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STEVEN SCURRY
FP: And that wedge of land (which is now Clarke, Oconee,
Jackson counties)...
SS: A lot of people call that the Forks. That wasn't resolved
until '96, and maybe a year after that. A delegation went up to
Philadelphia to try to re-negotiate. They were very determined to
hang on to that territory. They considered it some of their best
bear-hunting grounds. And bear oil was a commodity that was not
only a very popular trade item, but it was used in cosmetics, and
in cooking... so that area—for whatever reason—was just real
prime bear-hunting territory for the Creeks.
FP: This area.
SS: Yeah, this area. They called it, I mean, their term for it was
"beloved." They called it "beloved."
FP: The Forks in particular.
SS: The Forks in particular. And, actually, this is one of the sad,
poetic moments of the treaty in '96. The Creek leaders said that
acquiescing on the Forks: their experience of that was like tear
ing their hearts out and throwing them away. So, there was a very
special regard that they had for this particular area of the Oconee
River basin....
Now, we haven't even gotten into intertribal affairs, but just
to give you a taste of that, at the end of the Revolution—in the
closing year of the Revolution—there were hundreds of intertribal
representatives who came to St. Augustine from the Great Lakes.
They came from all over the continent.
Great Britain had lost all of its outposts in the South except
St. Augustine. Pensacola had fallen under a Spanish assault: St.
Augustine was the last. And so these native representatives came
down in 1782, the winter of that year, and said, "What's up with
you guys? What's going on?" They felt double-crossed.... They said
after all this fighting we've done for your sake, you're leaving us,
you're abandoning us like this?
What was happening at that time—it started even before the
Revolution—was the the Creek Confederation, that model, was
repeating itself in different intertribal communities up into the
Ohio River valley. What was happening was the beginnings of a
political alliance were forming between north and south, native
communities north and south. They were beginning to cooperate
to a greater degree than they ever had before. The Revolution gave
them an opportunity to do that.
The British weren't so interested in that tribal alliance until the
Revolution. Actually, the British discouraged it. The British were
kind of encouraging conflict between Native American communi
ties. In the South, there v as a serious war between the Creeks and
the Choctaws before the Revolution.
The British were encouraging that; they may not have started
it, but they were encouraging it. That played an important role in
what was going on. The Creeks were furious because they knew the
British were encouraging that.
The Revolution breaks out, the British go, "Oh, shit, we gotta
stop that war because we need them to help us against these
upstart rebels in the colonies!" So they spent the first two years
trying to end that Creek-Choctaw war so that they could get the
Creeks and Choctaws to cooperate in reestablishing Crown control
of the colonies.
But the point is, there was growing intertribal cooperation, and
that was the name of the game for Native America, and they came
very close to establishing that. They came very close.
In 1786, huge intertribal delegations show up in the Creek
Nation with belts—talking belts—they said, "Let's work out a for
eign policy for the Americans." They did.
For the Anglos, it became a game of, "How do you stop that?"
FP: And in the end?
SS: The Creeks came out looking pretty good at the end of the
Oconee War. They had lost the Oconee cession, but by that time
the landscape had changed a good bit, so they got a lot in return.
They got a guarantee on the rest of their territory... but there was
a problem. And the problem came up when they could no longer
negotiate between powers. That was their political genius, was be
ing able to negotiate their interests in a constellation of compet
ing interests....
So, the Oconee War is like a lens, I think: a very good lens to
view that whole borderland conflict that was going on all up and
down the new states. I think what's interesting about the Creeks is
that for a brief period of time, they were successful in their power
negotiations with the Americans, with the Anglos. And I'm just
interested why, and that's a lot of what I'm trying to answer with
this research. Why were they successful, when some of the other
communities had been broken up, and had suffered so terribly dur
ing that same period?
Ben Emanuel ben@flagpole.com
The shaded area is part of the conflict zone between the Creek Confederacy and the state of Georgia in the years following the American
Revolution. The future site of Athens lies just east of the right-angle turn near the boundary’s northern end.
sovereignty over all territory west to the Mississippi River....
Washington's view [the Federalist view at the time] was that
Georgia's independence depended on the cooperation of the whole
[the United States], and so the whole should reap the benefits
of settlement of that territory. And they finally succeeded in es
tablishing that as federal territory, not state territory.... What's
interesting about the New York treaty is that it was a chance for
Washington to claim that western territory for the federal govern
ment at the expense of Georgia, of the state government. And that
was the Georgia view.
FP: And what was the federal plan for the territory?
SS: Well, there were lots of competing ideas. An Indian territo
ry was one real possibility. There were a lot of people that viewed
that as a realistic possibility. And, actually, Spain and Great Britain
viewed that area from the Gulf to the Great Lakes as potentially
one buffer territory.
FP: When I think about you r research, and about the history of
the place where we live, it always occurs to me that Americans in
general—across the country—part of our national mythology is that
we know the sad stories of the Native Americans of the Old West:
the Sioux, Geronimo and the Apache, Chief Joseph and his bond of
Nez Perce...
SS: Yeah, that's Hollywood, isn't it? That's moviemaking.
FP: Well, why don't we know about the people who lived where
we live?
SS: Yeah, jeez... I mean you take this [points to a translation
of a first-hand account of the epic expedition of conquest that
Hernando De Soto led through the South in the 1530s]—this ac
count of De Soto—I mean that's good stuff, that's Hollywood
stuff...
FP: Mel Gibson might have to do it...
SS: Urn, yeah. You know, Georgia history touches on Native
American history, but generally it moves from Tomochichi and
Oglethorpe to Sequoya and the Trail of Tears.
FP: And we know about the Trail of Tears; we know about the
Cherokee. [Note: Creek Indians were also removed from the South
on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, but the Creek Confederacy lost
considerable tracts of land several decades prior, in the period of
# Scurry's study.] Where are the Creeks?
SS: I really think there's a point of pride. Like I said, Georgia
pride was terribly injured during the Oconee War. And the New
York treaty was denounced by Georgia representatives on the floor
of the House of Representatives. [Congressman] James Jackson
denounced the New York treaty, and said his state was under siege
and the federal government didn't even care about them. He threw
a tantrum on the floor of Congress. Of course, when the treaty was
confirmed by the U.S. Senate, the Georgia delegates voted nay, but
it was overwhelmingly approved and celebrated.
FP: So from there, if it's a point of pride, then that affects how
history gets written?
SS: [pauses] I think so. I mean, there are Oconee War histories
that were taught, and written about in some of the earlier histo
ries of Georgia. I haven't tracked it down, but there was a point
when that was virtually dropped off. There are some histories that
focus on [Creek leader and diplomat] Alexander McGillivray—but
that's because there's kind of a popularity right now, to teach his
tory as biography.
There's no doubt that McGillivray played a very important role
in the Creek Nation and the Creeks' relationship with the federal
government, the Creeks' relationship with the British, the Creeks'
relationship with Spain. He was a brilliant diplomat. But he played
a role. There were a lot of other interests that were being served
at that time, and his reputation was pretty badly damaged by the
New York treaty, because right after the New York treaty there was
a problem with the Oconee border.
The Creeks agreed to an Oconee cession, but there was strong
resistance to anything west of what they called the Little Oconee
River, which was the North Oconee. That wedge of land between
the North Oconee and the Apalachee was a hot coal that kept the
Oconee War kind of moving even after the New York treaty, up until
the treaty of Coleraine in '96.
r
WHAT: “Brown Bag Lunch” with Steven Scurry
WHERE: ACC Library
WHEN: Tuesday, Apr. 24,12:15 p.m.
HOW MUCH: FREE! (bring your own lunch)
)
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