Category: Creek Indian Tribe

When Alabama was first established as part of the Mississippi Territory in the early nineteenth century, the vast majority of the land belonged to the Creek Indian Confederacy, and most of the Native American towns in Alabama were inhabited by the Creeks. These towns were significant political and tribal centers, but they were much more important as places of personal identity for the Native Americans who were born in them.

The Creek Nation was divided among the group known as the Upper Creeks, who occupied territory along the Coosa, Alabama, and Tallapoosa rivers in central Alabama, and the Lower Creeks, who occupied the areas along the lower Chattahoochee, Ocmulgee, and Flint rivers in southwestern Georgia.

Both groups resided in those areas from the early seventeenth century until the Indian removal era of the 1830s.

Creek Indian towns and settlement patterns were recorded in the accounts of travelers who visited them. Some early writers, such as James Adair, David Taitt, William Bartram, and Benjamin Hawkins, provided detailed accounts of what they witnessed when traveling through Creek territory.

The US policy of discrimination against Native Americans was made official with the Indian Removal Act of 1830.  It was the first time the United States government resorted to coercion, mostly in the cases of two tribes, The Cherokee and the Seminole, as means of securing compliance.  The Removal Act was not in itself coercive, since it would only allow the president to negotiate with tribes that were along the East side of the Mississippi on a basis of payment for their lands. It called for improvements in the East and more land west of the Mississippi River. In carrying out the law, resistance was met with military force.

Despite the fact that they were able political and economic partners of the colonial and early U.S. government, the Creeks suffered the same fate as their fellow southeastern tribes, and many of them were forced from their lands in the 1830s. Creek culture is kept alive in Alabama among the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, based in Escambia County.

Montevallo-Alabama

Montevallo Alabama

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The area where Montevallo is now was once controlled by the Creek Indians. After being acquired in 1814 Jesse Wilson claimed a small hill on the northern bank of the Shoal Creek and created a homestead there, making it the oldest settlement in Shelby County. Wilson’s friends and family followed afterwards and also settled in the area, and a settlement known as Wilson’s Hill developed on the site. The settlement’s location at almost the exact center of Alabama meant it was considered one of the potential sites for the University of Alabama. In an attempt to encourage the university to choose the site the settlement changed its name to Montevallo, which is Italian for the hill in the valley.

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Tallassee on Henry Timberlake's 1762 "Draught of the Cherokee Country"

Tallassee Alabama

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Tallassee (also “Talassee,” “Talisi,” “Tellassee,” and various similar spellings) is a prehistoric and historic Native American site in Blount County and Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Tallassee was the southernmost of a string of Overhill Cherokee villages that spanned the lower Little Tennessee River in the 18th century. Although it receives scant attention in primary historical accounts, Tallassee is one of the few Overhill towns to appear on every major 18th-century map of the Little Tennessee Valley.

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Hilabee: An Important Creek Town

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The Hillabee complex, focused along the Hillabee and Enitachopco Creeks, dates back at least to the late 17th century. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries the complex lay in the approximate center of the Creek Confederacy’s territory. Its population probably peaked after the Creek War (1813–14), then declined. Creek settlement in the area ended with the forced removal of the Muscogee people during the 1830s.

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Nehemathla Micco or Neamathia Micco: Creek Chief

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Neamathla and the Fowltown warriors, all Red Sticks, were defeated in the Battle of Uchee Creek (1813) by the “southern” Creeks. They might have won had they not run out of ammunition. When a supply party with ammunition was attacked on its return from Pensacola — a preemptive strike — by U.S. forces, the Red Sticks defeated them at the Battle of Burnt Corn.

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