Muscogee (Creek) Nation

Muscogee (Creek) Nation. AD 1730 to AD 1832. By AD 1730, the English, French and Spanish had all established colonies in the region. It was also around this time that the people within the Coosa, Tallapoosa and Chattahoochee Valleys, known to history as the Arbekas (Abihkas), Tallapoosas, and Coweetas, formed an alliance, known as the Creek Confederacy. This confederacy consisted of dozens of individual tribal towns that would later become known as the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. The Europeans and Americans referred to these people collectively as the “Creek Indians.” The Muscogee people of the region struggled to live with the newcomers. They made several land cessions in an effort to live in peace even before the Creek Indian War of 1813-1814. Each land cession, however, shrank the amount of land available for the Muscogee people to pursue their traditional way of life. After the war's end, both hostile and friendly Muscogee were forced to cede all of their land west of the Coosa River to the United States. Only the mountain and hill country regions of Georgia and Alabama remained in Muscogee hands. In 1828, gold was discovered in northwest Georgia and the region was flooded with a new wave of settlers. That same year, the Muscogee's old nemesis, Andrew Jackson, was elected president of the United States. Under pressure from Georgia and Alabama, Jackson implemented a policy of removal and during the 1830s, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation was forced to leave their ancestral lands in what became known as the “Trail of Tears.”