Creek Paths and Federal Roads: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves and the Making of the American South

by Angela Pulley Hudson

In Creek Paths and Federal Roads , Angela Pulley Hudson offers a new understanding of the development of the American South by examining travel within and between southeastern Indian nations and the southern states, from the founding of the United States until the forced removal of southeastern Indians in the 1830s.

During the early national period, Hudson explains, settlers and slaves made their way along Indian trading paths and federal post roads, deep into the heart of the Creek Indians' world. Hudson focuses particularly on the creation and mapping of boundaries between Creek Indian lands and the states that grew up around them; the development of roads, canals, and other internal improvements within these territories; and the ways that Indians, settlers, and slaves understood, contested, and collaborated on these boundaries and transit networks.

While she chronicles the experiences of these travelers--Native, newcomer, free, and enslaved--who encountered one another on the roads of Creek country, Hudson also places indigenous perspectives squarely at the center of southern history, shedding new light on the contingent emergence of the American South.

Genres: History, Native American, American History

268 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2010

Reviews

[Sean]

As a layman who's particularly weak in this period (the US in the late 18th to early 19th centuries), I had a hard time following the author's narrative or arguments (which, honestly, seemed underdeveloped and poorly signposted). As an Alabamian who now lives in Georgia, I was still invested in the topic, and trudged through for the interesting anecdotes and facts. When Hudson moved into the early 19th century, I was more invested. Maybe it was just slightly more familiar territory, but the book got clearer for me in the last maybe two or three chapters.

[Alessandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

While other scholars may have only made a glancing association between roads and American-Indian relations, Hudson puts southern thoroughfares at the center of her study. Creek roads, Hudson explains, carried myriad travelers--from slaves to settlers--and as such her work explores not only Creek-U.S. relations, but also the effects of Creek and American roads on the growth of sectionalism, commercial enterprise, and slavery. In sum, her study of Creek roads provides a useful foil for looking a at series of inter-related phenomena taking placing on southern paths in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.