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The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek or just Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy, are a group of related Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands in the United States. Their historical homelands are in what now comprises southern Tennessee, much of Alabama, western Georgia and parts of northern Florida.
Muscogee mythology is related to a Muscogee tribe who are originally from the southeastern United States, also known by their original name Mvskoke, the name they use to identify themselves today. 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 Eastern branch of the Muskogean language family. The Seminole are close kin to the Mvskoke and speak an Eastern Muskogean language as well. The Muscogee were considered one of the Five Civilized Tribes. After the Creek War many of the Muscogee escaped to Florida to create the Seminole.
Childersburg is a city in Talladega County in the U.S. state of Alabama. It was incorporated in 1889. At the 2020 census, the population was 4,754. It has a history dating back before 1540, when it was noted as a village of the Coosa Nation visited by the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. It is said a member of De Soto’s crew fell ill and was left to settle in the area of present day Childersburg where the Coosa people cared for the ill explorer. The Alabama Army Ammunition Plant, important during World War II, was located 4 miles (6 km) north of Childersburg.
The Creek War was a regional conflict between opposing Native American factions, European powers, and the United States during the early 19th century. The Creek War began as a conflict within the tribes of the Muscogee, but the United States quickly became involved. British traders and Spanish colonial officials in Florida supplied the Red Sticks with weapons and equipment due to their shared interest in preventing the expansion of the United States into regions under their control.
Etowah Indian Mounds (9BR1) are a 54-acre (220,000 m2) archaeological site in Bartow County, Georgia, south of Cartersville. Built and occupied in three phases, from 1000–1550 CE, the prehistoric site is located on the north shore of the Etowah River.
Alice Brown Davis was the first female Principal Chief of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, and served from 1922–1935, appointed by President Warren G. Harding. She was of Seminole and Scots descent. Her older brother John Frippo Brown had served as chief of the tribe and their brother Andrew Jackson Brown as treasurer.
Red Sticks —the name deriving from the red-painted war clubs of some Native American Creek—refers to an early 19th century traditionalist faction of Muscogee Creek people in the Southeastern United States. Made up mostly of Creek of the Upper Towns that supported traditional leadership and culture, as well as the preservation of communal land for cultivation and hunting, the Red Sticks arose at a time of increasing pressure on Creek territory by European American settlers. Creek of the Lower Towns were closer to the settlers, had more mixed-race families, and had already been forced to make land cessions to the Americans. In this context, the Red Sticks led a resistance movement against European American encroachment and assimilation, tensions that culminated in the outbreak of the Creek War in 1813. Initially a civil war among the Creek, the conflict drew in United States state forces while the nation was already engaged in the War of 1812 against the British.
The Fort Mims massacre took place on August 30, 1813, at a fortified homestead site 35-40 miles north of Mobile, Alabama, during the Creek War. A large force of Creek Indians belonging to the Red Sticks faction, under the command of headmen Peter McQueen and William Weatherford, stormed the fort and defeated the militia garrison.
The Coosa chiefdom was a powerful Native American paramount chiefdom in what are now Gordon and Murray counties in Georgia, in the United States. It was inhabited from about 1400 until about 1600, and dominated several smaller chiefdoms. The total population of Coosa's area of influence, reaching into present-day Tennessee and Alabama, has been estimated at 50,000.
Fort Toulouse and Fort Jackson are two forts that shared the same site at the fork of the Coosa River and the Tallapoosa River, near Wetumpka, Alabama.
The history of Rome, Georgia extends to thousands of years of human settlement by ancient Native Americans. Spanish explorers recorded reaching the area in the later 16th century, and European Americans of the United States founded the city named Rome in 1834, when the residents of the area were still primarily Cherokee, before their removal on the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory. The competition for resources among its diverse inhabitants led to both innovation and strife. Its location at the confluence of three rivers enabled Rome to develop as a crossroads for trade and transportation. The city was later designated as the county seat of Floyd County, Georgia. Today, Rome is the largest city in Northwest Georgia, and is a regional center of healthcare, education, and manufacturing.
The Four Mothers Society or Four Mothers Nation is a religious, political, and traditionalist organization of Muscogee Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw people, as well as the Natchez people enrolled in these tribes, in Oklahoma. It was formed in the 1890s as an opposition movement to the allotment policies of the Dawes Commission and various US Congressional acts of the period. The society is religious in nature. It opposed allotment because dividing tribal communal lands attacked the basis of their culture. In addition, some communal lands would be declared surplus and likely sold to non-Natives, causing the loss of their lands.
Hickory Ground, also known as Otciapofa is an historic Upper Muscogee Creek tribal town and an archaeological site in Elmore County, Alabama near Wetumpka. It is known as Oce Vpofa in the Muscogee language; the name derives from oche-ub,"hickory" and po-fau, "among". It is best known for serving as the last capital of the National Council of the Creek Nation, prior to the tribe being moved to the Indian Territory in the 1830s. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 10, 1980.
Coweta was a tribal town and one of the four mother towns of the Muscogee Confederacy in what is now the Southeast United States, along with Kasihta (Cusseta), Abihka, and Tuckabutche.
Hillabee was an important Muscogee (Creek) town in east central Alabama before the Indian Removals of the 1830s.
Fort Armstrong was a stockade fort built in present-day Cherokee County, Alabama during the Creek War. The fort was built to protect the surrounding area from attacks by Red Stick warriors but was also used as a staging area and supply depot in preparation for further military action against the Red Sticks.
Sophia Durant was a Koasati Native American plantation owner, who served as the speaker, interpreter, and translator for her brother, Alexander McGillivray, a leader in the Muscogee Confederacy.
Sehoy, or Sehoy I, was an 18th-century matriarch of the Muscogee Confederacy and a member of the Wind clan.
Fort Okfuskee was the name of two separate forts built by Great Britain in what is now Tallapoosa County, Alabama. The first fort was built to ensure British trade with the Creek Indians after the French constructed Fort Toulouse. The fort was abandoned a little over a decade after construction after facing difficulties in being supplied. A second Fort Okfuskee was built a year later, but was abandoned in less than a year due to lack of colonial support.
References
- Nabokov, Peter and Robert Easton; Native American Architecture.; New York; The Oxford University Press; 1989; ISBN 978-0-19-506665-4.
- Swanton, John R.; The Indians of the Southeastern United States; United States Government Printing Office; Washington, DC; 1946; p. 81-82.
- Waselkov, Gregory A.; and Smith, Marvin T.; Upper Creek Archaeology; referenced in McEwan, Bonnie G.; edition Indians of the Greater Southeast: Historical Archaeology and Ethnohistory; Gainesville; University of Florida Press; 2000; p. 244.