Muskogee

The Muskogee group gathers the Muskogean-speaking peoples of the southeastern woodlands, among them the Muscogee, Coosa, Koasati, Yamasee and Guale. Their ancestors belonged to the Mississippian culture, which built mound towns and grew maize in present-day Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. By the mid-sixteenth century many centres had declined, leaving chiefdoms such as Coosa on the Coosa River.

Hernando de Soto's army crossed the region in 1540—1543 and defeated Chief Tuskaloosa at Mabila. Epidemics and the Indian slave trade then broke the old chiefdoms, and the survivors regrouped as the Creek Confederacy, which took in Yamasee, Guale and others. Most Muscogee were removed west in the 1830s.