by Adam Oliver
By the early 1800s, factionalism within the Creek Nation and a deep
dependence on European goods, particularly gunpowder, had already weakened
the Muskogee way of life beyond rectification. Although construction of
the invasive Federal Road can be viewed as the end of Creek Nation’s autonomy
outside of white dominance, the European trade tether was an earlier, more
powerful tool of control. The loose confederate ties that allowed it to
volley conflicting white powers (England, U.S., France, and Spain) off
of each other destroyed the possibility of an autonomous Creek Nation outside
of the United States. The internal weakness of the Muskogees perhaps began
long before a U.S. presence on the eastern seaboard. Instead of a road,
we can look to the gun. The gun did not necessarily change the war style
or discipline of the Creeks. However, because of gunpowder, this powerful
Nation was unable to rely on its own goods and products such as furs, to
support trade. Guns, bullets, and gunpowder were domestic tools that rapidly
changed the social and political structure of Creek society. These goods
destroyed the Muskogee way of life more effectively and far earlier than
any road cut through the Old Southwest. These tools were not produced by
the Muskogee but could not be abandoned, either. The buckskin trade of
the Southeast had expanded so much that the men in villages were forced
to travel farther from their traditional hunting grounds in order to bring
in greater quantities to trade for gunpowder, munitions, and rum. So great
was the Creek dependence on European trade that by the American Revolution,
Muskogee support could be swayed by the availability of gunpowder. In fact,
the Creek Nation remained officially neutral throughout the war. Despite
unofficial national alliances, most Creek sentiment swayed according to
the Panton, Leslie, and Company traders of Pensacola. The factors contributing
to the degradation of the Muskogee way of life present one with a blueprint
for the destruction of autonomy.
By the sixteenth century, the Creek Confederacy stood at the
forefront of politics in North America. Praised for their warriors and
courted by the Spanish, French, and English empires, the Muskogees were
treated as prominent allies, key for the control of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi,
and Louisiana. The word Nation may imply solidarity of a people. Although
the Muskogees certainly were a distinct people with their own language,
customs, and government, they were not isolated in North America and were
certainly not exclusionists or without internal struggles. It is important
to understand the complexities of this culture in order to appreciate the
dynamics that brought about the destruction of their autonomy.
The Muskogee Way, or Nene Muskogee, balances on the principle of a
duality of nature. For the Creeks, the universe is divided into the opposing
forces of order and chaos, represented by female and male, respectively.
These two poles could not exist alone. In the middle is life, as we know
it. Within life, duality is just as prominent as in the universe. The Muskogees
were divided into the Upper Creeks along the Tallapoosa River and Lower
Creeks along the Chattaoochee River. Within these regions were autonomous
towns and within those towns were matrilineal clans. These towns were either
white, “peace,” or red, “war” towns. Some of these towns sent delegates
to National Councils in prominent towns of either region. Clans comprised
towns and were the source of internal factionalism. Emotional ties and
fear of retaliation kept rival factions that would inevitably clash, at
bay. The individual did not act alone or speak alone, rather the weight
of responsibility fell upon his or her clan. Isolation from the clan could
be a penalty causing great distress.1
While the Creeks were a powerful nation, their loose confederation
allowed for the acceptance of many outside groups such as the Natchez,
the Savannah, the Apalachicolas, and even the English. This inclusion was
not obsequious for the Creeks, instead, it was a common display of military
and political superiority with a framework of rituals for acceptance. The
Muskogee, while sometimes Balkanized, were also unified by the Busk (this
is an English corruption of the word poskita 2 ). This
ceremony is a fast four times a year that lasted four to eight days each
time. Feasts followed these fasts. Each Busk represents a different
stage in the food cycle of the year--planting, growing, harvesting, and
hunting--and is used to reinforce the Muskogee way.
At the Busk in April, all differences and wrongs are forgiven.
