The Creek Frontier, 1540–1783 is the first complete history of an American Indian tribe in the colonial period. Although much has been written of the Spanish, French, and British explorations in North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, little has been known of the Indian tribes that explorers such as De Soto and De Luna encountered. The Creek Indians, who occupied Alabama, Georgia, and much of northern Florida from the earliest days of Spanish exploration to shortly after the American Civil War, were a power to be reckoned with by Spain, France, and Britain in their efforts to gain control of that area. Always hostile to Spain, the Creeks were natural allies with the British, but they used other Europeans to further their interests. When they gave up their neutral position to ally themselves with the British against the American patriots, the Creeks found themselves completely at the mercy of their victorious enemies. Stressing Creek political institutions and diplomacy, this volume offers the most complete story of the rapacious “Queen” Mary Musgrove, and the rise to leadership of Alexander McGillivray. Creek Indian personalities of old emerge to share history’s spotlight with the wigged governors they struggled with in order to maintain autonomy for their people.

A sweeping history of the cultural clashes between Indians and the British, Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans. A story of the contest for land and power across multiple and simultaneous frontiers.

An Indian perspective into native and Euroamerican diplomacy in the South First published in 1939, McGillivray of the Creeks is a unique mix of primary and secondary sources for the study of American Indian history in the Southeast. The historian John Walton Caughey's brief but definitive biography of Creek leader Alexander McGillivray (1750-1793) is coupled with 214 letters between McGillivray and Spanish and American political officials. The volume offers distinctive firsthand insights into Creek and Euroamerican diplomacy in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi in the aftermath of the American Revolution as well as a glimpse into how historians have viewed the controversial Creek leader. McGillivray, the son of a famous Scottish Indian trader and a Muskogee Creek woman, was educated in Charleston, South Carolina, and, with his father's guidance, took up the mantle of negotiator for the Creek people during and after the Revolution. While much of eighteenth-century American Indian history relies on accounts written by non-Indians, the letters reprinted in this volume provide a valuable Indian perspective into Creek diplomatic negotiations with the Americans and the Spanish in the American South. Crafty and literate, McGillivray's letters reveal his willingness to play American and Spanish interests against one another. Whether he was motivated solely by a devotion to his native people or by the advancement of his own ambitions is the subject of much historical debate. In the new introduction to this Southern Classic edition, William J. Bauer, Jr., places Caughey's life into its historiographical context and surveys the various interpretations of the enigmatic McGillivray that historians have drawn from this material.

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.

The vicious war on the frontier significantly altered the course of the Revolution. Regular troops, volunteers, and Indians clashed in large-scale campaigns. Bloody fights for land, home, and family. Although the American Revolution is commonly associated with specific locations such as the heights above Boston or the frozen Delaware River, important events took place in the wooded, mountainous lands of the frontier.

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."--BOOK JACKET.

"From Empire to Revolution is the first biography devoted to an in-depth examination of the life and conflicted career of Sir James Wright (1716-1785). Greg Brooking uses Wright's life as a means to better understand the complex struggle for power in both colonial Georgia and the larger British Empire. James Wright lived a transatlantic life, taking advantage of every imperial opportunity afforded him. He earned numerous important government posts and amassed an incredible fortune, totaling over £100,000 sterling. An English-born grandson of Chief Justice Sir Robert Wright, James Wright was raised in Charleston, South Carolina following his father's appointment as that colony's chief justice. Young James served South Carolina in a number of capacities, public and ecclesiastical, prior to his admittance to London's famed Gray's Inn to study law. Most notably, he was appointed South Carolina's attorney general and colonial agent to London prior to his gubernatorial appointment in Georgia in 1761. His long imperial career delicately balanced dual loyalties to Crown and colony and offers a crucial lens on loyalism and the American Revolution that also connects a number of contexts important in recent early American and British scholarship, including imperial and Atlantic history, Indigenous borderlands, race and slavery, and popular politics"--