The Second Creek War: Interethnic Conflict and Collusion on a Collapsing Frontier

Notes

433 adah Alabama Department of Archives and History aspia American State Papers, Class 2: Indian Affairs aspma American State Papers, Class 5: Military Affairs ca Creek Agency cvcc Chattahoochee Valley Community College gdah Georgia Department of Archives and History gj General Jesup lgm Local Government Microfilm lr Letters Received mp Microfilm Publication nara National Archives and Records Administration oag Office of the Adjutant General oia Office of Indian Affairs pb Papers and Books rg Record Group ss Seminole Superintendency wd War Department Introduction 1. The standard view of the Creek conflict comes from Rogin, Fathers and Children; Foreman, Indian Removal; Green, Politics of Indian Removal; Young, Redskins, Ruffleshirts, and Rednecks; and Debo, Road to Disappearance. J. L. Wright, in his book Creeks and Seminoles, gives a different view of the war. His ethnohistoric account places the conflict in the context of an ongoing civil war between two competing moieties in Creek society. 2. Eby’s That Disgraceful Affair is a good example of literature on the Black Hawk conflict, and Mahon’s Second Seminole War is still the most comprehensive of a number of works on the Seminole struggle. Notes 434 notes to pages 1–10 3. A couple of earlier journal articles and a master’s thesis did explain parts of the war, but none of these works comprehended the full scope of the war or its real meaning. See Valliere, “Creek War of 1836”; Rucker, “Creek Indian Crisis”; Pepper, “Creek Indian Question.” 4. Ortega y Gassett, Man and Crisis, 122. The idea of the world economic system and its impact on traditional societies comes from Wallerstein: “The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antimony of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth century” (Modern World-System, 233). For capitalism and commodification in the Old South, see Rogin, Fathers and Children, 252–53; Genovese, Political Economy of Slavery, 19–31; and Kulikoff, Agrarian Origins, 5–7. 5. According to Foner, “capitalism is profoundly antitraditional,” and one cannot logically defend social conservatism and the unregulated market at the same time (Story of American Freedom , 310). 6. The traditional interpretation of aggressive white southerners pushing Indian removal on oppressed Natives probably began with Turner’s Rise of the New West, 65, 67–68. Since that time, many books have utilized and strengthened the theme. Their point of departure has been Andrew Jackson’s role in the removal drama. Some historians blame Jackson for not enforcing treaties that protected Indian rights (see Van Every, Disinherited). Other historians exonerate the president, claiming that he could not resist the land hunger of southern whites and had no choice but to remove the Indians for the good of the nation and themselves (see Prucha, Great Father, 1:191–98). A review of the literature on this subject appears in Schoenleber’s “Rise of the New West,” 1–8. Schoenleber himself falls in the anti-Jackson camp, contending that the president’s leadership was crucial to removal and that southerners and their representatives in Congress could not have accomplished it without him. However, Schoenleber shows that southerners were not as united behind removal as many historians have supposed. In the case of the Creeks, all of the works mentioned in note 1 follow and help delineate the traditional theme. 7. Thompson and Lamar, “Comparative Frontier History,” 7–10 (quote on 7). 8. Merrell outlines the “New World” theme in Indians’ New World. He claims the American frontier was a “New World” for all ethnic groups, who had to adapt to one another and the changing landscape and times. One of the better examples of “Middle Ground” literature is R. White’s Middle Ground. See also Ethridge, Creek Country. 9. Peterson, “Old South,” 129. Those scholars who have taken Peterson’s advice when looking at the Old South usually focus on the period before the 1830s. Consequently, they do not examine the era when the most Native, white, and black people lived in the closest proximity. Usner’s Indians, Settlers, and Slaves is an example of one of these studies of the preremoval era. 1. Creek Politics and Confinement 1. Doster, Creek Indians, 1:244–65, 2:35–38; Owsley, Struggle, 9–13; Edmunds, Quest for Indian Leadership...