Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World

Reconstructing the human and natural environment of the Creek Indians in frontier Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, Robbie Ethridge illuminates a time of wrenching transition. Creek Country presents a compelling portrait of a culture in crisis, of its resiliency in the face of profound change, and of the forces that pushed it into decisive, destructive conflict.

Ethridge begins in 1796 with the arrival of U.S. Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins, whose tenure among the Creeks coincided with a period of increased federal intervention in tribal affairs, growing tension between Indians and non-Indians, and pronounced strife within the tribe. In a detailed description of Creek town life, the author reveals how social structures were stretched to accommodate increased engagement with whites and blacks. The Creek economy, long linked to the outside world through the deerskin trade, had begun to fail. Ethridge details the Creeks' efforts to diversify their economy, especially through experimental farming and ranching, and the ecological crisis that ensued. Disputes within the tribe culminated in the Red Stick War, a civil war among Creeks that quickly spilled over into conflict between Indians and white settlers and was ultimately used by U.S. authorities to justify their policy of Indian removal.

• Mississippi's Civil War: A Narrative History
• The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians (Volume 22) (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)
• Native American Tribes: The History and Culture of the Creek (Muskogee)
• Creek Indian Medicine Ways: The Enduring Power of Mvskoke Religion
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
• Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors
• Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800--1860
• Creek Indian History: A Historical Narrative of the Genealogy, Traditions and Downfall of the Ispocoga or Creek Indian Tribe of Indians by One of the Tribe, George Stiggins (1788-1845)
• Woodward's Reminiscences of the Creek, or Muscogee Indians, Contained in Letters to Friends in Georgia and Alabama (Classic Reprint)
• A Dictionary of Creek/Muskogee (Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians)