Creek Indian Genealogy


Creek, A confederacy forming the largest division of the Muskhogean family. 
They received their name form the English on account of the numerous streams in
their country.  During early historic times the Creek occupied the greater
portion of Alabama and Georgia, residing chiefly on Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers,
the two largest tributaries of the Alabama river and on the Flint and
Chattahoochee Rivers.  They claimed the territory on the east from the Savannah
to St. Johns river and all the islands, thence to Apalachee Bay, and from this
line northward to the mountains. The south portion of this territory was held by
dispossession of the earlier Florida tribes. They sold to Great Britain at an
early date their territory between Savannah and Ogeechee rivers, all the coast
to St Johns river, and all the islands up to tidewater, reserving for themselves
St Catherine, Sapelo, and Ossabaw Ilands, and from Pipemakers Bluff to Savannah
(Morse, N. Am., 218, 1776). Thus occupying a leading position among the
Muskhogean tribes the Creeks were sufficiently numerous and powerful to resist
attacks from the northern tribes, as the Catawba, Iroquois, Shawnee, and
Cherokee, after they had united in a confederacy, which they did at an early
day. The dominating tribes at the time of the confederation seem to have been
the Abihka (or Kusa), Kasihta, Kawita, Oakfuskee, and some other tribe or tribes
at the junction of Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers. Nothing certain can be said of
their previous condition, or of the time when the confederacy was established,
but it appears from the narratives of De Soto's expedition that leagues among
several of these towns existed in 1540, over which head chiefs presided.