Muscogee

The Muscogee, whom English traders called the Creek, are heirs of Mississippian mound-building societies in Alabama and Georgia. Hernando de Soto's expedition met their ancestors in 1540 and was checked at Mabila by Chief Tuskaloosa.

Epidemics and the Indian slave trade shattered the old chiefdoms, and in the seventeenth century survivors formed the Muscogee Creek Confederacy, a loose union of autonomous towns. The towns joined the Yamasee War of 1715, then traded deerskins for firearms. During the American Revolution most Creeks backed Britain under Alexander McGillivray, who signed the Treaty of New York in 1790.

Tecumseh's preaching split the confederacy, and the Creek War of 1813 to 1814 ended in Andrew Jackson's victory at Horseshoe Bend and the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which stripped away twenty-two million acres. In the 1830s most were marched west on the Trail of Tears, while the Florida bands became the Seminole.