What do you think?
Rate this book
The Second Creek War: Interethnic Conflict and Collusion on a Collapsing Frontier
Historians have traditionally viewed the “Creek War of 1836” as a minor police action centered on rounding up the Creek Indians for removal to Indian Territory. Using extensive archival research, John T. Ellisor demonstrates that, in fact, the Second Creek War was neither brief nor small. Indeed, armed conflict continued long after “peace” was declared and the majority of Creeks had been sent west.
Ellisor’s study also broadly illuminates southern society just prior to the Indian removals, a time when many blacks, whites, and Natives lived in close proximity in the Old Southwest. In the Creek country, also called New Alabama, these ethnic groups began to develop a pluralistic society. When the 1830s cotton boom placed a premium on Creek land, however, dispossession of the Natives became an economic priority. Dispossessed and impoverished, some Creeks rose in armed revolt both to resist removal west and to drive the oppressors from their ancient homeland. Yet the resulting Second Creek War, which raged over three states, was fueled not only by Native determination but also by economic competition and was intensified not least by the massive government-sponsored land grab that constituted Indian removal. Because these circumstances also created fissures throughout southern society, both whites and blacks found it in their best interests to help the Creek insurgents. This first book-length examination of the Second Creek War shows how interethnic collusion and conflict characterized southern society during the 1830s.
Ellisor’s study also broadly illuminates southern society just prior to the Indian removals, a time when many blacks, whites, and Natives lived in close proximity in the Old Southwest. In the Creek country, also called New Alabama, these ethnic groups began to develop a pluralistic society. When the 1830s cotton boom placed a premium on Creek land, however, dispossession of the Natives became an economic priority. Dispossessed and impoverished, some Creeks rose in armed revolt both to resist removal west and to drive the oppressors from their ancient homeland. Yet the resulting Second Creek War, which raged over three states, was fueled not only by Native determination but also by economic competition and was intensified not least by the massive government-sponsored land grab that constituted Indian removal. Because these circumstances also created fissures throughout southern society, both whites and blacks found it in their best interests to help the Creek insurgents. This first book-length examination of the Second Creek War shows how interethnic collusion and conflict characterized southern society during the 1830s.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2010
5 people are currently reading
22 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 7, 2012
As this book shows, the 2nd Creek war was neither brief, nor concentrated to a small area. It covered three states and the raids and skirmishes continued after the 2nd Seminole War was declared over in 1842.
What I like about this book, is that the author delves into the reason for the conflict. And that is what I really want to know. At the heart of the conflict were issues such as States' rights, Jacksonian democracy of the independent farmer, slavery and racial order, and the whole economy of the antebellum south. At the heart of it all was the biggest land fraud and theft in the history of our country.
By the 1830s, the Creeks are almost totally integrated with society in the south. Creeks were a mixture of people of different colors and economics. From white to black, rich to poor, highly educated to menial labors. The distinctions between Creeks and Alabamians or Georgians were really hard to identify from outward appearances.
The 1832 Treaty of Cusseta with the Creeks sounded like a good idea. The Creek land in new Alabama was going to become part of the state of Alabama. Creeks would own individual allotments of land and be citizens of the state of Alabama. Or they could sell their land and move to Creek land in Arkansas territory.
It sounded like a good idea. But it was a miserable failure of the worst kind. It opened the door for rampant land fraud. It also did not take into account the cultural differences of a matriarchal society that had a completely different idea of land ownership, and exploited the weaknesses in a way that robbed the Creeks of everything.
Speculators and land companies moved in and produced forged sales documents. Land is stolen for pennies and sold for a substantial mark-up. Destitute Creeks are employed to impersonate the land owners and sign for the sale.
The whole economic system implodes as a result of the land fraud. The ideal of Jacksonian democracy where the individual farmer prospers with his own homestead becomes nothing more than an illusion. And everyone loses, because the small white farmers are sold land, but have it taken away when it is determined that the sale was fraudulent. The poor get poorer.
Every conflict has the industries that rely on it. Grog shops and merchants who deal with the Creeks force the people in debt and gladly accept land titles as payment which they also sell. So the Creeks are without their land, without any money for the removal to the west, while their personal livestock, possessions, and slaves, are plundered by the local settlers or people looking to profit from the situation.
The 2nd Creek War finally exploded as a rebellion against the system. People who had lost everything and felt that open rebellion and war was the only option left. Following a similar story of people all over the world who become oppressed and rise up in revolt against the larger colonial power. With the revolt, maybe they could extinguish debts, and possibly regain their culture and land they had lost. During the same time, the Seminoles in Florida were rumored to be winning their war, so maybe the Creeks could have success as well. The reaction was swift and very bloody, and put everyone in the frontier into a panic. No one was safe.
