The Tallapoosas were a division of the Upper Creeks in the Muscogee Confederacy. [1] Prior to Removal to Indian Territory, Tallapoosa lived along the Tallapoosa River in Alabama. [2]
They are also called the Cadapouches or Canapouches, which was mistakenly considered a synonym for the Catawba of the Carolina. [3]
Spanish explorers described towns along the Tallapoosa as being surrounded by protective wooden palisades. In later years, the palisades were no longer built. [4] They made ceramics using grit as a temper. [5]
Over 30 towns along the Tallapoosa, Coosa, and Chattahoochee Rivers allied to form the Muscogee Confederacy. The Tallapoosa were among these Upper Creeks, [6] who were more culturally and politically conservative than the Lower Creek towns. [7]
The Tallapoosas fought in the siege of Pensacola. Although these warriors proved their effectiveness in combining native tactics and European arms, the English failed to compensate them adequately and seriously underestimated their importance as the key to the balance of power in the southeastern interior. Consequently, by 1716 the Tallapoosas and other tribes had shifted allegiance to the other side and prepared to use what they had learned against South Carolina settlements. [8]
The Tallapoosas were a part of a "Creek traditionalist faction," the Red Sticks, that fought in the Battle of Holy Ground. In the summer of 1813, the Red Sticks built new settlements for "each component of the Upper Creek Nation (Alabamas, Tallapoosas, Abeikas). The Tallapoosas built a new settlement near the town of Autossee, and the Abeikas erected Tohopeka, a fortified encampment at the Horseshoe Bend of the Tallapoosa River. The Alabamas built Holy Ground, or Econochaca ... on the bluffs above the Alabama River, approximately 30 miles west of present-day Montgomery." [9]
The Tallapoosa were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory with other Muscogee people in the early 19th century.
Tallapoosa County, Alabama is named after the tribe.
The Muscogee, also known as the Muskogee, Muscogee Creek, MvskokeCreek, Mvskokvlke, or the Muscogee Creek Confederacy in the Muscogee language, are a group of related indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands in the United States of America. Their original homelands are in what now comprises southern Tennessee, all of Alabama, western Georgia and part of northern Florida.
The Creek War (1813–1814), also known as the Red Stick War and the Creek Civil War, was a regional war between opposing Creek factions, European empires and the United States, taking place largely in today's Alabama and along the Gulf Coast. The major conflicts of the war took place between state militia units and the "Red Stick" Creeks.
Etowah Indian Mounds (9BR1) are a 54-acre (220,000 m2) archaeological site in Bartow County, Georgia south of Cartersville, in the United States. Built and occupied in three phases, from 1000–1550 AD, the prehistoric site is located on the north shore of the Etowah River.
The Coosa River is a tributary of the Alabama River in the U.S. states of Alabama and Georgia. The river is about 280 miles (450 km) long.
Alexander McGillivray, also known as Hoboi-Hili-Miko, was a Muscogee (Creek) leader. The son of a Muscogee mother and a Scottish father, he had skills no other Creek of his day had: he was not only literate but educated, and he knew the "white" 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.
The Yuchi people, also spelled Euchee and Uchee, are a Native American tribe based in Oklahoma.
Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, Southeastern cultures, or Southeast Indians are an ethnographic classification for Native Americans who have traditionally inhabited the area now part of the Southeastern United States and the northeastern border of Mexico, that share common cultural traits. This classification is a part of the Eastern Woodlands. The concept of a southeastern cultural region was developed by anthropologists, beginning with Otis Mason and Frank Boas in 1887. The boundaries of the region are defined more by shared cultural traits than by geographic distinctions. Because the cultures gradually instead of abruptly shift into Plains, Prairie, or Northeastern Woodlands cultures, scholars do not always agree on the exact limits of the Southeastern Woodland culture region. Shawnee, Powhatan, Waco, Tawakoni, Tonkawa, Karankawa, Quapaw, and Mosopelea are usually seen as marginally southeastern and their traditional lands represent the borders of the cultural region.
The Cape Fear Indians were a small, coastal tribe of Native Americans who lived on the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.
The Kichai tribe was a Native American Southern Plains tribe that lived in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Their name for themselves was K'itaish.
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.
The Pee Dee people, also Pedee and Peedee, are American Indians of the Southeast United States. Historically, their population has been concentrated in the Piedmont of present-day South Carolina. In the 17th and 18th centuries, English colonists named the Pee Dee River and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina for the tribe.
The State of Muskogee was a proclaimed sovereign nation located in Florida, founded in 1799 and led by William Augustus Bowles, a Loyalist veteran of the American Revolutionary War who lived among the Muscogee, and envisioned uniting the American Indians of the Southeast into a single nation that could resist the expansion of the United States. Bowles enjoyed the support of the Miccosukee (Seminole) and several bands of Muscogee. He envisioned his state as eventually growing to encompass the Cherokee, Upper and Lower Creeks, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, in parts of present-day Georgia and Alabama.
The Cheraw people, also known as the Saraw or Saura, were a Siouan-speaking tribe of indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, in the Piedmont area of North Carolina near the Sauratown Mountains, east of Pilot Mountain and north of the Yadkin River. They lived in villages near the Catawba River. Their first European and African contact was with the Hernando De Soto Expedition in 1540. The early explorer John Lawson included them in the larger eastern-Siouan confederacy, which he called "the Esaw Nation."
The Cusabo or Cosabo are a group of American Indian tribes who lived along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in what is now South Carolina, approximately between present-day Charleston and south to the Savannah River, at the time of European colonization. English colonists often referred to them as one of the Settlement Indians of South Carolina, tribes who "settled" among the colonists.
Abihka was one of the four mother towns of the Muscogee Creek confederacy. Abihka is also sometimes used to refer to all Upper Creek people.
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 is one of the four mother towns of the Muscogee people 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.
Josiah Francis, also called Francis the Prophet, native name Hillis Hadjo, was "a charismatic religious leader" of the Red Stick Creek Indians. According to the historian Frank Owsley, he became "the most ardent advocate of war against the white man, as he believed in the supremacy of the Creek culture over that of the whites". He traveled to London as a representative of several related tribal groups, unsuccessfully seeking British support against the expansionism of the United States, then was captured and hanged by General Andrew Jackson shortly after his return to Spanish Florida.
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