lexington yesterday

The Creek indigenous people came to call the white European settlers “ecunnaunuxulgee.” It roughly translates to “people greedily grasping for the lands of the red people.”

When the Quakers first arrived, they thought indigenous maidens should come out of the fields. They taught them spinning, weaving, and the home arts of the Europeans. Men were to abandon being warriors and hunters. Their new vocation was to plow.

Of course changing their way of life wasn’t enough. Traders were encouraged to oversell trade goods to natives to get them into deep debt. When massive debts were accumulated, traders were repaid with acres of land. Getting indigenous men to fall into trading traps like these was made easier by using alcohol. Traders plied the men with alcohol and did what they could to foster alcohol dependency. They did this to ensure these trades for land would continue.

The Creek Nation protested this state of affairs. They sought a cultural renewal through the spirit world. In the early 1700s roughly 20,000 Creek people remained in the Southeast. They celebrated the Green Corn Ceremony in the mid-summer to cleanse the earth. They danced for spiritual unity and the renewal of the annual cycle.

When the Federal road was built between central Georgia and Mobile, Alabama in 1805 the settlers came in larger numbers. The indigenous people of all nations fled their homes for the protection of the forest.

The Creek people understood what was happening to them, but were unable to stop the actions of the ecunnaunuxulgee. If we could see the grand scheme of things the way the Creek did, what would we see? Could we change our fate?