The shaping of a Creek (Muscogee) homeland in Indian territory, 1828--1907.

Abstract

Federal authorities removed the Creek (Muscogee) Nation from Alabama and Georgia to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) beginning in 1828. By the time of statehood in 1907, the Creek had shaped a new homeland in a ten-county area south of Tulsa. This study discusses the transfer of place names, tribal towns, ceremonial grounds, rural churches and other elements that characterize the new homeland. The role of Anglo intruders and individual allotments complicate the story, yet bonding to a new place, especially through the institution of the Creek tribal town, is clear. The study goes beyond the Creek to identify five new parameters by which geographers might better define homelands: a tightly knit and spatially integrated ethnic community, a limited geographic territory, a distinctive cultural landscape, an emotional loyalty that includes heightened feelings of attachment, home, and compulsions to defend, and a partial social or spatial segregation from other communities in order to maintain unique forms of cultural life and history.