This skeleton of basic customs was followed differently for each town and
ethnic group within the Muskoghean tribes. Different ethnic groups and
alliances through marriage comprised the nation which the Europeans encountered
east of the Mississippi and south of the Appalachian Mountains. The English
came to call them the Creeks, after the swampy character of the rivers
that impeded much East-West travel. The Muskogees were the most prominent
and powerful within these alliances. Their customs were used by the other
groups in the confederacy. Many of these other groups came into the Creek
Nation after losing in battle to the Muskogees or as refugees from other
regions around the present-day Southeast. Through these primarily military
alliances, the Creek Nation grew and spread east. The origin story of the
Muskogees is a flexible oral document but there is a primary theme. The
Muskogees arose from the West and for one reason or another, fled to the
East. Milfort, the eighteenth century French traveler and later, Creek
leader under McGillivray, describes:
Montezuma was at that time in Mexico; seeing that it was impossible for him to stop the progress of the Spaniards, called to his aid the neighboring peoples. The nation of the Moskoquis, now known by the name of the Creeks, which formed a separate republic in the northwestern Mexico ... offered him aid ... The courage of this war-like people served only to bring about its prompt destruction ... [They] decide to give up [their] country ... They set their course for the north...3
Milfort goes on to describe the displacement and series of wars
and submission the Muskogees inflicted upon neighboring tribes that they
came into contact with. After defeating each group, they then acculturated
each one into the growing Nation and continued moving East until settling
along the hospitable rivers. While Milfort’s description is obviously a
European interpretation, it is not altogether inaccurate. Chekilli, a Cussetta
headsman, told in 1735 about the migration from the west and encountering
other Muskoghean groups--the Chickasaws, the Alabamas and the Abihkas.
In the story, these groups shared a common religious experience and then
headed farther west. When they settled in the east, these groups encountered
and assimilated the existing groups there, like the Coosas and the Apalachicolas.
Within the division of the Creek Nation into Upper and Lower, major
towns appear in each area. In the Upper Creeks was the white town of Abihka
and the different red town lineages of Coosa, Tallassee and Oakfuskee,
and later, Tuckabatchee. The Lower Creek towns centered around the two
very prominent towns on either side of the Chattahoochee River: Coweta,
the red town, and Cusseta,4 the white town. While
these were seats of government, their prominence was not static. Chekilli
gives the origin of these Lower Creek towns:
The invading Muskogees followed these two refugees south to Apalachicola. The Apalachicaolas welcomed the Muskogees, entertained them with black drink, a decoction brewed from the leaves of the tea-like Yaupon holly, and urged them to give up war and killing and develop a white (peaceful) heart. Some of the Cussetas agreed, but others were ‘too bloody-minded’ to take such advice. They moved across the river and became the Cowetas.5
As part of an oral tradition, this account is not any more historically
verifiable than Chikilli’s own interpretation. This story has partly to
do with the acceptance of the cultures into the Creek Nation and the prominence
of shared religious experiences between the Muskogees and their allies.
As the Muskogee expansionism ebbed in the eighteenth century, their settlement
into these areas became more prominent to the surrounding Nations. The
Creeks became known for their acceptance of refugees and even their own
war victims.6 Inductee groups were given sections
of land available to the Nation. Part of land allotment that would
come into dispute with European settlers was the need for hunting grounds,
which is how the males of a town lived and worked, primarily on whitetail
deer. The white emphasis on large plantations and husbandry was counter
to the Indian need for hunting ranges.
Within the townships, a strong sense of community existed. Outside
of individual towns, this sense of alliance was de-emphasized. Certain
villages and ethnic groups were connected more intimately, but most towns
retained their autonomy within the extensive Creek Confederation. William
Bartram, the U.S. agent for the Indians south of the Ohio, observed this
relationship with one older, subdued group, the Uchee, from Georgia in
the 1790s:
Their [the Uchee] own national language is radically different from the Creek or Muscolgee tongue and is called the Savanna tongue ... They are in confederacy with the Creeks, but do not mix with them, and, on account of their numbers and strength, are of importance enough to excite and draw upon them the jealousy of the whole Muscogulge confederacy, and are usually at variances, yet are wise enough to unite against a common enemy, to support the glory and interest of the general Creek confederacy.7
The sense of autonomy enjoyed, and understood within the Muskogee
worldview of opposing but balanced factions in nature and politics, translated
into a rather important but not huge army for the Nation. Each town would
commit its own forces to an attack and each town within the Nation understood
not to attack the other towns. While there was no central army to commit
to an attack, any enemy of the Confederacy was a common one and official
support could only come through the consent of all members of the National
Council at a red town. White towns, being peace towns, did not rule over
war and no one could be killed in those towns. During wars, the administration
of the Nation was transferred to the red towns for the duration of the
war and then transferred back to the white towns in peacetime.8
Patterns of colonialism for the different European empires each influenced
different factions within the Confederacy. First, geographic familiarity
within the colonies produced different loyalties. The Spanish, French,
and English all approached the Creek Nation from different sides. Spanish
missionaries came up from Florida while France entered from the West and
the British approached through Georgia and the Carolinas on the Eastern
seaboard. The different villages in these areas became more familiar with
the different empires. The English were more familiar with the Lower Creeks
by way of Savannah and Charles Town (Charleston). Each of these British
frontiers had its own separate characteristics. While Carolina continued
to send shoddy traders into the Creek towns, Creeks became increasingly
upset with white trade though the fickle trade continued. In order to compete
with the English, the Spanish established the Fort San Marcos de Apalachee,
on the St. Marks River in Florida and maintained their contacts and trade
in St. Augustine, on the St. John’s River. The French built Ft. Toulouse
on the Talapoosa and maintained the port of Mobile.
