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.
Wetumpka is a city in and the county seat of Elmore County, Alabama, United States. At the 2020 census, the population was 7,220. In the early 21st century, Elmore County became one of the fastest-growing counties in the state. The city is considered part of the Montgomery Metropolitan Area.
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.
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon, Georgia, United States preserves traces of over ten millennia of culture from the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. Its chief remains are major earthworks built before 1000 CE by the South Appalachian Mississippian culture These include the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches. They represented highly skilled engineering techniques and soil knowledge, and the organization of many laborers. The site has evidence of "12,000 years of continuous human habitation." The 3,336-acre (13.50 km2) park is located on the east bank of the Ocmulgee River. Macon, Georgia developed around the site after the United States built Fort Benjamin Hawkins nearby in 1806 to support trading with Native Americans.
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.
Alexander McGillivray, also known as Hoboi-Hili-Miko, was a Muscogee (Creek) leader. The son of a Muscogee mother and a Scottish father, he was literate and educated, and understood the "white" European world and merchandise trading well. These gave him prestige, especially with European Americans, who were glad to finally find a Creek leader they could talk to and deal with. He used his role as link between the two worlds to his advantage, not always fairly, and became the richest Creek of his time.
William Weatherford, also known after his death as Red Eagle, was a Creek chief of the Upper Creek towns who led many of the Red Sticks actions in the Creek War (1813–1814) against Lower Creek towns and against allied forces of the United States.
Lachlan McGillivray was a prosperous fur trader and planter in colonial Georgia with interests that extended from Savannah to what is now central Alabama. He was the father of Alexander McGillivray and the great-uncle of William McIntosh and William Weatherford, three of the most powerful and historically important Native American chiefs among the Creek of the Southeast.
William McIntosh, also known as Tustunnuggee Hutke, was one of the most prominent chiefs of the Muscogee Creek Nation between the turn of the 19th-century and his execution in 1825. He was a chief of Coweta tribal town and commander of a mounted police force. He became a large-scale planter, built and managed a successful inn, and operated a commercial ferry business.
The trans-Atlantic trade in deerskins was a significant commercial activity in Colonial America that was greatly influenced, and at least partially dominated, by Scottish traders and their firms. This trade, primarily in deerskins but also in beaver and other animal pelts, was carried on with Native American tribes and is usually referred to as the Indian Trade. The Indian trade was conducted largely to fill the high European and later colonial demand for deerskins and other animal pelts trapped by Indians in return for European trade goods. These pelts were shipped to Europe and used in the leather-making industry. The trade had been developing since the seventeenth century and Scottish traders played an important part in its advance.
The Battle of Calebee Creek took place on January 27, 1814, during the Creek War, in Macon County, Alabama, 50 miles (80 km) west of Fort Mitchell. General Floyd, with 1,200 Georgia volunteers, a company of cavalry and 400 friendly Yuchi, repulsed a night attack of the Red Sticks on his camp. Floyd lost so many in this hostile country that he immediately withdrew to the Chattahoochee River. Also referred to as the Battle for Camp Defiance.
Jean-Antoine Le Clerc, also known as Louis Milfort, also spelled as Milford was a French military officer and adventurer who led Creek Indian warriors during the American Revolutionary War as allies of the British. He emigrated to the British Colonies in North America in 1775. Beginning in 1776, he lived with the Creek Indians of the Upper Towns for about 20 years in frontier territory of present-day Alabama. He was befriended by the chief Alexander McGillivray, who used him as his war chief in battles. Later, after his return to Paris, Milfort joined the French Sacred Society of Sophisians. Commissioned a general in the army, he was forced into retirement with a pension.
Red Shoes was a Muskogean leader of the Tuskegee people in the 18th century. He primarily lived in modern Alabama near Tuskegee at the forks of the Alabama River, but his influence extended well into modern Mississippi.
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 Pemmican War was a series of violent confrontations between the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and the North West Company (NWC) in the Canadas from 1812 to 1821. It started after the establishment of the Red River Colony by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk in 1812, and ended in 1821 when the NWC was merged into the HBC. The conflict was sparked by the Pemmican Proclamation issued by Governor Miles Macdonell, which disallowed any person from exporting pemmican, a key foodstuff for those involved in the North American fur trade, out of the Red River Colony. This was fiercely opposed by the Métis, who were mostly affiliated with the NWC and opposed to both the colony and the HBC's dominance in the region.
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.
Sehoy III, also called Sehoy Weatherford was a Muscogee Creek trader who was part of the Sehoy matrilineage. Like her mother and grandmother, both also called Sehoy, she contracted multiple marriages with white traders. According to Muscogee custom, her sons inherited her tribal identity and later fought on the Creek side of the Creek War and the Red Sticks rebellion. After inheriting property, Sehoy III set herself up as a successful trader in Coosada.
Sehoy II or Sehoy Marchand was a Muscogee Creek Wind Clan woman who was part of the Sehoy matrilineage. She and her family are known for their intermarriages with white traders, with the children inheriting their tribal identities from the mother's side.
