The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670-1763
Drawing on archaeological evidence and often-neglected Spanish source material, The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670-1763 explores the political history of the Creek Indians of Georgia and Alabama and the emergence of the Creek Nation during the colonial era in the American Southeast. In part a study of Creek foreign relations, this book examines the creation and application of the "neutrality" policy-defined here as the Coweta Resolution of 1718-for which the Creeks have long been famous, in an era marked by the imperial struggle for the American South. Also a study of the culture of internal Creek politics, this work shows the persistence of a "traditional" kinship-based political system in which town and clan affiliation remained supremely important. These traditions, coupled with political intrusions by the region's three European powers, promoted the spread of Creek factionalism and mitigated the development of a regional Creek Confederacy. But while traditions endured, the struggle to maintain territorial integrity against Britain also promoted political innovation. In this context the territorially defined Creek Nation emerged as a legal concept in the era of the French and Indian War, as imperial policies of an earlier era gave way to the territorial politics that marked the beginning of a new one.
"Bring them what they lack": Spanish-Creek Exchange and Alliance Making in a Maritime Borderland, 1763-1783
Between the late 1760s and the early 1780s, dozens of Creek Indians made the journey to Havana, ferried by Cuban fishing boats along the Gulf Coast of Florida. Creeks and Spanish Cubans traveled into the coastal and marine regions between Havana and the Florida Gulf Coast as it suited them; both took advantage of the space to negotiate and participate in exchanges with one another. For Creeks the region served as an economic and diplomatic safety valve. In the midst of conflict with Anglo Americans, Creeks hoped that Florida would provide them with new avenues into Atlantic diplomatic and exchange networks. For Cubans, and the Spanish Empire as a whole, an alliance with the Creeks represented a means of reestablishing Spanish influence in Florida and of pushing back against an expansionistic British Empire in the wake of the Seven Years' War. Though Spaniards and Creeks found the Florida Gulf Coast and its waters eminently useful, neither established full control over this maritime space. Though neither group would have framed it in these terms, Creek-Cuban contacts converted the Gulf of Mexico into a maritime borderland.
The Mohawk-Mahican War (1624–28): The Establishment of a Pattern
THE YEAR 1624 MARKED THE OUTBREAK OF HOSTILITIES between the Mohawk and Mahican tribes, who both lived in the upper reaches of the Hudson Valley. These hostilities lasted for about four years and ended with the Mahican being driven east of the Hudson River, thus setting the stage for the close relationship between the Mohawk and the European inhabitants of the Albany area that was to last throughout the colonial period. There is very little documentation for this event which, as far as upper New York State is concerned, took place at the dawn of its recorded history. The resuk has been a considerable amount of unbridled speculation. For lack of better evidence, most Iroquoianists, myself included, have been inclined to accept G.T. Hunt's explanation that the Mohawk went to war in order to eliminate the Mahican as middlemen in their trade with the Dutch x