Colonial Period Creek Indian Towns

 

The research for what will be the final novel of my Restoration Chronicles Trilogy, Witch: 1790 has included learning about the Creek Indians. My Georgia Gold Series featured some late Cherokee history, but until I moved out of the foothills to the Georgia Piedmont, I knew little about that area of the state's early residents. In a series of articles I'm sharing my findings; today's will relate something of the structure of a Creek Indian town during the Colonial period.


Naturalist William Bartram was an observer at the land cessation meeting that occurred in 1773 in Augusta between the white colonists and the Creek and Cherokee Indians. His journal of his travels from the coast to middle Georgia provide much of the information about the Creek Indians during that period. He described 60 towns, 30 of which spoke the Muscogulge tongue and could converse with Natchez, Chickasaws and Choctaws with the aid of white interpreters. The five clans were Panther, Bear, Wind, Bird and Snake.


In each town, white clay, paste or chalk was used to draw plants, flowers, trees on the red clay houses, especially those creating the Public Square. On white walls, colored chalks were used. Each family would have a round winter or a rectangular summer house. In 1790, Caleb Swan described these as being between 12 and 20 feet long and 10 to 15 feet wide constructed with poles stuck in the ground, walls lathed with canes and filled with clay, roofs pitched from a ridge pole and covered with large tufts of bark and four to five layers of shingles. The huts had one door and a chimney and would last only a couple of years.

A - Rotunda, B - Square, C - Chunky Yard

The town council was held every forenoon in the Public Square, presided over by the Mico, with the war chief on his left and the second head-man on the right. The Mico or king received great respect at the Great Rotunda or winter council-house, but outside important meetings, he dressed and was treated the same as the others, hunting and working the fields with his family. He was, however, entitled to the first fruits of harvest and use of the national granary.  Should a king or Mico also be war chief or high priest (in charge of guarding the eternal fire in the Great Rotunda) he would indeed have great power.

The game of "Tchung-kee" or Chunky

Between the public square and rotunda of each town was the chunky-yard, chunky being a game which involved rolling a small disk and shooting arrows or spears at the spot it would land. The yard itself was a large, sunken ground with what was known as the chunky-pole, four square pine pillars rising to an obtuse point. At the top the Indians could fasten an object to shoot at with bows and arrows and rifles. Near each corner of the lower and further end of yard was a lesser, 12-foot high pole, but a more fearful sight than the chunky pole, as it was decorated with the scalps of enemies and crowned by a grinning enemy skull.  Here in the days before Bartram’s arrival captives could have been forced to run the gauntlet or tortured by fire to their deaths. Thankfully for him, that practice had been abandoned by then, and Bartram was full of praise for the hospitality of his hosts.

 

 

Bartram indicated some Lower Creek towns may not have been composed of rotunda, square and chunky yard, but by this many suppose he meant the towns of the Hitchiti-speaking Creeks.

 

Each family in town had a lot bounded by poles and including a garden spot where corn, rice, squash, etc. were raised. A portion of everything went to the aforementioned public granary, which was for the use of guests of the tribe or families which fell on hard times. Bartram observed that the Creek were very given to sharing and loaning. A man could clear and settle as much land as desired within his tribe. Occasionally, a Creek Indian would own an independent plantation and would live like princes in their villas, wealthy from trade with whites.

Denise Weimer is one of our newest CQ contributors. Her website is www.deniseweimerbooks.webs.com

Creek Indians in Revolutionary War-era Georgia

The research for what will be the final novel of my Restoration Chronicles Trilogy, Witch: 1790 (www.deniseweimerbooks.webs.com) has included learning about the Creek Indians. My Georgia Gold Series featured some late Cherokee history just prior to the Trail of Tears, but until I moved out of the foothills to the Georgia Piedmont, I knew little about this area of the state’s early residents. So who were they? And what were they like? In a series of articles I’ll share some of my findings on Creek Indian towns, appearance, beliefs, Colonial war in Piedmont Georgia and the charismatic half-blood Supreme Chief Alexander McGillivray (by the way, someone needs to write a novel about him). Today’s article will serve as an introduction.

Musgrove & 3rd husband Rev. Bosomworth negotiating for Creek

Before the middle of the 16^th Century, the Creek Indians (Muscogee, Muskogee, or traditional spelling Mvskoke), Mississippian Culture mound-builders, controlled most all of present-day Georgia. Following the battle of Slaughter Gap against their neighbors, the Cherokee, the Creek moved past the Etowah River. Another battle in 1755 determined the later Creek-Cherokee border with the Creek south of the Chattahoochee River in Georgia and west of the Coosa River in Alabama. This began the period of referring to the Upper and Lower Creek tribes. Piedmont or Middle Georgia was the home of the Lower Creek. Mary Musgrove, daughter of an English trader and a Muscogee woman from the Wind Clan, helped her husband John run a fur trading post and became the main interpreter for the first governor of Georgia. Under these favorable conditions, peace and deerskin trade flourished.

 

During the French and Indian War, the Upper Creek sided with the Cherokee against the English. The peace conference in Augusta, Georgia, in 1763, gave the victorious English colonies a large section of Indian lands. White settlement began. By 1773, Georgians demanded payment of the trade debts accrued by the Native Americans. This occurred at a land cessation meeting in Augusta.

Even after the land cessations, many Creek farms remained on open-to-settlement land. True Muscogean speakers sometimes looked down on Yuchi or Hitchiti speaker members of Creek Nation, calling them “stinkards.” Hitchiti considered Muscogees interlopers from the west in the past who had moved closer to traders and trapped and hunted year round to satisfy their desires for white goods. From 1716 on, many Creek Indians fled the land pressures in Georgia for Florida, becoming Seminole Indians. Seminole was a corruption of the Spanish word Cimarron, meaning “runaway” or “wild one.”

On the eve of the American Revolution, the Spanish to the south, French to the west and Cherokee and Creek on the frontier placed Georgia in an insecure position. Even though the Lower Creeks were more a loose confederation of independent towns than a unified people, they could have overpowered the still randomly populated state. Supreme Creek Chief Alexander McGillivray, son of a wealthy Scottish trader and planter whose property had been confiscated by the state of Georgia, pushed the Upper Creek to ally with the British, fighting alongside the Chickamauga (Lower Cherokee) warriors of Dragging Canoe. Meanwhile, McGillivray’s ex-trading partner George Galphin had some success in persuading the Lower Creeks to remain neutral. However, after the capture of Savannah by the British, they became nominal allies. Muscogee warriors also fought with the British in the campaigns of Mobile and Pensacola.

Following the war, a series of treaties between the new U.S. government or the State of Georgia and the Creek Nation led to misunderstanding and frustration on both sides and were not recognized by McGillivray and the main body of Creek Indians. By 1786, war had been declared on the Georgia frontier, one that would rage for many years.