Poarch Band of Creek Indians

Flag of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians
Total population
2,340 (2006)[1]
Regions with significant populations
United States ( Alabama)
Languages
English, Muscogee
Religion
Protestant, traditional Creek beliefs
Related ethnic groups
Other Muscogee Creek tribes,[2] Alabama Creole people

The Poarch Band of Creek Indians (/pɔːrtʃ/ PORCH;^[3]) are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans with reservation lands in lower Alabama. They speak the Muscogee language. In the mid-20th century, they were known as the Creek Nation East of the Mississippi. They are one of eight federally recognized tribes whose members are descended from the Creek Confederacy of the Southeast, lands to which they have deep ancestral connections. Most of the members of the Poarch Band continue to reside in Alabama and Florida.

History

The Poarch Band members descend from Muscogee Creek Indigenous peoples who were first contacted by Spanish conquistadors in 1540, notably Hernando de Soto. Nearly 500 years later, they are still a continuing and surviving people. Predominant lineages and surnames in the group include the names Weatherford, McGillivray, Durant, McGhee, Moniac, Cornell, Gibson, Colbert, Woods, and Rolin.

Poarch Band members descend from Mvskoke Creek peoples of the Upper Towns and Lower Towns who intermarried with Scottish and Irish traders. Intermarriage was not usual for Native nations of the southeastern United States, including Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole. Intermarriage was a strategy of assimilation. Because ancestors of Poarch members were matrilineal and matrilocal, settler colonists targeted Creek women to gain land, wealth, and power. Due to the inability of Creek and other Southeastern Native men to transfer kinship or property rights to their offspring, colonists often enticed them to collaborate with colonial powers, and subsequently, the United States government. These men were appointed as "chiefs" by the American authorities, a strategy used to legitimize their signatures on treaties and reinforce the government's objectives.

Red Stick Rebellion

In the early 19th century, various elements intensified tensions within the Creek Nation leading up to their removal. These elements included geopolitical shifts, a growing reliance on European trade and economy, inner rifts within the Creek Nation, encroaching white settlement, and escalating colonial presence of British, Spanish, and U.S. military forces. Because of these conflicts, ancestors of the Poarch Band settled in lands in the southwest of Creek Nation territory in the early 1800s near the Tensaw River and the headwaters of the Perdido River. In reaction to Tecumseh's rallying cry in the early 1800s to rise against the United States government, a group of Creek traditionalists, referred to as the Red Sticks, initiated an uprising against Creeks who were allied with American forces. The rebellion, which started as an internal civil war within the Creek Nation, is known as the Creek War of 1813-1814.

Among the primary concerns of Red Stick Creeks was the belief that the growing assimilation into European-American practices, including pressures to conform to Christianity and a centralized Creek governance structure, was diminishing the Creek Nation's political strength to maintain authority over their territories and economies. This insurrection led to Andrew Jackson intervening against and eventually neutralizing the Red Stick resistance at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and then by burning all of the Creek tribal towns.

On August 9, 1814, under the coercion of Andrew Jackson, leaders from both the Upper and Lower Creek towns were compelled to sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson. Despite objections from Creek chiefs of the Red Sticks and those who had allied with the United States, the treaty resulted in the Creek Nation ceding around 23 million acres (93,000 km²) — which included much of central and southern Alabama and parts of southern Georgia — to the U.S. government. Jackson denied that the Creek War was primarily a civil conflict within the Creek Nation and instead addressed it as a rebellion against the United States. Jackson treated both his Creek allies and the opposing Red Sticks as adversaries, claiming their lands for what he deemed the United States' needs for security, settlement, and slave plantation agriculture.

Among the Poarch ancestors, the Weatherford and Woods lineages were active participants in the Red Stick rebellion and allied with the traditionalists. Other Mvskoke ancestors of Poarch members fought alongside the U.S. against the Red Sticks. Many Creeks refused to surrender and remained in Alabama or fled to Florida to ally with the Seminoles to fight what would be known as the Seminole Wars.

