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BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 129 / / Creeks and Southerners / Andrew K. Frank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [129], (1) Lines: 0 to 14 ——— 13.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: Eject [129], (1) Epilogue Race, Clan, and Creek In the early nineteenth century, as racial divisions increasingly became an accepted reality on the southern frontier, the Creeks told a story that explained the origins of race in terms that seemingly violated their nonracial worldview. “Some people once came to a very small pool of water to bathe. The man who entered . . . first came out clean and his descendants, the white people, have the same appearance. He had, however, dirtied the water a little and so the next man was not quite so clean, and his descendants are the Indians. By this time the water was very dirty and so the last man came out black and his people are the negroes.”1 Even as the tradition embraced the importance and inevitability of biological differences between Indians,Africans,and Europeans, it still adhered to the Creek’s nonracial worldview. Rather than permanent and primordial divisions separating humankind,the tradition pointed to the historical and perhaps recent emergence of racial difference. Underneath the range of skin colors, the explanation inferred, people were essentially the same; only an accident created racial differences. Creeks and Southerners, much like the oral tradition, urges us to be more careful with the language and logic of race in writing about early American Indian history. This process is a difficult one. The language of half-breed and mestizo litter available English, Spanish, and French primary sources, and the logic of race frequently shaped the behavior of the European Americans who left most of the records. Native sources recorded in the past century also use the language of blood quantum, implying partial Indianness for people whose actions were consistently Creek. Yet Creeks in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries held a nonracial understanding of the boundary between themselves and outsiders. Although Creeks never issued a proclamation that conveniently defined this boundary, their behavior throughout the long eighteenth century demonstrates that they did not believe that a racialized boundary existed. Race and the language of blood may have become central components of Creek and Indian identities in subsequent years, but this was not always the case. Creeks— of various villages, clans, and cultural dispositions—routinely adopted, incorporated , and accepted the Creek identities of African, European American, and BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 130 / / Creeks and Southerners / Andrew K. Frank 130 | Epilogue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [130], (2) Lines: 14 to 23 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [130], (2) Native newcomers. The issue of village and clan membership was simply not a biological one. The emergence of race began during the decades that preceded removal, but it did not yet threaten to eliminate the importance of clan and village allegiances . Even the Red Stick War (1813–14),which corresponded with Tecumseh’s efforts to create a pan-Indian alliance throughout the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley, demonstrated the internal tensions regarding race and identity within Creek society. On one hand, as several scholars have demonstrated, the Redsticks employed rhetoric that pointed to the creation of a racial division between white Americans and red Creeks. For example, they declared that all non-Creeks “should immediately remove [from Creek lands], otherwise they should by them be considered as whites and enemies.”2 By implying “whites” were naturally outsiders and therefore “enemies,” the Redsticks connected biology and tribal identities in a way that contradicted earlier ideas about ethnic and racial inclusivity. This racial logic also appeared during the 1813 assault on Fort Mims, an assault that at least according to one warrior resulted because “the Master of Breath has ordered us not to kill any but white people and half breeds.”3 At the same time, though, several American observers watched as the Redsticks warned the Creek children of intermarriages to choose their cultural paths. They could no longer embrace both their maternal ties to Indian society...

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