Tribe: The Creek. They are part of the "Five Civilized Tribes," a confederation of tribes that include the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Seminole, as well as the Hitchiti, Nachez, Alabama, Yuchi and Shawnee tribes.
Meaning of Name: They were given the name "Creek" by white men who saw that they lived by rivers and creeks. They call themselves the "Muscogee," "Isti" or the "Istichatta" which probably means something along the lines of "People of the Waterways."
Location: The Creek, along with the Seminoles, were originally from the SE part of the United States, specifically, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. They were forced out of their homeland and into "Indian Territory" in 1834 so that whites could use their land for cotton fields. They now live in NE Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas and Alabama.
Original Language: Muscogee, which is also spoken by the Seminoles.
Tribal Affiliations: The British, the Spanish, the Seminoles
Traditional Enemies: The Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Americans.
Traditional Style of Housing: Before contact with the white man, the Creek lived in large permanent palisaded villages built around a central plaza, around which were arranged round clay houses with tall peaked roofs made of bark. Their homes were similar to the traditional Cherokee homes. Their villages had an open-air summer council house and a town hall, which was a round building (a round hill-like rotunda) made of poles and mud. Creek villages also probably had storehouses, sweat-lodges, and menstrual-lodges. Once the village had 400-600 people in it, about half of the town would move to what was basically a subdivision a mile or two away, on the other side of the field of crops. The new town would set up its own rotunda for meetings, ceremonies and games, but would retain a political connection to the original town. In this way, a Creek Confederacy developed.
Traditional Attire: The men wore Mohawks or had ponytails going down the back of their bald heads, and tattoos, and the women wore topknots, and no tattoos. They adopted European dress during colonial times. The men also wore something called a "porky roach" for ceremonies. It was made of deer tail hair and porcupine hair (not the quill part) and looked like a spray of stiff straight brightly-colored hair attached to the back of the head or going down the back of the head in double or single rows. A picture of a porky roach can be found at http://nativeamericanencyclopedia.com/roach-headdresses-porcupine-roaches.
Traditional Foods: Since the Creek were a sedentary and agricultural people who lived in settled communities, the women grew corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, melons, peaches, apples and sweet potatoes. They also may have grown or gathered blueberries, mayapples, huckleberries, elderberries, raspberries, blackberries, serviceberries, pawpaw, mayhaw hawthorn, persimmons, plums, crabapples, mulberries, grapes and strawberries. The men fished and hunted bear, deer, wild hogs, wild turkeys and small game.
Position of Women: Low, but with matrilineal descent. Most of the movers and shakers were men, but Creek Society allowed for a "Beloved Woman" to speak to and for all of the women on the tribe. This probably harkens back to the days when they were part of the Iroquois and had Clan Mothers. Unfortunately, in Creek Society, women had no vote, but they may have owned their own homes which their husbands had made, and they could pass this house on to their daughters.
Creek Courtship: There was apparently no bride-price of horses or deer meat. If a young man wanted to court a young woman, he would play a flute under her window. Premarital sex was okay but adultery was not. When a couple married, the groom went to live with his wife in her parents' house. When he had made her a house and planted a garden, then that marriage was considered finalized. If there was a divorce, the wife kept everything.
Interesting Tidbits: They had dugout canoes, which would make sense, since they lived by waterways. They were also big on sports, and had their own sports fields near the town center.... They viewed land as community property, not individually-owned, which caused problems with white people who owned property. They also communally took care of the poor, the aged and the infirm. This was also at odds with white people's "Every man for himself" values.
Traditional Religion: Baptist, Methodists, and Four Mothers Society.
Slavery and the Creek: The Creek owned slaves and were on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Current Population: There are currently about 70,000 registered members of the Muscogee Nation.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: farming, factories, casinos, cigarette shops, convenience stores.
Famous Creek: Carrie Underwood.
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