In the aftermath of the Treaty of Fort Jackson and the Treaty of Washington (1826), the Creeks returned to their mother tribal towns awaiting to obtain land titles from the government. Conflict quickly arose as white settlers realized the potential profit to gain in land speculation, fraud, and theft with thousands of mostly illiterate Creeks gaining title to sections and half sections of farm land. From 1832 to 1837, white settlers and some Creek and Cherokee conspirators engaged in widespread fraud and land theft against the Creeks of Alabama. Some settlers established organizations with the sole purpose of deceiving the Creek people and stealing their land. This corruption was so severe that U.S. Secretary of War John Eaton and Francis Scott Key intervened, albeit with limited success. The situation escalated when the Creeks retaliated against white encroachment, leading to a perceived state of war and the subsequent forced relocation of most Indigenous peoples of the southeast. After the enactment of the Indian Removal Act, the Creek Nation signed the Treaty of Cusseta, ceding their remaining territories east of the Mississippi River to the U.S. and agreeing to relocate to Indian Territory.

Some members of the pre-Poarch Creek community, including the mixed-blood Creeks, managed to negotiate property claims and remain on their ancestral homelands. Although these agreements were threatened by state and federal governments and undermined by the influx of white settlers, these Creeks successfully endured and eventually formed as the Poarch Band of Creeks. Several ancestors of Poarch members continued to fight in Seminole Wars or later Creek Wars and marched west to Indian territory, including Sam Moniac (Totkvs-Harjo), David Hale, and others who died in 1837 at Pass Christian, Mississippi, one of the Indian encampments along the removal route West. ^[4]

Post-Removal

Under provisions of the Treaty of Fort Jackson, the Creeks were able to secure sections of historical and traditional Creek territory that would serve as the nucleus of what eventually became known as the Poarch Band of Creek Indian community. The devastation caused by war, combined with the encroachment and land theft by white settlers, rendered the Creeks incapable of securing a collective and continuous land base, so they instead negotiated smaller subdivisions of land that were within a 10 mile radius. One of the most prominent sections was referred to as the "McGhee Reserve," a 240 acre tract and a center of the Creek community. It would remain Creek as long as members did not abandon the reserve. This provided the central town for the community that is located in present-day Atmore, Alabama.

The Poarch Band experienced great poverty and struggled to make ends meet throughout the nineteenth century. Most Poarch Creeks were small subsistence level farmers and sharecroppers in the latter decades of the century. The Creeks persisted in their traditional hunting and fishing practices. However, the arrival of the railroad in the late 19th century brought the lumber and turpentine industries to the region. This led to large corporations purchasing public lands, which restricted the Creeks' access to their subsistence methods and made them vulnerable to economic exploitation.

The William M. Carney Mill Company frequently trespassed and harvested timber unlawfully from Creek lands. This led to several legal disputes beginning in 1911, resulting in minimal compensation to the Poarch Creek members. These legal challenges highlighted issues with ambiguous land titles for Indian land grants in Alabama, prompting the U.S. government to take action. On June 4, 1912, Congress passed legislation relinquishing all United States claims to lands in Alabama allocated for the Creek tribe or Nation, clarified land titles but didn't affect Creek Indian descendants still living on the land.

Because they had stayed behind and not removed with the main body of the Creek Nation after the 1830s, members of the Poarch Band received no federal aid or recognition of their Indian status at the tribal level. ^[5] These reports documented what the federal government had neglected for decades - the existence of a Creek Indian reserve in southern Alabama under the 1834 Treaty of Fort Jackson.

In 1924, the U.S. Department of the Interior terminated the government's protection of the title for the McGhee grant lands. Following this, small parcels of this land were sold, resulting in a significant decrease in Indian-owned property. Approximately 80 acres of the reserve were stolen or bought by non-Natives over time, leaving only about 160 acres of the original pre-1924 lands in Indian ownership. The community became more concentrated in the Poarch Creek communal areas known as Hedapeada, Poarch Switch, Bell Creek, and Hog Fork.

