0.4 The negroes and the creek nation  (Page 9/2)

It sometimes happens that two or more races of widely different physical and cultural characteristics blend together after a period of contact which is marked by amity instead of hostility. In South Africa, in the Soudan, in India, and in some parts of Asia, we find instances in historic times of mixed-blood communities, and even of mixed-blood tribes, the result of intermixture between the natives and foreign immigrants of entirely different extraction. So in North and South America there are numerous groups whose ancestry is derived from Negro and Indian, Indian and white, or Negro, Indian, and white sources. Some of these groups are known historically fairly well, and the gradual blending of blood and culture is a transparent affair in its various stages. This is the case in the Creek Nation of the former Indian Territory, where the opportunity for observing the traits of the mixed Negroes and Creek Indians is too favorable to be passed by.

The old Creek Nation itself was a loose confederacy of Indian tribes of the Maskogian linguistic stock. The avowed purpose of the coalition was to keep peace and to offer a front of strength against hostile neighbors. The tribes which composed it were of three or four linguistic families, but the majority were called Creeks and spoke dialects characterized by similarities in words, roots, and grammar, which are known collectively as Maskogian. When this tendency to join together for purposes of war or peace began we do not know, but the Confederacy was known to the southern colonists at a very early date. As a political body the confederacy or nation, as it was often called, was respected by the whites and treaties were made or broken as the case might be, wars were levied and peace secured at different times during the last three centuries between it and the Government. The history of these inter-relations is too lengthy for the present paper, but a certain part of this history is necessary for introducing the period of first contact between the Creeks and the imported Negroes.

About the first notice that we have of the presence of the latter among the Indians is in 1798-99, when Colonel Benjamin Hawkins, an agent of the United States for Indian affairs, stated that at the time of his visit to the Creek town of Eufaula (Yufala) several of the Indians there possessed Negroes, presumably slaves. Hawkins informs us that some of the Negroes were taken during the Revolutionary War and others were given to the Creeks by the agents of Great Britain in payment for their services. It is further stated by Hawkins, who was interested in observing the economic conditions of the Creeks, that where the Negroes were there was more industry and the farms were better. He asserts, too, that the Negroes were all of them attentive and friendly to the white people, and he adds, with a touch of candor, particularly so to those in authority.