Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603-1832

6. In a Red Petticoat: Coosaponakeesa’s Performance of Creek Sovereignty in Colonial Georgia

[6] In a Red Petticoat Coosaponakeesa’s Performance of Creek Sovereignty in Colonial Georgia Caroline Wigginton In 1733 the Creek trader Coosaponakeesa donned a red stroud petticoat and stationed herself on a bluff overlooking the Savannah River. Along with her husband, a group of local Yamacraw Indians, and the Yamacraw leader Tomochichi, she awaited the appearance of the first Georgian colonists and their governor, James Oglethorpe. At last seeing the colonists, the Yamacraws “saluted them with a volley of gunfire.”1 The Georgians returned the greeting, and the two groups approached each other. Then, as the Yamacraws watched, Coosaponakeesa mediated and interpreted the first of many friendly diplomatic conversations between Tomochichi and Oglethorpe. From the perspective of Oglethorpe and the other colonists, Coosaponakeesa “then appeared to be in mean and low Circumstances , being only Cloathed with a Red Stroud Petticoat and Osnabrig Shift.”2 As this description suggests, to them her selection of clothing for the first encounter accentuated that she was a woman but an Indian one. On the one hand, as garments typically worn by English women, the petticoat and shift were familiar and declared femininity. On the other hand, as a petticoat and a shift were frequently undergarments and as she was bareheaded, she appeared strange and perhaps improper.3 Moreover, her outfit may have evoked for them the economic motivations behind their colony, an extension of Britain’s mercantile empire. Stroud, a woolen rag cloth usually used to make blankets for trade with Indians, would have demonstrated that she was willing to participate in trade for English manufactures and to adapt those objects for her own purposes through sewing or other material interventions.4 In the preceding account the anonymous white author, writing sixteen years after the meeting and describing her appearance as indicating “mean and low Circumstances,” attests to the vividness of the moment even as he couches her difference in terms of poverty and inferiority. After encountering a woman attired in the objects of European trade, fluent in English and Creek, and experienced as an Indian trader, the colonists may have seen Coosaponakeesa as embodying their hopes for the new colony, a figure of raw potential awaiting the adornment of prosperity. After all, they depended upon her skills and her opinion throughout their early years in Georgia, even when they found her motives suspect. Yet this image of Coosaponakeesa in her spare, unusual clothing spoke of more than Georgia’s promise. To herself and to the Yamacraws observing this encounter, her choice of the color red likely announced a particular stance toward this first diplomatic meeting. As a culture whose cosmology centered upon dualities and balance, the Creek Nation—and by extension the Yamacraw band, composed mainly of Creek exiles—structured political relationships around the duality of red and white (roughly translated as war and peace).5 The talwa, or main Creek political unit, and individual male Creek leaders had permanent identifications as red or white.6 During local and national councils those who were red argued from a red or war stance and those who were white argued from [170] Caroline Wigginton a white or peace stance. Additionally, a man could identify himself as on the red or white path in terms of a relationship with another person or group.7 Unlike men, women may have belonged to a red or white talwa, but otherwise they maintained balance in the cosmos “behind the scenes.”8 Red and white alignments structured political engagements, but according to Katherine E. Holland Braund, women’s “considerable impact” on political matters derived from their privately influencing public opinion through “tears, ridicule, and other methods to persuade husbands, brothers, uncles and sons. This was especially true of matters of war and peace.”9 In choosing a red petticoat, Coosaponakeesa began her first diplomatic meeting vibrantly adorned in the Creek diplomatic “male” color of war—quite the opposite of the exploitable poor and female subject the Georgians read in Coosaponakeesa’s strange apparel. Coosaponakeesa’s color choice did not automatically indicate that she was declaring war upon the colonists. In explicating Creek duality, George E. Lankford explains that balance instead of competition defines the relationship between dual categories: “As seems to be true of most dual oppositional thought, the goal is to maintain a workable balance between the opposing forces or worlds. The opposition is not one which is envisioned as temporary, with one to become a victor...