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2. The Creek Social Universe
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Prior to embarking upon a discussion of specific archaeologically revealed aspects of sociocultural change among the Creeks during the postcontact period, it is first necessary to present an understanding of the Creeks from ethnohistoric descriptions. Although the limitations of cultural descriptions based in an atemporal ethnographic present have been pointed out previously (see Galloway 1993), to understand the social processes of cultural change among the Creeks following European contacts, we must, as Rogers (1990:23) argues, “consider those sociocultural aspects relevant to the interaction process.” It is also essential to understand something of the structure of the Creek social and cosmological universes and how these perspectives helped to shape their postcontact social world. Creek peoples and social practices certainly were not static prior to European contacts, but the introduction of novel goods, diseases , and ideologies during the postcontact period presented unique challenges to preexisting sociocultural practices (Crane 1928; Fairbanks 1952; Knight 1985; Mason 1963b; Waselkov 1989, 1993). The question that now arises is, “Who are the Creeks?” Contrary to what almost three hundred years of ethnohistoric information would lead us to believe, the answer is not straightforward. The Creeks were a multiethnic confederation of village agriculturalists occupying a large territory in the present-day states of Alabama and Georgia. Like most southeastern groups, the Creeks traced descent matrilineally, practiced matrilocal residence, and The Creek Social Universe 2 used a modified form of the Crow kinship system (Spoehr 1947). The Creek household, or huti, was the smallest identifiable social unit among the Creeks, and it was through the household that they met their basic subsistence and productive needs. Household membership usually consisted of a matriarch, her spouse and dependent children, married daughters with their spouses and children, and occasionally additional matrilineally related relatives. Thus, the Creek household was a multigenerational extended family occupying a common dwelling and cooperating in subsistence and productive activities (see Swanton 1928a). It appears that during the precontact and immediate postcontact period, younger married couples lacked the resources necessary to begin new households, living instead with members of the wife’s family until they had the resources necessary to establish an independent household (Swanton 1928a:114; Moore 1988:62). Creek households exhibit dramatic departures from these patterns during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These emergent trends are examined in greater detail in chapters 4 and 5. Creek women were responsible for the daily upkeep of the house, including the production of pottery, basketry, and other essential domestic products. Women were also responsible for the cultivation of communal agricultural fields and house gardens as well as the final processing and cooking of foodstuffs. Women and small children secured firewood for daily use and gathered wild food products to supplement their diet (Hudson 1976:264). They prepared animal skins and produced textiles for clothing and other household uses. The house and the overwhelming majority of household property belonged to the matriarch of the household. Affinal men were considered little more than visitors in their wife’s home. Research by Mason (1963b) suggests that the roles and social status of women remained largely unchanged throughout the historic period . She contends that the removal of men from Creek households for several months during commercial deer-hunting activities would have strengthened principles of matrilineal descent and improved The Creek Social Universe | 23 [18.191.171.20] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 23:24 GMT) the social status of women. However, archaeological and ethnohistoric data suggest a more complicated interpretation of postcontact female roles and status (see chapter 5). Creek men spent most of their time involved in “hunting, the ball game, politics, war, and the ceremonies connected with the entire round of social life” (Hudson 1976:267). Men made the majority of stone tools, cleared land for agriculture and the construction of new buildings, and built most public and domestic structures. During the historic period men spent an increasing proportion of their time engaged in commercial hunting related to the European deerskin trade. Such activities removed men from the household for long periods of time (sometimes as long as six months), forcing women to undertake an even greater range of domestic tasks (Piker 2004; Waselkov 1989, 1993). It was through the participation in the deerskin trade that many elements of Creek culture were forever altered as new ideologies and mechanisms of social aggrandizement were introduced into Creek households and as Creek peoples reacted to preexisting sociopolitical practices (see Braund 1993 and Saunt 1999). Matrilineages allowed kinship groups to...