Muscogee, or Creek, people (Amerind tribe)
Nation | Active
1396 CE to 2057 CE
The Muscogee (or Muskogee), also known as the Creek or Creeks, are a Native American people traditionally from the southeastern United States.
Mvskoke is their name in traditional spelling.
Modern Muscogees live primarily in Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.
Their language, Mvskoke, is a member of the Muscogee branch of the Muscogean language family.They were descendants of the Mississippian culture peoples, who built earthwork mounds at their regional chiefdoms located throughout the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries.
The historian Walter Williams and others believe the early Spanish explorers encountered ancestors of the Muscogee when they visited Mississippian-culture chiefdoms in the Southeast in the mid-16th century.The Muscogee were the first Native Americans to be "civilized" under George Washington's civilization plan.
In the 19th century, the Muscogee were known as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes", because they had integrated numerous cultural and technological practices of their more recent European American neighbors.
In 1811, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, with the help of a prophetic comet and earthquake, convinced the Muscogee to resist the efforts of civilization.
The Red Stick War, begun as a civil war within the Muscogee Nation, enmeshed them in the War of 1812.During the Indian Removal of 1830, most of the Muscogee Nation moved to Indian Territory.
The Muscogee Creek Nation based in Oklahoma is federally recognized, as is the Poarch Band of Creek Indians of Alabama.
Creek tribe communities also have formed in Louisiana and Texas.
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Xapita, a province near Duahre where pearls are found, is identified with the name of the Sampit River, which flows in an easterly direction to Winyah Bay at Georgetown.
Other provinces under Datha include Tihe, inhabited by a priestly tribe, and Xamunambe.
Arambe, Guacaya, Quohathe, Tanzaca (Tanaca), and Pahoc are additional regions that the Spanish record visiting, where they note the indigenous peoples had dark brown skin.
Swanton suggests that Guacaya may correlate to Waccamaw (a Siouan tribe), and Pahoc to "Back Hooks".
Rudes connects Quohathe with Coweta (a Muscogee (Creek) subtribe); Tanzaca with "Transequa", a village shown on a 1733 map on the Upper Catawba River; and Arambe with the Ilapi of Hernando de Soto (1541), also the Mississippian-culture village called Herape by Juan Pardo (1568), and the later Creek town Hilibi, which had moved farther west.
Inziguanin is described as a nation whose inhabitants have a myth that crocodile-like men had once lived in their land.
Rudes suggests Inziguanin could be a reference to the Shawnee, though they will not be not attested in the southeast until long afterward.
Other sources, such as Oviedo, Navarrete, Barcia, and Documentos Ineditos list additional provinces derived from Francisco de Chicora, some of which have been tentatively identified by Swanton and other researchers, including the Yamiscaron: the Yamacraw or Yamasee tribe (Guale).
The Orixa are a Cusabo subtribe on the Edisto River.
The Coçayo is the "Coosa" subtribe of the Cusabo, who live on the upper South Carolina rivers.
These "Coosa" are probably not related to the Muskogean-speaking Coosa chiefdom that Hernando de Soto will encounter some fifteen years later in present-day northern Georgia.
The Pasqui, which Pardo will call the Pasque, live inland near the Siouan Waxhaw tribe, native to what are now the counties of Lancaster, in South Carolina; and …
…Union and Mecklenburg in North Carolina, around the area of Charlotte.
The Waxhaw were related to other nearby Southeastern Siouian tribes, such as the Catawba and Sugeree.
Some scholars suggest the Waxhaw may have been a tribe of the Catawba rather than a separate people, given the similarity in what is known of the language and customs.
A distinctive custom that they share is flattening of the forehead of individuals.
Flattening of the head gives the Waxhaw a distinctive look, with wide eyes and sloping foreheads.
They start the process at birth by binding the infant to a flat board.
The wider eyes are said to give the Waxhaw a hunting advantage.
The typical Waxhaw dwellings are similar to those of other peoples of the region.
They are covered in bark.
Ceremonial buildings, however, are usually thatched with reeds and bullgrass.
The people hold ceremonial dances, tribal meetings and other important rites in these council houses.
Aymi is possibly the Hymahi of de Soto and Pardo, placed by Hudson (1990) on the Congaree River, near where it joins the Santee.
Early European observers and later American scholars theorize the Congaree were likely of the Siouan language family, given their geographic location and characteristics of neighboring tribes.
Since the late twentieth century, scholars more widely agree that the people were non-Siouan.
Their language is distinct from the Siouan language, and not intelligible to their immediate Siouan neighbors, the Wateree.
The Sona are possibly a Cusabo subtribe on the Stono River.
The Yenyohol are the Winyaw of Winyah Bay; the identification of the Anica, Xoxi, Huaque, Anoxa is uncertain.
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