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3 on sunday, september 12, 1813, an express rider arrived in nashville to hand Governor Willie blount a shocking report “of the dreadful slaughter of several hundred of our fellow citizens by the Creek indians.” The dispatch referred to the massacre that had taken place on august 30 at the fortified stockade known as fort mims, located in a remote region of the mississippi Territory (about forty miles north of mobile in present-day baldwin County, alabama). The annihilation of hundreds of settlers by the warring faction of the Creeks—the red sticks—ignited a panic throughout the southern frontier .1 Within a month of the incident, Tennessee declared war on the Creek nation and initiated plans to conduct a coordinated campaign with Georgia, the mississippi Territory, and elements of the Us regular army to chastise the offending Creeks. but for various reasons the americans’ strategy never materialized and Tennessee took on the brunt of the 1813–14 struggles that came to be known as the Creek War. of the five tribes of indians affiliated with the old southwest—Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and seminole—the Creeks were considered the most powerful at the onset of the nineteenth century. Geographical advantages made up much of this prestige; that is, the easy access to the Gulf of mexico, their control of east–west routes, and their possession of highly prized land. europeans had long recognized the key role the Creeks held and energetically sought their support or neutrality. since the seventeenth century , the Creeks had been traditionally divided into the Upper Creeks (those towns situated along the alabama, Coosa, and Tallapoosa rivers) and the lower Creeks (towns on the Chattahoochee and flint rivers). by the mideighteenth century, the Upper Creeks had increased in population and power, due in part to the avoidance of large-scale warfare and the adoption of the natchez, shawnee, and other refugee tribes. by 1764, the Upper Creek portion of the Creek “confederacy” consisted of thirty-nine towns with a population of nine thousand (by the War of 1812, the Creek population grew to Chapter 3 / 57 twenty thousand, including five thousand warriors). historically, the union of the Upper and lower Creeks came about as a response to powerful outside forces that threatened them. many of their languages were related but not mutually intelligible, and the confederation was merely one of convenience, as the real power lay in the individual villages. Thus the Creeks were composed of various tribes each with their own language and customs, structured by a kinship system based on matrilineal class and a clan system that helped to counter any factionalism. This cultural and ethnic diversity of the Creeks created a flexible political structure that proved to frustrate whites seeking land concessions and treaties.2 The transformation of Creek culture due to ties with european trade has been well documented.3 based primarily on the exchange of goods (particularly guns and cloth) for deerskins, the economic bond between the Creeks and the british reveals a sophisticated trade operating from the late seventeenth century forward. Creek political elites of the early, precolonial period used certain prestige goods to exercise dominance over their people. after contact with europeans, individual households gained more access to these goods, as well as metals, thus enlarging their influence over all aspects of Creek social life while undermining the elites’ monoploly of authority. european intervention also created an atmosphere of intense pressure between indian societies competing for the highly sought european merchandise . White contact altered the economy of the Creeks by creating new roles for females (spinning cloth, for example), while the males adopted agriculture by which the Creek warriors felt subjugated, thus creating tensions between genders. in the decades following the american revolution, when the deerskin economy began to fade, the Creeks adopted new conceptions of property—cattle, slaves, cotton—that fomented controversy about what kind of economy and leadership they should have, with many Creeks viewing these innovations as symbols of decay. more ruinous to Creek tradition than white intrusion was the establishment of wealthy half bloods, set apart from the rest of the tribe by accepting white ways, producing a class of people who became potential enemies within the tribe. anti-american prophets, such as Josiah francis, gradually succeeded to leadership roles. This eventually led to a civil war among the Creeks, spilling over into a conflict between indians and white settlers, and giving Us authorities an excuse to justify their policy of indian removal.4 federal...

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