The interesting aspect this time is that it was unlike the previous Creek War. It erupted without much warning. This time there were no prophets, no religious or ideological movements. It was pure desperation, caused by the economic implosion, starvation, and loss of their land. And the Upper Creeks sided with the United States, while the Lower Creeks were the ones responsible for the uprising.
When the war broke out, miscommunication causes conflict and rivalry between two high ranking generals in the Army. General Winfield Scott makes the same mistake that he just did in Florida using a slow Army that does not take to the field soon enough. He gets at odds with General Thomas Jesup, who has a quicker response and finished his campaign before Scott even starts, similar to what happened between Scott and Gaines on the Withlacoochee. Then the response of the state volunteer militia units proves that the militia is unprepared with lack of discipline and often results with cowardly defeat against the Creeks.
In the end, the Creeks are removed without a removal treaty. Their land is stolen right out from under them. Although some Creeks remain, they go into hiding with a chameleon effort of blending into their surroundings and appear as the poor farmer in the deep south.
What the book outlines is a template of what happens in the United States and territories with Indian Removal. And for the Creeks, it will be repeated again in Oklahoma in the early 1900s with allotment under the Dawes Act. And once again, their tribal land is stolen from them.
In the last chapter, the author mentions that the large percentage of the population of the south is descended from the Creeks. But he thinks that most of these people are mistaken, that it is instead a guilt that the local population had from the cruel removal of an established population.
But the Creeks who remained did survive with remnants of the culture. I doubt that the local white population would practice Creek mortuary practices out of guilt, where there are cemeteries with Creek grave houses. But I don't fault the author for thinking that most of the Creek culture has disappeared, with many current groups claiming Creek ancestry while making an odd appearance with generic native American clothing and decoration. But there are a few who remain, and they would rather still remain hidden. I won’t go into examples that I have seen, but Creek culture and ceremony does still exist down here, but remains in hiding. There is a fire that has always burned, even if there are other multitudes who are seeking to regain what they had lost.
What I like about this book, is that the author delves into the reason for the conflict. And that is what I really want to know. At the heart of the conflict were issues such as States' rights, Jacksonian democracy of the independent farmer, slavery and racial order, and the whole economy of the antebellum south. At the heart of it all was the biggest land fraud and theft in the history of our country.
By the 1830s, the Creeks are almost totally integrated with society in the south. Creeks were a mixture of people of different colors and economics. From white to black, rich to poor, highly educated to menial labors. The distinctions between Creeks and Alabamians or Georgians were really hard to identify from outward appearances.
The 1832 Treaty of Cusseta with the Creeks sounded like a good idea. The Creek land in new Alabama was going to become part of the state of Alabama. Creeks would own individual allotments of land and be citizens of the state of Alabama. Or they could sell their land and move to Creek land in Arkansas territory.
It sounded like a good idea. But it was a miserable failure of the worst kind. It opened the door for rampant land fraud. It also did not take into account the cultural differences of a matriarchal society that had a completely different idea of land ownership, and exploited the weaknesses in a way that robbed the Creeks of everything.
Speculators and land companies moved in and produced forged sales documents. Land is stolen for pennies and sold for a substantial mark-up. Destitute Creeks are employed to impersonate the land owners and sign for the sale.
The whole economic system implodes as a result of the land fraud. The ideal of Jacksonian democracy where the individual farmer prospers with his own homestead becomes nothing more than an illusion. And everyone loses, because the small white farmers are sold land, but have it taken away when it is determined that the sale was fraudulent. The poor get poorer.
Every conflict has the industries that rely on it. Grog shops and merchants who deal with the Creeks force the people in debt and gladly accept land titles as payment which they also sell. So the Creeks are without their land, without any money for the removal to the west, while their personal livestock, possessions, and slaves, are plundered by the local settlers or people looking to profit from the situation.
The 2nd Creek War finally exploded as a rebellion against the system. People who had lost everything and felt that open rebellion and war was the only option left. Following a similar story of people all over the world who become oppressed and rise up in revolt against the larger colonial power. With the revolt, maybe they could extinguish debts, and possibly regain their culture and land they had lost. During the same time, the Seminoles in Florida were rumored to be winning their war, so maybe the Creeks could have success as well. The reaction was swift and very bloody, and put everyone in the frontier into a panic. No one was safe.
The interesting aspect this time is that it was unlike the previous Creek War. It erupted without much warning. This time there were no prophets, no religious or ideological movements. It was pure desperation, caused by the economic implosion, starvation, and loss of their land. And the Upper Creeks sided with the United States, while the Lower Creeks were the ones responsible for the uprising.
When the war broke out, miscommunication causes conflict and rivalry between two high ranking generals in the Army. General Winfield Scott makes the same mistake that he just did in Florida using a slow Army that does not take to the field soon enough. He gets at odds with General Thomas Jesup, who has a quicker response and finished his campaign before Scott even starts, similar to what happened between Scott and Gaines on the Withlacoochee. Then the response of the state volunteer militia units proves that the militia is unprepared with lack of discipline and often results with cowardly defeat against the Creeks.
