The Creek Indians and Community Politics in the Native South, 1753-1821
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PEACH, STEVEN J., Ph.D. “The Three Rivers have Talked”: The Creek Indians and Community Politics in the Native South, 1753-1821. (2016) Directed by Dr. Greg O’Brien. 419 pp. This dissertation is a political history of the Creek Indians spanning the years between the conclusion of the Creek-Cherokee War in 1753 and the Creek Redstick migration to Florida. That migration came to a conclusion in 1821, when the United States took possession of Florida from Spain. By examining British, Spanish, American, and Creek documents with the methodology of ethnohistory, it seeks to understand how community interests directly and indirectly shaped political leadership in Creek society. It argues that Creek towns (italwa), clans, and provinces inspired a contradictory pattern of politics among Creek peoples. On one hand, town headmen forged coalitions with other Creek towns to secure trade with Euro-Americans, pursue peace with Euro- Americans and other indigenous people, and protect Creek hunting grounds. At times, clans stabilized the cross-town coalitions, especially when town leaders forged kinship ties with one another or with a potential Euro-American or indigenous ally. On the other hand, clans undermined political agreements and policies when clansmen carried out the law of retaliation (lex talionis) against Euro-Americans and other indigenous people. By uncovering the ways in which community fostered and impeded coalition- building in Creek society, this project revises debates in Creek ethnohistory, Native American history, and the history of the “Red”/Native Atlantic. Countless examples of coalition-building demonstrate that the Creeks were not politically decentralized, as some Creek ethnohistorians have argued, but nor did they create a centralized “nation” with coercive authority, as others in the same body of scholarship have contended. Secondly, the rise, shift, and demise of coalitions pieced together by this dissertation suggest that Creeks conceptualized politics in terms of coalition units. As a result, Native Americanists should no longer use terms like faction, pro-American, or pro-British to explain Native political agency. Rather, Creek politics developed, operated, shifted, and fractured along lines of community interests, choices, and affiliations. Finally, this project asserts that the Creeks shaped the contours of empire in the Atlantic basin by giving them a decidedly political cast. European overseas empire-building in the Native South was tied to the logic of Creek politics. “THE THREE RIVERS HAVE TALKED”: THE CREEK INDIANS AND COMMUNITY POLITICS IN THE NATIVE SOUTH, 1753-1821 by Steven J. Peach A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2016 Approved by Dr. Greg O’Brien Committee Chair © 2016 Steven J. Peach To my wife, Aisha Capparelli, whose love and patience are unending. To my parents, Alice and Steve, who helped me get this far. To the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, where clans and talwas endure. ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation written by STEVEN J. PEACH has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair Committee Members Date of Acceptance by Committee Date of Final Oral Examination iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Although my name graces the title page, every project of this scope bears the imprint of a generous community of people. Foremost, I thank my mentor and friend, Greg O’Brien, whose guiding hand shaped the dissertation into its current form. I am indebted to committee members Mark Elliott, Linda Rupert, and Peter Villella for their generous feedback. The College of Arts of Sciences awarded me the Candace Bernard Dissertation Fellowship, and the Department of History provided me with an Allen W. Trelease Dissertation Fellowship. I am grateful for each award, which defrayed the cost of two research trips. I also thank Dawn Avolio, Laurie O’Neill, and Kristina Wright for making my time at UNCG all the more pleasurable. Furthermore, I would like to thank the staff at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan; the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois; and the UNCG Library. I wish to thank the American Society for Ethnohistory, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and the UNC American Indian Center for allowing me to present my research. As a result of those meetings, I met many wonderful people who share my passion for Native American history, including Robbie Ethridge, Steven Hahn, Angela Pulley Hudson, Joshua Piker, and Bryan Rindfleisch. They offered advice at crucial stages of the dissertation. Finally, I could not have completed this project without my family’s support. Bonds of kinship, as the early modern Creeks knew, mean everything. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. vi LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................1 Community Politics ..........................................................................................1 Historiographical Discussion and Significance ................................................7 Community in Context ....................................................................................27 Organization of Argument ..............................................................................50 II. TOWN-BASED COALITIONS ..........................................................................53 III. THE INSTABILITY OF COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP ...............................107 IV. POLITICAL ORGANIZATION .......................................................................165 V. THE THREE RIVERS RESOLUTION.............................................................220 VI. THE HICKORY GROUND RESOLUTION ....................................................271 VII. POLITICAL CHANGE AND CONTINUITY ..................................................334 VIII. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................399 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................405 v LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1. Provincial Affiliation of Major Creek Towns and Talofas, Arranged in Alphabetical Order ......................................................................................42 Table 2. Five Creek Coalitions, 1753-1765 .......................................................................64 Table 3. Creek Coalitions during the Creek-Choctaw War .............................................113 Table 4. Two Creek-Led Coalitions, 1777-1786 .............................................................184 Table 5. Creek Coalitions in the Late Eighteenth Century ..............................................226 Table 6. Coalitions in Turn-of-the-Century Creek Society .............................................278 Table 7. Creek Coalitions in the Redstick War Era .........................................................341 Table 8. William Triplett, “The Warriors Enrolled in the Service of the U. States under the Command of Col. Hawkins” .........................................380 vi LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1. Eighteenth-Century Creek Society .....................................................................10 Figure 2. “A Publick Square” ............................................................................................35 Figure 3. A Creek Town, 1770s .........................................................................................36 Figure 4. Creek Towns, Colonial Period ...........................................................................54 Figure 5. John Swanton, “The Creek Busk: The Women’s Dance,” ca. 1912 ..................87 Figure 6. Eighteenth-Century Creeks and Choctaws .......................................................112 Figure 7. John Stuart or William Gerard De Brahm, “A Map of the Indian Nations in the Southern Department 1766” ......................................114 Figure 8. Creek Pictograph, Reproduced on Copperplate by Dutch Traveler Bernard Romans, ca. 1770 .............................................................121 Figure 9. Anthony Gonyea (Onondaga), Iroquois Wampum Belt ...................................144 Figure 10. Creek Coalitions during the American Revolution ........................................171 Figure 11. Major Rivers in the Native South ...................................................................174 Figure 12. The Native South in 1805 ...............................................................................227 Figure 13. Bird Tail King (Fusihatchee Mico) of Cussita, 1790 .....................................247 Figure 14. Treaties in the Native South, to 1805 .............................................................281 Figure 15. Classification of the Upper Creek Towns, 1799 ............................................294 Figure 16. Battlefields and Forts of U.S.-Creek War, 1813-1814 ...................................359 Figure 17. Upper Creek Towns in 1813...........................................................................363 Figure 18. “Tookaubatchee