Muskogee

Muscogee, also called Creek, is the principal language of the Eastern Muskogean branch, which also includes Hitchiti-Mikasuki, Alabama, Koasati and the now-silent Apalachee. It was historically the language of the Muscogee Creek Confederacy of Alabama and Georgia, heirs of Mississippian mound-building towns such as Moundville, whom Hernando de Soto's expedition met in the 1540s.

The closely related Eastern Muskogean varieties were largely mutually intelligible. Early in the eighteenth century Muscogee speakers moving into Florida merged with Hitchiti-Mikasuki and other groups to form the Seminole.

Divisions over dealing with the United States kindled the Red Stick, or Creek, War of 1813 to 1814; Andrew Jackson's victory and the Treaty of Fort Jackson cost the confederacy twenty-two million acres, and in the 1830s most Muscogee and Seminole were forced beyond the Mississippi to Indian Territory.