CREEK

Muskogean-speaking North American Indian tribe that originally occupied a huge expanse of the flatlands of Georgia and Alabama. Their economy was based largely on the cultivation of corn (maize), beans, and squash. Most of the farming was done by the women while the men of the tribe were away hunting or fighting. There were two divisions of Creeks: the Muskogee (or Upper Creeks), settlers of the northern Creek territory; and the Hitchiti and Alabama, who had the same general traditions as the Upper Creeks but spoke a slightly different dialect and were known as the Lower Creeks. Their towns were grouped into white towns (set apart for peace ceremonials) and red towns (set apart for war ceremonials). The Creeks were quite conscious of rank, but it was based on individual meritachievement in battle or the acquisition of tribal wisdomrather than heredity. Like most Indians of the Southeast, they commonly had their entire bodies tattooed. Each tattoo was an official insignia, beginning with those awarded a young boy when he first achieved warrior status. Each Creek town had a plaza or community square, around which were grouped the housesrectangular structures with four vertical walls of poles plastered over with mud to form wattle. The roofs were pitched and covered with either bark or thatch, with smoke holes left open at the gables. If the town had a temple, it was a thatched dome-shaped edifice set upon an eight-foot mound into which stairs were cut to the temple door. The plaza was the gathering point for such important religious observances as the Busk, or Green Corn, ceremony, an annual first-fruits and new-fire rite. A distinctive feature of this midsummer festival was that every wrongdoing, grievance, or crimeshort of murderwas forgiven. The Creeks' first contact with Europeans was in 1538 when Hernando de Soto invaded their territory. Subsequently, the Creeks allied themselves with the English colonists in a succession of wars (beginning about 1703) against the Apalachee (q.v.) and the Spanish. During the 18th century a Creek Confederacy was organized in an attempt to present a united front against both Indian and white enemies. It comprised not only the dominant Creeks but also speakers of other Muskogean languages (Hitchiti, Alabama-Koasati) and of non-Muskogean languages (Yuchi, some Natchez and Shawnee). The confederacy was a failure, for at no time did all the Creek towns (about 50 with a total population of perhaps 20,000) contribute warriors to a common battle. In 181314, when the Creek War (q.v.) with the U.S. took place, some towns fought with the whites and some (the Red Sticks) against them. The defeated Creeks ceded 23,000,000 acres of land (half of Alabama and part of southern Georgia) and were forcibly removed to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in the 1830s. There with the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, they were one of the Five Civilized Tribes. For three-quarters of a century each tribe had a land allotment and a quasi-autonomous government modelled on that of the U.S. In preparation for Oklahoma statehood (1907), some of this land was allotted to individual Indians; the rest was opened up to white homesteaders, held in trust by the federal goverment, or allotted to freed slaves. Tribal governments were effectively dissolved in 1906 but have continued to exist on a limited form. Some Indians now live on tribal landholdings that are informally called reservations. In the late 20th century about 20,000 Creeks were living in Oklahoma, many of them entering fully into the life of the state and remaining Creek only by formal affiliation. About 15,000 of these resided on federal trust lands. Others were more conservative, preserving the use of the Creek language, traces of the ancient town organization, and some aspects of Creek religion such as the Green Corn ceremony. A remnant had remained in southwestern Alabama, where their descendants numbered about 500. This group has lost the Creek language and almost all traces of Creek culture. The Seminole (q.v.) of Florida and Oklahoma are an offshoot from the Creek Confederacy of the 18th and early 19th centuries.