George Washington Grayson and the Creek Nation, 1843-1920 (review)

George Washington Grayson and the Creek Nation, 1843–1920. By Mary Jane Warde. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. xvii + 334 pp., preface, introduction, photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $25.95 cloth.)

In George Washington Grayson and the Creek Nation, 1843–1920, Mary Jane Warde describes Grayson as a “biographer’s dream” (ix). He appears in government documents, the Creek National Records, and territorial newspapers; his daily journals between 1898 and 1917 confirm that he was, both privately and publicly, an important figure in Creek history. Living in a period of upheaval in the Creek Nation between 1843 and 1920, Grayson survived the aftermath of removal, the Civil War, the pressure for land allotment, and the eventual tribal dissolution. Warde believes that Grayson’s life epitomizes Creek history during this period. Through the biography of Grayson, therefore, Warde also hopes to provide a corollary to Angie Debo’s classic, The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians (1941), which ends with the 1906 dissolution of the Nation.

Although scholars increasingly have become aware of the false impression conveyed by the term “mixed-blood”—blood determines the level of Indian acculturation—and have avoided its use, Warde deliberately employs this term to describe Grayson. Warde considers Grayson a well-balanced, “mixed-blood” Creek, who retained his Indianness while accepting Anglo-American ways. His life experiences illustrate how he had acquired the skills to incorporate new perspectives into Native culture. Whereas a traditional Indian upbringing shaped his strong Creek identity, an English education in mission schools introduced Grayson to different manners and practices. When Grayson, along with several others representing the Creek Nation, enrolled in Arkansas College at Fayetteville in 1859, he more fully exposed himself to American society. Through daily contact with American students and the hospitality of the townspeople, Grayson came to feel much at ease with non-Indians. His conversion to Christianity during his first year in Arkansas College demonstrated his willingness to adopt different cultural perspectives. Indeed, two years of higher education “in the States” broadened his views and placed him in a better position to serve the Creek Nation as a “cultural broker.”

Enlistment in the Confederate Indian Brigade reinforced Grayson’s importance in Creek society. Just as the Creek warrior tradition expected male members to fight in wars to demonstrate their courage and bravery, Grayson participated in the Civil War to show his manhood, earn public recognition, and acquire his war name, Yaha (Wolf). Persistent white racism, of which Confederate officers reminded Grayson, reinforced his Creek nationalism. His performance during the war helped him gain the confidence of prominent Confederate Creeks, who would soon dominate the post-war politics of the Nation; his war experiences also shaped his political views, which Warde calls nationalistic and progressive. Grayson advocated “selective cultural change,” which, he believed, would help bolster tribal sovereignty (87).

As secretary to the council, interpreter, national treasurer, member of the House of Warriors, and delegate to intertribal councils and to Washington, Grayson actively participated in national politics. He also engaged in various business activities, including ranching, and he played a major role in the modernization of Indian territory farming. Moreover, Grayson was a stockholder in the Indian Journal, the official organ of the Creek Nation, through which he and other Creek nationalists advocated acculturation as a means of survival.

Throughout his life, Grayson continued to believe that “defensive, selective adoption of Anglo-American culture” would save the Nation and the people (163). Grayson strongly opposed allotment when it became an issue. Although he eventually gave up the idea of communal landholding, Grayson continued to insist on the retention of an Indian tribal government. Nevertheless, Grayson’s devotion to his people was not fully realized until well after the Creek Nation ceased to exist as a political entity on March 4, 1906. Having engaged in Creek politics for almost half a century, Grayson received a presidential appointment on November 13, 1917, as...