The decimation inflicted on Charleston by the Yamassee War in 1715
would be a primary concern during the establishment of Georgia in 1733.
Until that time, starting in 1670, Creek trade had rested exclusively in
Charleston, so much so that the Lower Creek towns had moved from the Chattahoochee
River to the more eastward Ogeechee, Ocmulgee, and Oconee Rivers. The poor
traders sent into the Creek towns caused resentment and eventually the
Yamassee War. This event had huge implications for the towns of Mobile
and St. Augustine. The Lower Creeks moved back to trading with the Spanish
at St. Augustine, while the Upper Creeks mended their relationship with
French Mobile. Forts Toulouse and San Marcos were then built in 1716 and
1718, respectively. The memory of the Yamassee War still lingered on the
wary tongues of English traders and settlers in 1733, when James Oglethorpe
moved to establish the colony of Georgia. An alliance with the Creeks was
necessary for expansion into the territory, or protection interest in those
areas. While the English pushed for more and more land into the Nation,
the Spanish preferred to use Florida as a largely uninhabited buffer zone
against the English. The French agenda was to expand trade, not necessarily
land. After the Yamassee War, the courting of Creek interests through gift
giving made the Creeks rich, but also more dependent on white goods. The
Coweta headsman until 1730, Brims, maintained a stance of neutrality, which
frustrated the Europeans. When three different powers divided loyalty in
the National Council, no consensus could be reached. In 1733, when Oglethorpe
was ready to establish the colony of Georgia, he was anxious to prevent
another Yamassee War and so asked permission of the Creeks to establish
his colony on the eastern seaboard. Like the refugees that had been accepted
before, the Lower Creeks granted land on the Savannah River, at arms length
from the head towns. The availability of English goods that
would be sold was a primary goal in the establishment of Georgia, but away
from the unscrupulous Charleston traders. On April 3, 1735, the Creeks
and the English crown wrote up the trade agreements to establish regulated,
open trade.The Carolinians, however, became jealous of Georgia and denounced
their laws and soon, the laws were obsolete.
The Treaty of Coweta, 1739, established the dominion of the Creeks
as:
all the Dominions, Territories and Lands from the River Savannah to the River Saint John’s and all the Islands Between the said Rivers and from the River St.John’s to the Bay of Apalachee within which is all the Apalachee old fields, and from the said Bay of Apalachee to the Mountains.9
Although Oglethorpe weakly attempted to regulate it, Georgian expansion
was inevitable and almost immediate. The Georgians, or Ecunnaunuxulgee
eyed the Uchee lands west of Savannah10 for the
town of Augusta. Even Oglethorpe recognized problems of this expansion.
Not only would breaking the Treaty of Coweta drive the Creek to the Spanish,
but also:
because Indian land is not planted therefore there is no Hurt in taking it from them. [T]he Indian Nations have as much right to their Woods as an English Gentleman has to a Forest or Chace, and they are more necessary to them since the Venison is the Flesh that chiefly feeds them, and the Skins of the Deer is what enables them to pay the English for their Goods.11
This is an important point that Oglethorpe brings up: the Creek
trade with the colonies was vital to the survival of Georgia and South
Carolina. Even though the British presence had come after the Spanish in
Florida, the invasive English settlement was apparent before Georgia was
established. Milfort quotes one Muskogee speaker when denying the English
permission to build a fort west of Augusta, giving deference to the French:
The French were the first Europeans who made friends with us; we consider them our fathers and protectors,12 because they have never broken faith with us, nor taken advantage of the ease of their communications with the nation. You Englishmen, on the contrary, while giving us many gifts, demand, in return, each day further cessions of our lands, so that these gifts are very dearly bought. When they give us something ... they demand no remuneration; therefore, they will build forts as long as they wish, and we shall be pleased with them, because we consider them as means of defense for us. As for you, we request you to speak no more about them. You are already too close to us, and you are like the fires we light every year in our forests in order to destroy the weeds; if we were not there to stop their progress, they would soon destroy everything. You would likewise overrun a great part of our land, or you would force us to drive you away entirely. We advise you to be satisfied with what we have given you, and not to demand anything further.