Jim Crow segregation laws played a particular role in the history of the Poarch Creek. Among these challenges were discrimination and exclusion from local businesses, along with using segregated facilities in schools, theaters, and medical offices. Religious organizations and local governments set up segregated schools for Creek Indian children in southwest Alabama during the late 1920s and early 1930s. These included the Gibson Indian School, Poarch Indian School, Roland Indian School, and McGhee Indian School. Furthermore, in 1929, the St. Anna's Indian Mission Episcopal school was founded to further Christianize the Poarch Creek community.

During the Indian Reorganization Act era, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, at the urging of the missionaries, sent a federal Bureau investigator to southern Alabama in 1938. The Bureau found that the Poarch Band was clearly a surviving Creek enclave. However, it was unclear how Indian policy should apply to the Poarch Creek, and the Bureau recommended to not establish a federal Indian reservation for the group, a decision which continues to undermine Poarch Creek sovereignty today. No federal Indian land or aid was provided for the Poarch Band during the 1930s and early 1940s, times in which tribal sovereignty was increasingly being challenged by state and federal governments as enabled in the Indian Reorganization.^[6]

Poarch families endured these challenges by relying on strong kinship and community ties, predominantly through a high level of endogamy within their community.^[7] These relations have enabled them to retain their Creek language and traditional practices like busk, stompdance, and chinaberry beading.

Gaining Sovereignty

After World War II, Chief Calvin McGhee, a descendant of Band founder Lynn McGhee, began organizing the Creeks of southern Alabama and northern Florida to pursue land claims and other rights denied to them as Indigenous peoples. In the late 1940s, McGhee spearheaded an effort to file a lands claim case with the Indian Claims Commission. He formed a group that became the Creek Nation East of the Mississippi that pursued a case for compensation for lands lost by the Creeks in the nineteenth century. The group received a favorable judgment; members received sums beginning in 1972 as reparations.^[8]

Through the lands claims litigation, Bufford Rollins and Eddie Tullis emerged as leaders of the Poarch Creek community. Along with Calvin McGhee, they took part in major events that were happening due to increasing visibility of Indigenous people, nations, and resistance movements in the 1960s and early 1970s throughout the U.S. Calvin McGhee attended the landmark Chicago Indian Conference of 1961, an event that galvanized movements toward Indigenous rights and sovereignty. McGhee was among the delegation that presented the Conference's "Declaration of Indian Purpose" to President John F. Kennedy at the White House in 1961. The Conference, along with other pan-Indian activism, prompted Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, to establish Indian programs outside the Bureau of Indian Affairs as part of his War on Poverty after 1963. Poarch Creeks secured federal grants during this era. They established federal job training, Headstart, and Department of Education Title IV Indian Education programs for area Creeks.

To fundraise for tribal organizing, the Poarch community advanced several community events, such as the intertribal Thanksgiving Powwow. Despite Mvskoke people not dancing powwow historically, Poarch members took advantage of the limited knowledge of Native American history in the United States to gain more funds and visibility for their Nation. The group also worked to formalize its government structures. Emerging from the Indian Claims Commission's petition by the Creek Nation East of the Mississippi in the early 1970s, McGhee, Tullis, and Rollins founded the modern government of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, centered near Poarch, Alabama. After the death of Calvin McGhee in the early 1970s, Eddie Tullis was elected as McGhee's successor. The Band joined the National Congress of American Indians and was active in pan-tribal eastern Indian organizations at the time. With a federal Administration for Native Americans grant, the Band secured funding to research and to write a petition for federal tribal recognition during the 1970s.^[9]

Assisted by anthropologist Tony Paredes, as mandated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Poarch Creek Band leveraged federal land records, census data, cultural items and practices, court records, and school documents. This comprehensive documentation approach was used to fulfill the criteria set by the US Department of the Interior, demonstrating their enduring and unbroken existence as Creek People. These processes were crucial in establishing their eligibility for federal tribal status under the Bureau of Indian Affairs' procedures created in 1978.^[10] The Poarch nation was successful in this effort, being one of the first tribes to secure federal status by petition in 1984. Afterward, the Band was able to have a 229 acre tract taken into trust as a federal Indian Reservation and to re-establish their own government under a written constitution. These lands provide the grounds for the tribal reservation.

