Welcome to the Creek Nation Archives of the state of Oklahoma!

The Creek Nation

British traders called them "Ochese Creek Indians," after the Ocmulgee River tributary in Georgia, where many of the tribal towns existed when trade began. The Muscogee (their recognized name) are not a tribe, but a confederacy of 100 or more tribes (called tribal towns) united in a single government.

The Muscogee speak, read, and write Muskoke, the mother of the great Muskogean linguistic family. An unrelated language, Yuchi, is still spoken.

In their early history, the Muscogee Indians lived in Georgia, Alabama and northern Florida. In 1540, they suffered an invasion by DeSoto, and eventually, war. By 1700, some unrelated tribes of the southeastern region, weakened by war and pressure from settlers, began joining the Creek Confederacy.

After losing the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, a few of the tribal towns removed to new lands in Indian Territory in 1826. In 1832, all Muscogee still in Alabama were allotted lands which could be sold with state approval. The resulting fraudulent sales deprived many of their property, and starving families returned "home" for crops and animals, causing friction among the "new owners." This sparked the Creek War of 1835-36, after which they were forcibly removed, costing 10,000 lives. The Muscogee were reunited in 1840, but the Civil War split the tribe again. A few joined the Confederacy; 10,000 "loyal Creeks" marched to Kansas. Attacked by confederates and Cherokee and later starved by Union inaction, 5,000 died, including Opoethleyahola, the most respected leader of the historic period.

After the war the tribe lost half their lands. Tribal government was illegally dissolved in 1906. In protest came Chitto Harjo's Rebellion of 1909, the last major Indian uprising in the United States. The protesters were right: the allotment and guardian frauds again deprived the Muscogee of land and resources.

In 1979, the Creek Nation reorganized under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936.

This is one of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma noted for conservatism and dramatic color in tribal ceremonies. The Muscogee are matrilineal and matrilocal, with women owning  family property. Towns are red-hearted or white-hearted, representing war and peace.

 Gene Phillips - State Archivist

Linda Simpson-Indian Nations/Indian Territory Archivist

Help the archives grow, kindly submit data

If you have any cemetery records, bible records, deeds, applications for citizenship in the Creek Nation, land patents, probate records, allotment records, etc, that pertain to the Creek Nation, please send them to me as an attachment in an e-mail to Darren McCathern. Please be sure to identify that it is for the Creek Nation. It also needs to be a plain text file, no HTML and no images. This ensures that everybody will be able to read it, no matter what kind of web browser.

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OBITUARIES

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 14-Aug-2005