Mendoza had centered Spanish settlement in St. Augustine around
1565. Before Mendoza, de Soto and then Luna had attempted to subjugate
the Creek Nations but turned back when no gold was found. In later expeditions,
the Spanish brought the Franciscan missionaries to convert the natives.
The Franciscans set up missions along the eastern seaboard and in the interior
of Florida’s panhandle, promoting conversions first, and then regulated
trade. This trade was limited, but an important source of exotic luxuries.
The archaeological finds by Vernon James Knight, Jr. in the old Tukabatchee
town of the Upper Creeks, show that the earliest European goods during
the Atasi period were a few domestic items such as hoes and hatchets, but
mostly luxury items, such as bells and beads and a few precious metals.
Food stuffs, such as the peach seed were also traded as domestic luxury
items. The Atasi period is defined by the pre-fur trade era but post-exploration
by European empires. This period lasted until the Yamassee War and is marked
by the prominence of Spanish trade in the pre-Charleston years. Although
domestic goods were traded in this era, Verner notes that they were not
widespread and were probably seen as luxury items. These trade alliances
were endorsed by the Franciscans to promote religious conversions and alliances
for Spanish protection.13
The importance of luxury goods as signs of high social status had been
a practice since pre-Columbian times. With the Spanish and then the French
and English, the flood of new, exotic luxury goods quickly replaced the
usage of traditional luxuries. European domestic goods such as foodstuffs
and tools did not replace traditional domestic goods as quickly. The great
number of these luxuries, especially beads, and then metals, were viewed
as power symbols. This change in luxury commodities, with a decimated population
due to disease, seems to have upset the power structure of the seventeenth
century Creek nation. Luxury items in the Creek villages marked the importance
of that clan, such as McGillivray’s clan, the Wind clan. Verner makes a
point that the adoption of European luxury items does not mark a savagery
or childlike quality in the Creeks but is, instead a “[display] of worldly
knowledge and exotic lore.”14 Upon encountering
the different villages, European traders were of course unaware of the
social customs of bestowing gifts to defer importance to an individual’s
clan. The widespread distribution of luxuries inadvertently caused turmoil
in the Creek social stratification as clans other than the leading clans
also received gifts, signifying control over social relations. This flood
of European goods and confusion also coincided with the first Indian contact
with European diseases. Indian immune systems could not stand up to diseases
like small pox or the bubonic plague. These epidemics decimated the populations
of the Americas, leaving huge population gaps and power voids.
After the Atasi period, Verner marks the Tallapoosa period of the Upper
Creeks as the Colonial period following the Yamassee War. English trade
had begun 1670 out of Charles Town, but the Yamassee War marked the beginning
of English trade regulations that would promote established posts in the
Creek interior, as already noted. The British Empire, unlike the French
or Spanish, was not intent on conversions or incorporation of the “savage
red man.” Instead, the Georgia and South Carolina colonies established
trading posts within Muskogee towns in order to promote friendly trade
relations through gift giving. The localities of these posts were attractive
as were the lack of missionaries. English and French traders also tended
to marry into the clans, thus promoting harmony between the Europeans and
the Creeks. The slave and pelt trade with the Muskogees grew during the
English and French colonial period. Here, the gun becomes the tool that
would destroy Creek autonomy within the Southeast.
In the Muskogee worldview, a sense of balance within social order must
be maintained. A duality to all aspects of life existed to maintain this
balance. This is why there were several capitols. Central to this worldview
was the balance of male and female interactions. Women were viewed as ordered
order. They were domesticity and tend to the house and farming. Muskogee
men, however, were chaos, in the sense that they were away from the home.
