LOGIN BUY TICKETS ACTIVITIES CALENDAR SHOP RESTAURANT SUPPORT MEMBERSHIP Back to Main menu Center for Digital History About the Encyclopedia Contributors Partners George Washington Presidential Library ESTATE HOURS 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Directions & Parking BUY TICKETS ONLINE & SAVE Search... QUICK LINKS The Creek or Muscogee Nation (Este Mvskokvlke) is a modern, federally- recognized Native American tribe in the United States. In the eighteenth- century, though, the Creek Nation was instead the Creek Confederacy, a multi-ethnic coalition of migrant peoples with a territorial expanse that encompassed much of the Deep South from South Carolina to Alabama. As their influence spread in the South, Creek Nation navigated relationships between the British, Spanish, and French. However, the American Revolution and the formation of state governments challenged Creek Nation’s land claims and led to assimilation policies that targeted their culture and way of life. The Formation of the Creek Nation The Confederacy evolved out of the Mississippian civilizations that collapsed in the southeast during the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries as a consequence of European colonialism. Specifically, Muskogean- language groups such as the Abihka, Tallapoosa, and Apalachicola coalesced into a polyglot alliance of towns, who were later joined by groups of non-Muskogean speakers like the Yuchi, Hitchiti, Shawnee, Natchez, Chickasaw, Apalachee, and others. Over the course of a century, these multilingual communities continuously merged, precipitated by the founding of the “mother” towns – Coweta, Cusseta, Tukabatchee, and Abeka. By the turn of the eighteenth-century, they were all collectively identified by Europeans as the “Creek Indians.” Such fluidity continued to define the Confederacy throughout the eighteenth-century. For example, the primary source of identity in the Creek world was one’s town (talwa). From the annual Busk festival, political councils, and ritual gatherings, to economic exchange, preparation for war, and recreation and sport, all manners of life unfolded in the town square. Therefore, the Confederacy was less a “nation” as defined by Western standards, and more of a flexible union of towns. The British Superintendent of Indian A airs, John Stuart, observed as much Creek Nation About the Encyclopedia Contributors Partners George Washington Presidential Library Colonial Music Institute Podcast Past Projects Digital Exhibits Search the Digital Encyclopedia o A-Z INDEX Creek Nation WASHINGTON LIBRARY CENTER FOR DIGITAL HISTORY DIGITAL ENCYCLOPEDIA Calendar Map Restaurant Shop Ways To Give LOGIN SUBJECT TYPE CREEK NATION BUY TICKETS DONATE MEMBERSHIP Plan Your Visit Plan Your Visit The Estate The Estate George Washington George Washington Preservation Preservation Education Education Washington Library Washington Library English when he remarked in 1764, “The Towns...may be considered as so many Di erent Republicks which form one State, but each of these Towns has separate Views and Interests.” Yet the autonomous nature of the Confederacy existed side-by-side with “Upper” and “Lower” Creek a liations, as communities along the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers (“Upper”) and towns on the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers (“Lower”) occasionally acted cooperatively, as in times of war or in negotiations with Europeans. Culture, Family, and Society in Creek Nation In addition, Creek society pivoted around family and clan, agriculture, and a particular cosmology. Along with town and regional identities, the Creek privileged their family and clan connections. For instance, each individual belonged to a clan moiety and resided with their extended relatives in a town in clan clusters. Creek society was also matrilineal, as children inherited the clan of their mothers. Women controlled the means of production, commanded the power to incorporate outsiders, and wielded authority over the household. Similarly, women and men performed complementary yet distinct tasks: men hunted fur-bearing animals for food and trade and waged war, while women cultivated agriculture, the most important responsibility in Creek society. This gendered labor system was embodied in the Creek cosmology, in which the world was divided into three separate planes of existence: the Upper World, Under World, and This World. Since the Creek lived in This World – the in-between world – they were tasked with maintaining balance between the Upper and Under Worlds, and did so through ritual. For instance, during the Green Corn Ceremony (Posketv), the entire town ritually and physically cleansed their bodies, minds, homes, and communities. Thus, the Confederacy functioned within social and cosmological structures of balance. When it came to politics, the Confederacy operated at a more local and individual level, as town headmen (micos) competed with one another for authority inside and outside of their towns. Since political authority in the Creek world did not revolve around coercive power as it did in Europe, micos engaged in consensus politics, having to persuade their peers to support them, with the assumption that they had