Kathryn Holland Braund | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4

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Kathryn Holland Braund | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733–1816. By Claudio Saunt. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xiv, 298 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-521-66043-2. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-521-66943-X.)

In this book, Claudio Saunt examines Creek Indian history in light of a "transformation" in concepts of governance and economy that "overturned" traditional Creek culture after the American Revolution, as a plantation economy began to displace the failing deerskin trade. Focusing on "wealthy mestizo elites," he chronicles their acquisition of slaves and livestock, and, ultimately, their departure from the matriarchal towns of their ancestors to private, patriarchal settlements. Acquisitive materialism rapidly separated the wealthy mestizos from the Creeks who remained in their towns and retained traditional Creek values, concepts of common property, respect for clan organization, and government by consensus. 1

Alexander McGillivray, his extended family, and their descendants and cohorts are pivotal. According to Saunt, McGillivray's "rise to prominence . . . signaled the beginning of thirty years of dramatic change" for the Creek people. Saunt maintains that McGillivray's conflicting interests—he was in the pay of both Spain and the United States and a partner in the trading firm he was charged with regulating—compromised his integrity, and Saunt concludes that what interested McGillivray most was his own self-interest. . . .

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