The Creek Town of Eufaula

The Creek Town of Eufaula. . The area surrounding Eufaula was once part of a regional Creek population center. Towns of note in the region included Sawokli (also known as Sabacola) and the town of Eufaula for which the modern city is named. Trails linked these closely-connected towns, each containing perhaps fifty families in the early 1800s, to other towns on the Chattahoochee, Flint, and Pea Rivers., The town of Eufaula appears on maps as "Uphale" as early as the 1730s. The town and its outlying settlements at various times spread along both sides of the Chattahoochee River. Many of the people who lived in the village may have moved here from other areas, and some of them are believed to have later helped settle some of the principal Seminole towns in Florida. United States Agent to the Creeks Benjamin Hawkins described Eufaula as comprised primarily of farmers and cattle herders and featuring several fenced fields. There were actually multiple Creek towns named Eufaula. The nature of the connection, if any, between this town and the Upper Creek town of Eufaula on the Tallapoosa River is not fully understood., [Right side insert] , Yoholo Micco, or "Chief Eufaula," was the principal chief of the Upper Creek town of Eufaula, but is believed to have had relatives and acquaintances among the Lower Creeks. He fought as an ally of American forces in the first Creek War and was involved in negotiating several treaties between the Creeks and the United States. Remembered as a great orator, he famously addressed the Alabama legislature at the time of Removal, remarking poignantly that "the Indian fires are going out. Soon they will be cold. New fires are lighting in the west for us, they say, and we will go there." He died shortly after emigration to the west., [Left side map caption] , A New Map of Georgia, with part of Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, by Emmanuel Bowen, 1747 , Courtesy of W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, University of Alabama , [Middle map caption] , Map of Creek villages in the Eufaula area, circa 1800, based on Archaeology of the Lower Muskogee Creek Indians, 1715-1836, by H. Thomas Foster II., [Right lithograph] , This lithograph was made after a portrait by Charles Bird King produced at the time of Yoholo Micco's visit to Washington, D.C. as part of a Creek delegation. , Courtesy of the Eufaula-Barbour County Chamber of Commerce