the community’s best interests in mind. Creek headmen often achieved consensus by redistributing trade goods and presents to the community, sustaining a vibrant trade with Europeans, and mediating conflict with other Native peoples and Europeans. Yet there were instances when micos attempted to assert broader authority over their towns. For example, in 1718, Brims articulated a collective foreign policy – known as the “Coweta Resolution” – that committed all Creek towns and micos to end internal conflict in the Confederacy and to open trilateral negotiations with the French, English, and Spanish. The Resolution pitted Europeans against one another for the loyalty of the Confederacy, which translated into greater leverage and more favorable trade for the Creek. In doing so, the Creek extended their political and commercial reach as far west as the Arkansas and Ohio River Valleys, and north to the Great Lakes and Iroquoia. 1 2 English Creek Nation After the American Revolution While the Confederacy abided by the “Coweta Resolution” for most of the eighteenth-century, the American Revolution dramatically changed their situation. No longer able to play Europeans o of one another, the Confederacy at first clashed violently with the United States during the 1780s and 1790s. U.S. o cials like Benjamin Hawkins coined the term “Plan of Civilization” to describe U.S. relations with the Creek Nation. During the Washington, Adams, and Je erson administrations, the U.S. desired Creek Nation to model American culture and society through types of agricultural production, home industry, and dress. They envisioned a new generation of Creek leaders – many of whom were born of the unions between Creek women and Euro-American men – as a means to counter American colonialism by reinventing the Confederacy as a “nation” similar to the United States, thus putting the two states on equal footing. Consequently, the Creek Nation adopted a written constitution, established a National Council and other federal forms of government, implemented a legal system that privileged property ownership and patriarchy, and turned to plantation agriculture and African slavery. Yet such adaptations came at the cost of the clan and town identities, consensus politics, and matrilineality that once characterized the Confederacy. Creek Nation and the Washington Administration After conflict between Creek Nation and the state of Georgia concerning treaty disputes, the Washington administration was apprehensive in how they navigated their relationship with the influential nation. These treaties from the 1780s ceded land to the state of Georgia along terms that the Creek Nation did not agree to. At the time, the nation was led by Alexander McGillivray, a mixed-race chief who spoke fluent English. He and twenty- eight other leaders accepted Washington’s invitation to travel to New York in 1790 to negotiate a new treaty. The result was the Treaty of New York, which restored some Creek lands and provided annuities for ceded land. However, the treaty included assimilation policies in which members of Creek Nation were given "useful domestic animals and implements of husbandry" and encouraged to become "herdsman and cultivators" instead of "remaining in a state as hunters." However, the Treaty of New York failed to achieve its goals, as the federal government could not stem the relentless incursion of American settlers onto "protected" lands that the U.S. promised to protect. Tensions concerning the loss of land and assimilation e orts within towns mounted into the Creek War fought between Upper Creeks and Lower Creeks from 1813-1814, transforming into an imperial conflict amid the War of 1812. While e orts to implement assimilation policies in Creek Nation ultimately failed to deter the United States from its violent removal of the Creek during the 1810s-1840s on a state and federal level, the Muscogee Nation still thrives to this day, a testament to the fluidity and adaptability that has defined the Creek Indians for centuries. 3 English Bryan Rindfleisch Marquette University, updated by Zoie Horecny, Ph.D., 9 July 2025 Notes: 1. Clarence Edwin Carter, ed. “Observations of John Stuart and Governor James Grant of East Florida on the Proposed Plan of 1764 for the Future Management of Indian A airs,” American Historical Review Vol. 20: No. 4 (July 1915): 828. 2. Steven C. Hahn, The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670-1763 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). 3. “From George Washington to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 7 December 1796,” Founders Online, National Archives. Bibliography: Ethridge, Robbie. Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Frank, Andrew K. Creeks and Southerners: Biculturalism on the Early American Frontier . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Hahn, Steven C. The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670-1763 . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Piker, Joshua. Okfuskee: A Creek Indian Town in Colonial America . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. Saunt, Claudio . A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 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