The Importance of Waterways to the Creeks

The Importance of Waterways to the Creeks. . The numerous rivers and small streams of the Creeks' homeland played a very important role in their life and culture. Creeks almost invariably lived along waterways. They relied on them for food and a variety of raw materials for utilitarian purposes such as cane basket making, and traditionally farmed fertile waterside bottomlands. The Creeks also used the many navigable streams of the area for travel, trade and communication with each other and the larger region. Creeks celebrated water as a life-giving and sustaining resource as well, and waterways also figured prominently in their spiritual lives. , Water was an important part of Creek spiritual life. Creeks ritually bathed in rivers or other larger streams to start their day throughout the year to ensure both physical and spiritual purity. Perhaps owing to the Creek's understanding of waterways as a figurative gateway to the underworld, streams became central parts of some of their most enduring legends and myths. A variety of strange and fearsome creatures were associated with the waters of this area, several of which allegedly lay in wait for unassuming people or animals who ventured too near their lairs. , Creeks ate a wide variety of fishes that lived in area waters, such as shad, perch, rockfish, catfish, and even sturgeon, which they baked, boiled, and fried. They caught these fish using multiple methods; hooks, nets, weirs (rock traps into which fish were funneled), and on occasion spears and bow and arrows. Creeks were known to collect huge catches of fish using natural poisons such as buckeye by driving wooden piles into stream beds and pounding the nuts or roots on top of the piles. The resulting liquid would instantly kill fish for an extended distance and they could easily be scooped up from the water's surface. , Even in their oral legends about their origins, waterways figured prominently to the Creeks. According to tradition, the ancestors of the Creeks moved from one river valley to another prior to arrival along the Chattahoochee. The English colonists who encountered the Creek peoples in the seventeenth century referred to them collectively as "Creeks" in part because of their close association with watercourses. The term is believed to specifically have referred to Ochese Creek (Ocmulgee River) in central Georgia, which in the early 1700s was recognized as an informal boundary separating British colonies from Creek hinterland. , Image captions: , (Left): Detail of map by Eleazer Early showing numerous streams and creeks along which Creeks made their homes. , Courtesy of the David Rumsey Map Collection , (Right, top): Engraving by Theodore de Bry depicting Southeastern Indians cooking fish, ca. 1600. , Courtesy of the Library of Congress , (Right, middle): Buckeye tree Courtesy of Eric Hunt , (Right, bottom): The Chattahoochee River from River Song: A Journey Down the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola Rivers, by Joe and Monica Cook