Creek Indians

April 22, 2012

Abstract

Native Americans are some of the most important figures in American history. They were here before the first settler built upon this land of the free. The battles that were fought were battles that were necessary but sometimes we forget the human side of these Indians. Known as salvages and brutes it is no doubt that the war was bloody and the Indian fight for survival was fierce. Nevertheless, these tribes were a people that joined until the very end. Native Americans have played a major role in the history of the United States and its growth. While they struggled against the taking of their land and fought many battles, there were those in battle that sought peace and only wanted to protect their people. There were marked differences in the culture and religions of all the tribes as well as differences between them and the white man. Yet they were some remarkable men and women that came from those tribes. Native Americans have a unique relationship with the history of the United States.

Creek Indians
The Creek Indians were a great part of history for early Georgia and Alabama. They lived there most of the early days and during the colonial period. While the Indians outnumbered the colonist, they also owned more land and enslaved the African people. By the year of 1760, the Creeks had become a minority population, and by the 1800 they had given their land to the new state. Christopher Columbus arrived in the America’s to find the entire Southeastern area filled with the Indian villages and societies. Soon these natives found themselves devastated by outbreaks of disease not known to them. The small pox infection wiped out a majority of the native population. This was something that the natives had no knowledge of and surely was unprepared for the consequences of it. The estimate is that the disease wiped out over 90 percent of the population. For reasons unknown, some of the larger villages had already collapsed and reorganized into smaller ones along the rivers and valleys. However, by the late 1600s the Indians in the Southeastern area started to recover and soon built an alliance that united them from the Ocmulgee River west to the Tallapoosa rivers in Alabama . They build villages up and down the Ocheesee Creek, which is near Macon Georgia. The original name of the Indians that lived there were the Muscogee, but because they lived near the creeks the settlers and traders began calling them the Creek Indians and that was how they are known to this day.
The Creek-English relationship was established before the colonist began to arrive in the Southeastern area and the Indians set up a business of capturing the Florida Indians and selling them to their neighbors for slaves. This was a lucrative business until the population started to become scarce, once that happened the Indians began selling deerskins to the English. The English would send the skins to their factories where they would make them into breeches, book covers, and gloves. There was thousands of skins that left the port of Charleston, South Carolina and the traders now took residence among the Indians and made settlements there. (Worthy, 2001-2012) They would marry their women and have children by the Indian women. Some of those mixed children would become important Creek leaders and the relationship between the two seemed to flourish. Slaves that were fugitive began to dwell with the Creek as well and helped them to see that slavery was wrong. By 1735, as the American Revolution (1735-1783) began the Creek Indians avoided it but it would forever change their lives. Now the whole state of Georgia viewed them more as slaves and not as partners in trade. The tension between the two was enormous and it erupted into what we know of as the Civil War of 1813. As tension built, the U.S. troops, military got involved, and it led to other battles between the two races. By 1814, the battle now headed to a place called Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. It was here that General Andrew Jackson directed and killed hundreds of Creek Indians. This officially ended in 1814 by treaty, which is the Treaty of Fort Jackson; with this treaty, the Creek Indians relinquished 22 million acres of land to the new government. Major hostilities between the whites and the Indians became a fierce and vicious battle in which the United States assisted by Georgia and Alabama militia would round up the Creek Indians and send them to another territory. Some went in chains, guarded by the armed soldiers to begin a new life in the land west of the Mississippi. (Cox, 2012) Long before the new settlers came to the America’s , there were tribes and people with different beliefs and customs. These people lived in teepees, in mounds, and other dwellings. The cultures and customs would vary but most of the Native beliefs were rooted in Animism, which means that they believed that the universe was bound together by the spirit of all life that was within all life forms on earth such as humans, plant, earth, trees. They believed we are all connected to the earth just as much as we are connected to one another. The Creek Indians however believed that they crawled out of the earth just as an ant crawls out of a hole in the earth. However, once they were here something caused a great fog to cover the earth and they were all afraid. This they thought was when they became smaller groups and these groups lived together to help each other. Because of the fog now all the people were blind and could not see each other. Nevertheless, the Master of Breathe had mercy upon them one day and started a wind to blow; the wind blew away the blindness and fog. The people were so joyful and thankful that they gave thanks to the Master of Breathe and all the groups of Indians swore eternal brotherhood one to another. Now the people became one large family of people and each member would be like a brother or sister, a father or a son to each other.
The villages consisted of groups of 400-600 people and once the group got that large, it would split off and form another village and live separate but they would always be family. They would build their buildings large enough to hold all the people so that they could have meetings and decide what they would do. They wore clothing of deerskin and woven fibers and wore moccasins upon their feet. Most were farmers and the women were in charge of the children, cooking and the farming while the men were hunters and fishers of the wild. When the Europeans arrived they had the idea that all the Native Americans would be savages and uneducated. However, they were surprised when it turned out that they were highly intelligent and smart. They found that they brushed their teeth daily, took baths, and consisted of a very organized people with strict rules about personal relationships and conduct and that they had a mutual respect for one another. The destruction of the last major Creek fighting force at Horseshoe Bend which took place on the Tallapoosa river and led by war chief Menawa. With the Treaty of Fort Jackson, the Creek Indians were stripped of all their lands. In 1813, there came a battle known as the Creek War. It started because of a religious explosion by a group later known as the Red Sticks. The leader of the Red Sticks was a chief called Red Eagle. His real name was William Weatherford and he was fierce in battle and a major figure in the wars between the white man and the Indian. (Braund, 2010) The movement started to try to turn the Creek people back to their lifestyles and to stop them from associating with the white man. The focus of this battle was an attack on Fort Mims in south Alabama. More than 800 warriors died in the fighting but the Creek Nation was forever broken. The Prophet and his followers fled to Spanish Florida where they allied with the British against the Americans. (Cox, 2012) There were other treaties made and by 1836 with pressure to give up their land and abandon their homes, it sparked the Creek War of 1836. After the war, the United States soldiers and troops rounded up the Creek men, women, and children, herded them to concentration camps, and then drove the west in large groups. The Trail of Tears was a route in which travel by both land, water was made to reach the point in Alabama. Men women and children died on that trail, and the removal of the Creeks was one of the greatest tragedies in American history. Menawa became a legendary figure as leader of the Creeks against the government at the battle of Horseshoe Bend, one of the last heroic stands to save the Indian lands. He was of Scotch and Indian parents and rose with pride in his Indian heritage. He was a man of wealth and intelligence that became disturbed when he saw the white settlers take the land that belong to the Indians. He led the Creeks against General Andrew Jackson, shot seven times in battle and left for dead he dragged himself to the river where he crawled into a canoe and floated down river where some Indian women found him and helped him.

References
Braund, K. E. (2010, June 3). Encyclopedia of Alabama. Retrieved April 22, 2012, from William Weatherford: http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2593
Cox, D. (2012). Explore Southern History. Retrieved April 21, 2012, from The Creek Trail of Tears: http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/creektrail.html
Worthy, L. (2001-2012). Our Georgia History. Retrieved April 21, 2012, from The Creek Indians of Georgia: http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/indians/Creek/creek01.html