 March 1832, which divided up Creek lands into individual allotments. [4] Creeks could either sell their allotments and received funds to remove to the west, or stay in Alabama and submit to state laws. Land speculators and squatters began to defraud Creeks out of their allotments, and violence broke out, leading to the so-called "Creek War of 1836." Secretary of War Lewis Cass dispatched General Winfield Scott to end the violence by forcibly removing the Creeks to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
The official website of the Muscogees describes the next phase in their history:
- In the new nation the Lower Muscogees located their farms and plantations on the Arkansas and Verdigris rivers. The Upper Muscogees re-established their ancient towns on the Canadian River and its northern branches. The tribal towns of both groups continued to send representatives to a National Council which met near High Springs. The Muscogee Nation as a whole began to experience a new prosperity. [5]
The Muscogee Today
Most Muscogees were removed to Indian Territory, although some remained behind. There are a number of Muscogees in Alabama living near Poarch Creek Reservation in Atmore (northeast of Mobile), as well as a number of Creeks in essentially undocumented ethnic towns in Florida. Additionally, Muscogee descendants of varying degrees of acculturation live throughout the southeastern United States. The reservation includes a bingo hall and holds an annual powwow on Thanksgiving.
Though the Creek Confederacy was one of the largest Native groups, their unpopularity after the Creek War may have made them more likely to attempt assimilation into other tribes and white culture.
See also
Notes
Note 1: Hurt, R. Douglas, The Indian Frontier: 1763-1846 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), p. 148.
External links
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