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Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World. By Robbie Ethridge. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Pp. xiii, 369. Illustrations, maps. Cloth, $59.95; paper, $22.50.)
This is a book about the Creeks and their land. A confederacy of numerous native groups that drew together in the late seventeenth century, the Creeks occupied a central place in the history of the American South through the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Settled in towns along numerous waterways mostly in modern-day Georgia and Alabama, their diversity of languages was not reflected in a great diversity of lifestyles. The Creeks practiced mixed agriculture and hunting and gathering, with minor variations dependent upon the location of towns, and they adapted to new market conditions brought about by an influx of settlers to their lands after the American Revolution.
Anthropologist Robbie Ethridge takes a refreshing approach to her subject. Most historians would tell a history of the Creeks by focusing on politics, diplomacy, and warfare. Ethridge provides relatively little discussion of the Creeks' external relations except in regard to treaties and settlers that had a direct impact upon Creek land. She provides no extensive discussion of Creek relations with their native neighbors, in part because of her chronological focus on the last decades of Creek Country when disputes with the Choctaw and Cherokee declined in importance. Nor does Ethridge much discuss the internal dynamics of the confederacy, such as relations between the Upper and Lower Creeks or among towns. There is, however, political, cultural and social history here, including an excellent overview of the historic period and a superb discussion of European encroachment on Creek Country. Cultural analysis informs all of her work, but Ethridge focuses firmly on the Creeks and their environment, and that focus is the strength of the book and a significant part...