In the end, the Creeks are removed without a removal treaty. Their land is stolen right out from under them. Although some Creeks remain, they go into hiding with a chameleon effort of blending into their surroundings and appear as the poor farmer in the deep south.
What the book outlines is a template of what happens in the United States and territories with Indian Removal. And for the Creeks, it will be repeated again in Oklahoma in the early 1900s with allotment under the Dawes Act. And once again, their tribal land is stolen from them.
In the last chapter, the author mentions that the large percentage of the population of the south is descended from the Creeks. But he thinks that most of these people are mistaken, that it is instead a guilt that the local population had from the cruel removal of an established population.
But the Creeks who remained did survive with remnants of the culture. I doubt that the local white population would practice Creek mortuary practices out of guilt, where there are cemeteries with Creek grave houses. But I don't fault the author for thinking that most of the Creek culture has disappeared, with many current groups claiming Creek ancestry while making an odd appearance with generic native American clothing and decoration. But there are a few who remain, and they would rather still remain hidden. I won’t go into examples that I have seen, but Creek culture and ceremony does still exist down here, but remains in hiding. There is a fire that has always burned, even if there are other multitudes who are seeking to regain what they had lost.
June 28, 2022
My genealogical research led to an interest in the Creek Wars of Alabama and Georgia. While there were several popular histories of the First Creek War (coincident with the War of 1812, and involving Andrew Jackson in the early stages of his career), there were none of the much-smaller-scale Second Creek War of the 1830s. This book appears to be the only history of note, and it's an academic tract.
I prepared myself for the normal challenges of academic works - abstruse prose, excessive opining, and so forth. That was true, and more. It's of course no secret that the Creek Indians were ill-treated by American expansion and in particular by unscrupulous actors of all races, and an illumination of this ill treatment is both expected and reasonable. But a persistent harping about the inherently exploitative nature of capitalism (the "world system"), the commonalities with other "oppressed peoples," and so forth really gets tedious. I imagine such was de rigueur in such works even back in 2010, and is probably much worse today. For an everyday normie such as me, though, it makes the book seem very tendentious, and much less enjoyable.
That would be forgivable if the "history" itself was crisp and informative. Sadly, not so much. There was very little flow to the book, and overall I found it failed to convey a cohesive story.
On the positive side, the maps were numerous, detailed and useful - notably so. The index is detailed and accurate, and the bibliography is - as would be expected - thorough and useful...indeed, I expect that the bibliography will turn out to be the most useful part of the book, for me. Editing is generally tight, although I noted a humorous (to me) reference to: "[a] grizzly incident, [in which] Indians cut the throat of a Dooly County school teacher." Since there were no bears around, I assume that "grisly" was intended, and I always giggle when my "intellectual superiors" (or, at least, their editors) make such goofs.
Overall, if you *must* study this period, this book is one of few options, and needs to be on your list. Otherwise, if you're just a gen pop student of history like me, skip it and hope for a more approachable telling to come out someday...
I prepared myself for the normal challenges of academic works - abstruse prose, excessive opining, and so forth. That was true, and more. It's of course no secret that the Creek Indians were ill-treated by American expansion and in particular by unscrupulous actors of all races, and an illumination of this ill treatment is both expected and reasonable. But a persistent harping about the inherently exploitative nature of capitalism (the "world system"), the commonalities with other "oppressed peoples," and so forth really gets tedious. I imagine such was de rigueur in such works even back in 2010, and is probably much worse today. For an everyday normie such as me, though, it makes the book seem very tendentious, and much less enjoyable.
That would be forgivable if the "history" itself was crisp and informative. Sadly, not so much. There was very little flow to the book, and overall I found it failed to convey a cohesive story.
On the positive side, the maps were numerous, detailed and useful - notably so. The index is detailed and accurate, and the bibliography is - as would be expected - thorough and useful...indeed, I expect that the bibliography will turn out to be the most useful part of the book, for me. Editing is generally tight, although I noted a humorous (to me) reference to: "[a] grizzly incident, [in which] Indians cut the throat of a Dooly County school teacher." Since there were no bears around, I assume that "grisly" was intended, and I always giggle when my "intellectual superiors" (or, at least, their editors) make such goofs.
Overall, if you *must* study this period, this book is one of few options, and needs to be on your list. Otherwise, if you're just a gen pop student of history like me, skip it and hope for a more approachable telling to come out someday...
February 4, 2023
I find it hard to know what to rate this. It's an academic book -- and in terms of the information it gives, it's readability, and thoroughness, it's an excellent account of the 2nd Creek War. Because it IS academic however, it might not be for the casual reader. I read it for research on a novel I'm writing and with that purpose in mind, I highly recommend it for anyone interested in this period of South Georgian history.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews