Featured
MILITARY · HISTORICAL MARKER
Who Were the Creek?
Military
2
Originally, the name "Creek" referred only to Muskogee Indians living near Ochese Creek in central Georgia, but over time it came to include all Muskogee people along the rivers of present-day Georgia and Alabama. At one time, the region held as many as 60 Creek towns, with houses standing in clusters along riverbanks, each cluster containing a clan or related family who ate and lived in common, and each town having a public square, hothouse, and yard near its center. Waterways provided transportation and food, and rivers such as the Tallapoosa supplied fish and water for corn, bean, and squash fields along the banks. The Creek traded deerskins for guns, ammunition, metal tools, beads, and woven cloth, and by the 1760s they supplied the British with as many as 200,000 deerskins annually. The British grouped Creek towns geographically into the Lower Towns along the Chattahoochee, Flint, and Ocmulgee Rivers and the Upper Towns along the Tallapoosa, Coosa, and Alabama Rivers. Although the 1814 Battle of Horseshoe Bend ended the Creek War, the Creek continued to live along the Tallapoosa River until the Muskogee people were forcibly moved west to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, in 1836. By 1813, the Creek confederation of towns had split between those who favored cooperation with the United States government and those who sought to limit American expansion in their homeland; the more militant faction, known as the Red Sticks for the red-painted war clubs that symbolized war, fought Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend, where Jackson used the division in Creek society to pit allied Creek and Cherokee warriors against them.
FIND IT
New Site, Alabama
CITY · 21 STOPSExplore New Site, Alabama
Hear every story as you drive
4.8 Stars · 800+ Ratings
© 2026 MainEngine