Creek Indians

To get started in American Indian Research

Creek Indians were also known as Muskogee.

The Creek Indians are one of the Five Civilized Tribes.

Cultural area is the Southeast United States.

Linguistic group: Muskogean

Federal Status: Recognized

Clans: Wind, Bird, Alligator, Bear

Original homeland: along the banks of the Alabama, Coosa, Tallapoosa, Flint, Ocmulgee, and Chattahoochee Rivers, In the Gerogia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee

Creek Indians trace their ancestry through the female line. The children belong to the same clan as their mother. Clan members were closely related so they had to marry someone from a different clan than his or her own.

The Creek Nation is comprised of six political districts: 1. Coweta, 2. Deep Fork, 3. Eufaula, 4. Muscogee, 5. Okmulgee, 6. Wewoka; these districts functions like counties.

History
Their ancestral homeland was in Alabama and Georgia.

Brief Timeline

 * 1540: First contact Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto
 * 1703-08: Creeks were allies of the English in the Apalachee wars.
 * 1775: supported the British in the American Revolutionary War
 * 1813-1814: Creek Wars, General Andrew Jackson, in command of some of the forces
 * 1796-1816: Benjamin Hawkins, was the federal agent to the Creeks
 * 1816: after the death of Benjamin Hawkins, President James Madison appointed David B. Mitchell, a former governor of Georgia. He undermined the Creeks' sovereignty and initated acts to take all of their lands in Georgia.
 * 1836-1837: removed from Georgia and Alabama to eastern Oklahoma. Some were taken by a southern route to New Orleans and then by steamboats (Monmouth) up the Mississippi River to Arkansas. The Monmouth collided with the Trenton more than 300 Creeks drowned.  During removal 3,500 died of the 15,000.
 * November 25, 1785: Treaty at Hopewell, South Carolina
 * June 29, 1796: Coleraine, Georgia
 * August 9, 1814: Fort Jackson, Alabama
 * January 22, 1818: Creek agency on Flint river
 * January 8, 1821 / February 12, 1825: Treaty of Indian Springs negotiated by Creek leader William McIntosh. He was later (1825) executed by the Creek Nation for the deed.
 * January 24, 1826: Washington D.C.;Creeks would sell their land. Ratified April 22, 1826
 * March 24, 1832: Treaty that the United States would remove intruders.
 * 1836-1837: removal
 * November 23, 1838: Ft. Gibson
 * 1861-1865: the tribe was split; some allying with the Union others with the Confederate Army
 * 1867: Tribe adopted a new constitution
 * 1887: Dawes Act

Additional References to the History of the Tribe
Frederick Webb Hodge, in his Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, gave a more complete history of the Creek tribe, with estimations of the population of the tribe at various time periods. Additional details are given in John Swanton's The Indian Tribes of North America.

Enrollment Records

 * Dawes Commission Enrollment Records

Trade
Superintendent of Indian Trade. Letter Book of the Creek Trading House, 1785-1816. FHL film: 1024433

Treaties


 * 1785:
 * 1790 August 7, at New York
 * 1796 June 29, at Colerain
 * 1802 June 16, at Fort Wilkinson
 * October 27, 1805,
 * 1805 November 14, at Washington
 * 1814 August 9,
 * March 22, 1816, - Cherokee
 * 1818 October 19, with the Chickasaw, Flint River
 * 1821 January 8, at Indian Spring
 * 1821
 * 1824 February 12, at Indian Spring
 * 1825 June 29, at Broken Arrow - unratified
 * 1826 January 24, at Washington
 * 1827 November 15, at Creek Agency
 * 1832 March 24, at Washington
 * May 9, 1832, Seminole
 * 1833 February 14, at Fort Gibson
 * March 28, 1833
 * June 18, 1833, Appalachicola Band
 * 1835 August 24,  at Camp Holmes, with the Comanche
 * 1838 November 23, at Fort Gibson
 * 1845 January 4,with the Seminole
 * April 1, 1850 - Wyandot
 * 1854 June 13,
 * 1856 August 7, at Washington
 * September 13, 1865, at Fort Smith - unratified
 * 1866 June 14, at Washington

Vital Records

 * Crow Creek Agency, M595, births and deaths 1924-1932, FHL Film: 575783

Indian Pioneer Papers
In 1936, the Oklahoma Historical Society and University of Oklahoma requested a writer's project grant from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in which interviews would be conducted with early settlers in Oklahoma who had lived on Indian land. More than 100 writers conducted over 11,000 interviews and were asked to "call upon early settlers and (record) the story of the migration to Oklahoma and their early life here." The University of Oklahoma Western History Collection has digitized the Indian Pioneer Papers which consists of approximately 80,000 indexed entries arranged alphabetically by personal name, place name, or subject. An index to the Indian Pioneer Papers may also be found at OkGenWeb Oklahoma Genealogy. A separate index of Indians interviewed, including the Creek, may be viewed at: “Indians in the Indian Pioneer Papers” Some of the surnames from the Creek tribe found in the collection are: Barnett, Beam (Stevens), Berryhill, Bond, Breeding, Canard, Coker, Fisher (Postoak), Jobe, Postoak, Sells (Jobe).

Important Web Sites

 * Muscogee (Creek) Indians Wikipedia