Their role in the town is to bring in venison meat and deer hides for clothing
and religious items. When not hunting, men had a role in warring administrating
in civil law. Buckskin became an important commodity for trade as it became
fashionable in Europe as would beaver pelts and then buffalo hides. Hunting
grounds were important places for exercising manhood and earning one’s
living. Hunting would take place in the woods as well as on clearings that
had been burned out of the woods by the hunters. But what was important
is having vast tracts of land aside for hunting. Before the European landings
on the Americas, hunting had been conducted with bow and arrow while war
was fought with the club. With the Europeans came the gun. This tool became
widespread even though the club retained its symbolic purpose of calling
for war by the tastanegy, or war chief, according to Milfort.15
In order to use a gun, one needs gunpowder. Indians were not producing
their own gunpowder and so the lucrative power of powder held sway over
the Creeks. “Gunpowder, a necessity for both hunters and warriors, was
the sine qua non. Without it, the Creek trading economy would collapse.”16
Along with gunpowder, rum and, eventually, cotton and other European luxuries
and domestic commodities were bartered for with deerskin and captured slaves.
As the English plantations and farms continued to moved west, the hunting
grounds were destroyed and the use of guns to hunt stressed the deer population
into receding numbers. The men hunting these deer then journeyed for months
at a time, hundreds of miles away from their towns. Domestically, this
took the male influences away from the village life and women probably
exercised more power in their absence.17
During this British period following the Treaty of Paris and the Proclamation
of 1763, certain events seated in these old issues swiftly led to the explosive
extinguishment of the Muskogee confederation in the Old Southwestern U.S.
following the Creek War of 1813-1814. Beginning with the Augusta Conference
in 1763 called by Georgia Governor James Wright and negotiated by John
Stuart and the Creek headsmen, a series of land purchases began the policy
of English land acquistion. Unlike the later American purchases, these
land cessions were not to settle Creek debts, but rather to appeal to the
Creeks whose lands had been illegally squatted on.
The prominence of certain Scotch traders that had come to Pensacola
in the mid-1700s brought about the domination of Creek trade into the Creek
War. These traders frequently married in with the local towns of the Lower
Creeks who traded more often in Pensacola than other towns. The Panton,
Leslie and Company of traders were the most powerful land speculators in
that era. Based in Pensacola in 1785 and accustomed to the bartering and
gift giving of the Indian trade, the company grew steadily under William
Panton, without much other competition. Even when Florida was given back
to Spain, Panton held onto his posts, including the Fort San Marcos de
Apalachee. This firm came to dominate the trade of the Southeastern Indians
after other firms left due to hostilities with the Indians and Spanish
and English. One of the prominent Scotch traders at the time was a man
by the name of McGillivray, who married a woman of the prominent Wind clan.
Their son, Alexander McGillivray, is considered an anomaly among the Creeks.
While he was the son of prominent European man, he was also the son of
a prominent Muskogee woman, thus giving him a power base in each culture.
McGillivray’s education and white background and land base gave him the
clout to negotiate in white circles. As white encroachment became more
and more aggressive, the Muskogees found themselves on the defensive. At
the American Revolution, similar factions within the Nation divided Creek
loyalty along white bloodlines and thus, no official position was taken.
McGillivray led a pro-British faction, while the Tallassee King and the
Fat King were in support of the Americans. At the opening of the war, the
Virginian army charged into North Carolina and crushed the Cherokee Nation.
The Georgians made similar threats on the Creeks. These factors contributed
to the factionalism, which now weakened the Creeks. The National Council
could not come to a consensus. 18
The emergence of the United States posed perhaps the most immediate
threat to Creek autonomy. Thomas Jefferson’s vision of westward expansion
depended on a road between the port of New Orleans and the Eastern seaboard.
The new mail road was proposed in 1805 and opened in 1811. It was to connect
New Orleans with Athens, Georgia and thus Washington, D.C., slicing 726
miles off of the Natchez Trace route. In order for the road to be cut,
the Creek Nation, which stood in the middle, from the Ocmulgee River to
Mobile, had to be appeased, or moved.
