Architectural Variability in the Southeast

10. Interpreting Changes in Historic Creek Household Architecture at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

10 Interpreting Changes in Historic Creek Household Architecture at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century Robert J. Scott House construction is based on shared traditions and ideas about how dwellings should be built, where, of what materials, how they are to be used, and where different activities will take place. Change in domestic architecture can often be related to significant changes in cultural knowledge, attitudes, and technology within a given community or society. The historic Creeks selectively incorporated elements of European material culture and technology into their own throughout the eighteenth century but remained distinctively Creek (Waselkov 1989, 1997:185). With the exception of a specific subset of the population that was beginning to bring Euro-American architectural patterns into Creek country, most continued to erect homes of wattle-and-daub construction . At the turn of the nineteenth century the historic Creeks were faced with an advancing frontier of white settlers and a U.S. government focused on civilizing the southeastern Indians. A decline in the overseas demand for deerskins had left a large number of Creek families without a means of acquiring European manufactured goods. The United States implemented a policy that encouraged southeastern groups to adopt stock raising, plow agriculture, spinning and weaving, and other elements of Western culture and society that Americans understood to represent civilization (Hahn 2004:275).The rhetoric surrounding this policy focused on the economic life of the Indians, requiring a reordering of the roles men and women played in household production, and accepting Western ideas of private property and the inheritance of wealth. Not required of this policy, but presumably implied in its mandate, were concomitant changes in other aspects of Creek material culture not related to the new economic enterprises recommended by the U.S. government. Changes in Historic Creek Household Architecture 167 Here I examine archaeological evidence from late Lawson Field phase (1783– 1832) sites along the Lower Chattahoochee and Flint rivers for changes in Lower Creek domestic architecture at the turn of the nineteenth century.Written accounts and illustrations of Creek houses dating to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries indicate a shift from vertical post, wattle-anddaub homes and storage facilities to horizontal log pole structures. The accounts of Benjamin Hawkins and others suggest that people living in the prominent core communities at the turn of the century were less receptive to the economic and social changes advocated by the civilization plan, an attitude that may have been expressed through the continued construction of wattleand -daub dwellings and storage facilities. In contrast, those Creeks who decided to adapt to the new political and economic context that emerged in the Southeast at the turn of the century by raising livestock or growing crops for commercial exchange were beginning to build horizontal log and notch homes resembling those of frontier whites. Limited test excavations at several late Lawson Field phase sites in Alabama and Georgia in the last 20 years (see Worth 2000 for a recent overview) and recent area-wide excavations at the Lawson Field site, the confirmed location of the Lower Creek town of Kasita, allow us to independently assess the extent to which changes in Lower Creek material culture really occurred during this period. The approximate locations of relevant Upper and Lower Creek communities discussed in this chapter are provided in Figure 10.1. Historical Context and Background At the end of the eighteenth century the trade in deerskins was declining due to a drop in market demand in the United States and Europe and decimation of deer populations by years of over-hunting (Braund 1993; Crane 1956). In 1796 Hawkins arrived in Creek country as the first U.S. Indian agent to the southern Indians, charged with the task of promoting what would later be called Jeffersonian Indian policy. This plan focused on civilizing the southeastern Indians and transforming them into members of the newly founded United States. His obligation was “to lead the Indian from hunting to the pastoral life, to agriculture, household manufactures, a knowledge of weights and measures, money and figures . . . and lastly, letters” (in Mauelshagen and Davis 1969:7). Central to the civilization plan was putting men in charge of the household and making them responsible for raising livestock and growing crops for commercial exchange. Women were to give up their influence over household production and focus on spinning cotton as their primary economic contribution 168 Robert J. Scott to...