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Reviews
| African Creeks: Estelvste and the Creek Nation. By Gary Zellar. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. xix + 343 pp. Maps, photos, notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95 (cloth).
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This well-written and researched new book compellingly argues that African Creeks acted as middlemen or cultural brokers between whites and Indians who were distinct but integral elements of the Creek Nation. Unfortunately, this approach neglects a great deal of Creek history and culture to focus on one small element of the Creek Nation. |
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Africans came among the Creeks through slavery, which is where the book begins. The relative freedoms enjoyed by Creek slaves that stemmed partially from frontier conditions began to ebb in the 1850s. However, just as Creek slavery assumed harsher aspects, the Civil War arrived, offering African Creeks unprecedented opportunities to gain their freedom. During the war, blacks served as soldiers and African Creeks were the first black troops enlisted in the U.S. army. While they played important roles as interpreters, black troops were regularly assigned to menial duties by white officers. Of course, many African Creeks remained in bondage during the war and did not have such opportunities, but their experiences receive little attention here. |
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Zellar describes the postwar Creek Nation as an "unheralded success story of reconstructing race relations in the U.S." (p. 77). The 1866 treaty between the Creek Nation and the United States guaranteed equal political, economic, and social rights to African Creeks, but there were difficulties realizing these goals. African Creeks did improve their access to education and religion, at times by trading their political support to make material gains. The African community, however, learned and worshipped in separate institutions from Indians. And race continued to mark divisions as neighboring Cherokees engaged in violence against blacks sparked by lawlessness in African Creek communities and claims of cattle rustling. Always looking for the most favorable interpretation, Zellar describes the African Creeks' division during the Green Peach War as demonstrating the group's maturation into a community with diverse interests. |
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More general racial views intruded on Creek country in the 1880s with the arrival of outsiders. Indians and blacks often disagreed on how best to protect sovereignty and define citizenship in the face of intruders. Twenty years after the war, many Creeks remained dubious about the wisdom of African citizenship. Leading citizen G. W. Grayson testified before a Senate committee in 1885 that being on equal footing with African Creeks was "distasteful" (p. 162). While they were not totally accepted by Indians, African Creeks also did not want to be lumped with African freedpeople arriving in Indian Territory. African Creeks continued to claim themselves as a minority culture within a larger minority culture, which required quite a balancing act. |
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By the end of the century, mounting pressures caused the Creeks to retreat from an earlier spirit of inclusiveness to strict constructions of the meaning of being Indian. The Dawes Act of 1887 threw Indian country into turmoil. The ensuing land runs brought hundreds of thousands of non-Creeks to the region and threw into sharp relief the unresolved issues of citizenship and communal rights that had always swirled around African Creeks. The Curtis Act enforced allotment on the Creek Nation, and six thousand African Creeks were enrolled amid the unending accusations of fraud and mistakes that ensued. African Creeks quickly lost 75 percent of their land as the Creek Nation was pushed toward dissolution. Zellar describes African Creeks living, from the early twentieth century, in the Jim Crow state of Oklahoma as persons virtually indistinguishable from other blacks. |
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This monograph will appeal to anyone interested in African American, Oklahoma, or Creek history. Those without a background in American Indian history will want to read other works for a more balanced picture of the Creek Nation. The author is to be commended for bringing a little-known aspect of history to light through considerable research.
Clarissa W. Confer
California University of Pennsylvania
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