In response to American aggression, McGillivray moved to centralize
authority in the Nation so as to transform the Creek confederation into
a powerful nation that would be able to dictate its own destiny. McGillivray’s
support came from the Upper Towns but he was undermined by the Lower Towns
who had closer contact with Augusta and Charleston. The thought of central
power was counter to the traditions of the Muskogee worldview and the thought
of a single, central authority caused turmoil within the Nation. Meanwhile,
the Georgians continued to squat farther and farther west. The Tallassee
King and the Fat King made separate treaties with the Georgians, without
the National Council consensus. Supported by Spanish gunpowder, the Creeks
repelled the invading Georgians in 1786. The Spanish became frightened
by the Creek power and withdrew their powder. By 1790, most of Georgia
was under the control of the United States. In the Treaty of New York in
1790, McGillivray ceded the remainder of the territory to the U.S. and
received titles in the U.S. Army. The remaining Creek towns outside of
the U.S. were in the Florida and the Upper Creek towns. McGillivray died
in 1793 at Pensacola.
During the same year, the U.S. suggested that it might want to put
not for profit stores in the Backcountry. Because of the Treaty of San
Lorenzo, the U.S. had assumed responsibility of the lands and Indians east
of the Mississippi River, excluding Florida. William Panton, of Panton,
Leslie and Co., decided that he would not be able to incur the losses that
this new competition would bring. Exacerbating this situation was General
William Augustus Bowles. In 1792, General Bowles, the Seminole raider,
attacked St. Marks and Panton lost $14000 in goods and supplies. In 1796,
Panton decided to begin to collect on the debts of the Creeks. The stranglehold
that Panton could hold on the Creek Nation through trade is evident later,
when he is given Apalachicola as retribution in 1800 after Bowles attacks
St. Marks, again.
When Panton began to collect the Indian debts, it marked a change in
the trade system that had traditionally been used in the Creek Nation.
Until this time, trade had been based on barter and gift giving. The new
system the Panton and his younger partner, John Forbes began to use was
exacting and compounded interest. The concept of interest enraged the Creeks,
whose leaders and prominent figures had been allowed numerous purchases
on credit. Forbes went to Nashville to collect from the Cherokee. John
McKee, the Cherokee Indian agent, sent under the authority of the U. S.
War Department traveled to Pensacola. McKee assured Panton of U.S. support
to enforce a new policy which allows the Creeks to pay off their debts
through land sales. In return, Panton was required to keep the Muskogee
quiet during the transfer of Louisiana.19
At the time of Panton’s death, Forbes took control of the company,
renaming it Forbes and Co. Spain allowed Forbes to use the same “land for
debt” policy in Florida. The trade that had allowed the Muskogees to rise
to prominence among the eastern tribes now choked their vitality. As opposed
to the barter trade that the Leslie, Panton and Co. had focused on, Forbes
and Co. ushered in the transition to cotton trade in Pensacola and Mobile.
With the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the ability to grow cotton
in the Mississippi territory became more viable. In 1798, the U.S. began
a policy of active acquisition of the Mississippi territory through tribal
alliances, making peace between the settlers and Indians, teaching farming,
and then acquiring farmlands. There were not enough settlers at that time,
however, to move into Mississippi and make a state. The Indians were to
be assimilated. Benjamin Hawkins was made the Creek Indian agent in 1796
and used his influence in the Lower Creeks to try and remove their tribal
culture and implement husbandry.20 In the
acquisition of territories, the U.S. would also establish trading posts
so as to regulate Indian trade. The trading posts were established primarily
along the Federal Road, which had been enacted in 1806. Hawkins, along
with Forbes, had the task of keeping Creek frustration in check to allow
for safe passage along the road from Georgia to New Orleans. In the cession
of the lands for the Federal road, Forbes hoped that the Creeks would be
able to pay their debts off. 21
The growth of the cotton industry spelled the death of the deerskin
trade.22 The land that had been used to hunt
on now became part of the cotton farms and useless for hunting on the scale
necessary to pay back debts, thus the Creeks continued to go further and
further into debt, selling more and more land, as in the Treaty of Ft.
Wilkinson in 1802. In order to hold onto their land, the Lower Creeks began
to assimilate to white cultures and take up fanning of cotton and animal
husbandry as dictated by Hawkins, relying on white tools such as the plow.
The Upper Creeks, refusing to bend, became hostile to the U.S. An embargo
imposed by the Federal government in 1809 drove the price of cotton down
and only large plantations could survive the downturn.
