Muskogean

The Muskogean languages are a family of highly synthetic, agglutinative indigenous tongues of the southeastern United States, comprising Choctaw and Chickasaw in the west and Muscogee, also called Creek, among the eastern languages.

Their speakers were heirs to the Mississippian mound-building tradition, which between 800 and 1600 raised plaza-centred towns such as Etowah and Moundville under maize-farming chiefdoms from the Tennessee River to the Gulf coast. The Hernando de Soto expedition of 1539 to 1543 crossed these densely settled lands.

In later centuries Muscogee-speaking towns drew together into the Creek Confederacy across Alabama and Georgia, while groups moving into Florida after 1767 merged into the Seminole. Along the lower Mississippi and the Gulf shore, the Western Muskogean-based Mobilian Jargon served for centuries as a shared trade language among peoples of many different tongues.