Tribal membership requirements

To be eligible to enroll in the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, people must be descended from one or more American Indians listed on one of three rolls: the 1870 U.S. Census of Escambia County, Alabama; 1900 U.S. Census of Escambia County, Alabama; or 1900 U.S. Special Indian Census of Monroe County, Alabama. Besides being of direct Mvskoke Creek heritage, they must have a minimum blood quantum of 1/4 Creek blood (equivalent to one full-blooded Creek grandparent) and not be enrolled in any other tribe. There are two distinctions of membership, including tribal enrolled membership and descendant membership that extends to first generation descendants. Each federally recognized tribe has the right to make its own rules of citizenship.^[11]

Current status

The Poarch Creek Indian Reservation is located in southern Alabama near the city of Atmore, Alabama.^[12] Their current tribal chairwoman is Stephanie Bryan.^[13]

Tribal economy

Federal law recognizes the inherent right of Indian Tribes to develop their economy as necessary to exercise self-determination and sovereignty, and to support the wellness of their peoples and maintain connections to their ancestral lands. The Poarch Band has several casinos operating under Wind Creek Hospitality, a Tribal company.^[14] Three of its casinos are located on sovereign tribal land in Alabama: Wind Creek Atmore, Wind Creek Montgomery, and Wind Creek Wetumpka.^[15][16]

In 2012 the tribe announced plans to construct gaming operations at Oce Vpofv (Hickory Ground), one of the last remaining Creek etvlwv or tribal towns. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma filed suit to prevent this, arguing that the expansion would require excavation and reinterment of remains from an historic Creek burial ground at the site.^[17] This decision was not widely supported by the Poarch community and remains a controversial debate as it involves other legal constraints of Poarch Creek sovereignty.^[18]

In Gardnerville, Nevada, the Tribe entered in a partnership with the Washoe Tribe to assist with financing the Wa She Shu Casino. The casino opened in May 2016.^[19] In 2023, the Poarch Creek nation announced the sale of the Wa She Shu Casino facility to Washoe Development Corporation, effectively returning the casino to full ownership by the Washoe Tribe.^[20]

The Poarch Band of Creek Indians opened the Park at OWA, an amusement park in Foley, Alabama, on July 20, 2017.^[21][22] The 520-acre (2.1 km²) site was a joint venture between the City of Foley and the Foley Sports Tourism Complex, developed in conjunction with the Poarch Band of Creek Indians as part of a city-wide sports tourism push.^[23] An indoor water park known as Tropic Falls^[24] was announced in 2021;^[25] the first of the water park's two phases opened in June 2022.^[26][27]

Much of the tribal revenue is used to provide direct support for citizens of the Poarch Band. The Tribe demonstrates a strong commitment to the education of their youth and tribal members. For students enrolled in Pre-K through 12th grade, who also are tribally enrolled, the Tribe provides $20,000 in educational support. The Tribe extends its support to tribal members pursuing higher education, offering up to $40,000 for associate degrees, $80,000 for bachelor's degrees, and up to $100,000 for master's degrees and beyond. The Tribe has several other programs to support tribal members with mental and physical health services, housing, internet access, and crisis situations.

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Littlefield, Jr., Daniel F. and James W. Parins, ed. Encyclopedia of American Indian Removal, Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011. ISBN 978-0-313-36041-1.
• Miller, Mark Edwin. Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013.

External links

• Poarch Band of Creek Indians, official website
• Poarch Band of Creek Indians Tribal Constitution, National Indian Law Library