The Creek War marks the end of the Creek confederacy. The Creeks, especially
the Upper Creeks became hostile. Many Creeks had become seasonal laborers
and itinerant peddlers. Rumors of British aggression and the spiritual
revivalists’ uprising under Tecumseh spurned on the Upper Creeks, whose
deep resentments of the Americans and Hawkins was ready to brew over. Tecumseh’s
followers were called the Red Sticks by whites. After the Red Sticks had
attacked a group of Tennessee settlers, Hawkins ordered their execution.
In retaliation, the Red Sticks planned an uprising. But, in transporting
gunpowder from Pensacola to the Tallapoosa in July 1813, the Red Sticks
were raided by settlers. On August 30, 1813, the Red Sticks overran Ft.
Mims, killing 250 men, women and children living there. This attack sparks
the invasion of the Creek interior by four armies of militiamen and the
Lower Creeks. Despite this attack, the Upper Creek towns evaded these armies
for ten months. In the course of these ten months, the Upper Creeks followed
a scorched earth policy, eventually starving themselves. Starving and displaced
and terribly outnumbered, the remainder of the Muskogees were cornered
into the Battle of Horseshoe Bend at the hands of Andrew Jackson. The Battle
of Horseshoe Bend ended on August 9, 1814 with the Treaty of Ft. Jackson.
The events leading up to the end of Creek autonomy at the end of the
Creek War in 1814 and introduction of the Federal Road in 1811 are deep
seated in the past. These two events are chronologically, flashes of tender
when seen in the light of the history of European-Creek trade. This trade,
beginning with the Spanish in the sixteenth century, centered on the barter
system trading goods for pelts and military alliances. Later, under the
French and English, the pelt trade, along with the introduction of the
gun created a colonial economy dependent on the trade of gunpowder and
munitions for pelts and slaves. The growing dependence of the powerful
Creek confederacy on European goods undermined their autonomy, as their
reliance on European gunpowder was necessary to defend them from European
encroachment. The attempt of Alexander McGillivray to unite the Creeks
into a centralized force at the end of the eighteenth century was counter
to the traditional government and worldview of the Creeks, or Muskogees.
The attempt to form this government and thus, wield Creek power more effectively,
fell through because of internal factionalism. This internal factionalism
had always existed but now divided the autonomy of the Creek Nation. Although
the Creek War was considered on of the bloodiest Indian wars in American
history, its outcome was forgone. The way of life that the Upper Creeks
strove to hold onto was destroyed by the onslaught of European trade. Secretary
of War, John C. Calhoun best articulated the end of Creek autonomy, in
1818:
They have, in a great measure, ceased to be an object of terror, and have become that of commiseration ... The time seems to have arrived when our policy towards them should undergo an important change ... Our views of their interest, and not their own, ought to govern them.23
1Milfort. My Sojourn Into the Creek
Nation. 1959.
2Green, Michael D. The Politics
ofIndian Removal, 1982. p15.
3 Milfort. My Sorjourn in the
Creek Nation. 1959.
4 Labeled as Kasihta by J.R. Swanton,
Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors. 1998.
5 Green, p 13.
6 Green, p. 14.
7 Bartram. Travels of William Bartram
, p 313. New York: Dover Pub., 1928.
8 Milfort, p. 105.
9 Green, p 25.
10 Creek term for the Georgians:
“People greedily grasping after the lands of the red people.” Green, p.
26.
11 Green, p 26.
12 Milfort was also a French agent
addressing Napoleon with this document. He is attempting to sway Napoleon’s
support for the Muskogees as allies. Memoirs, p. 117.
13 Knight, Jr., Vernon James. Tukabatchee:
Archaeological Investigations at an Historic Creek Town, Elmore Co.,
Alabama. 1985.
14 Vemer, p 182.
15 Milfort, p 105.
16 Green, p 31.
17Vemer, Tukabalchee.
18 Green, p 32.
19 Cottcrill, Robert S. “A Chapter
of Panton, Leslie, and Co..” The Journal of Southern History. Vol. 10,
no.3 (Aug, 1944). p275-292.
20 Hawkins, Benjamin. “Letter to
James McHenry.” Letters. January 6, 1797.
21 Brown and Southerland. The Federal
Road. 1989.
22 Usner, Jr., Daniel H. “The American
Indian on the Cotton Frontier.” Ae Journal of American History. September,
1985. Vol. 72, no. 2, p. 297-317.
23 Green, p 32.