Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution, 1763–1818

According to James L. Hill, Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution “navigates the overlapping concerns of diplomacy, trade, sovereignty, and autonomy at the heart of affairs in Creek Country during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries” (4). Hill shows that sovereignty remained the central issue for the Creek. However, it was not conflicting perceptions of sovereignty that doomed Creek efforts to establish themselves as an international power. Hill identifies a lack of any clear notion of autonomy among the Creek that prevented their becoming a united entity as they sought recognition from European powers—specifically, Britain and Spain. This reality highlights the continued relevance of a question long posed by historians: Who spoke for whom when it came to Indigenous peoples’ relations with European powers?Key to Hill’s study is his differentiation between the principal communities (talwa) and the satellite communities (talofa) and these community leaders’ interest in vying for influence over the Creek people as a whole, which in turn lead to competition over international interests and favors. Leading these communities were mekkos or headmen. However, mekkos of the talwas did not always recognize the legitimacy of the talofas and their self-appointed leaders. To Hill’s credit, he articulates the difficulties of any American power, including the United States, in motivating European nations to recognize sovereignty across the Atlantic. If the United States could not convince Britain or Spain to recognize their rights as a nation, what hope did the Creek have when they could not create consensus on community leadership, much less national sovereignty? The answer to this question is what makes Hill’s study so compelling. It does not matter in hindsight if the Creek realistically could achieve sovereignty; the Creek believed sovereignty to be a realistic goal, and Hill captures that belief effectively. This belief is what motivated the Creek to take diplomatic missions to Cuba, Canada, Nassau, England, and Washington, DC.Then what prevented the Creek from becoming an international power? Hill’s answer is a predictable one—themselves. By 1790, Creek delegates continued their attempts to exploit rivalries between the United States, Spain, and Great Britain. However, as Hill writes, “The North America of 1790 was not the North America of 1750” (134). In this quotation, Hill encapsulates his main argument. As the old diplomatic strategy of exploiting European rivalries became less useful to groups such as the Iroquois, it became far less useful to the Creek. Delegations to London, Nassau, and Havana were met with respect but were not taken seriously as representatives of an international power. The Creek simply possessed nothing to negotiate with as European powers sought diplomatic solutions to their problems with the new United States. For Europeans, past policies that enabled the Creek to wreak havoc ceased to be a plausible military solution to a diplomatic issue. War remained the primary export for the Creek, and its diminishing importance created immense fissures in the Creek economy. Deerskin and cedar proved a poor foundation to build an export economy. This forced the Creek to use the only asset they had readily available—their own lands, of which they ceded large portions to the United States, most notably the cession of twenty-three million acres at the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814.In conclusion, Creek Internationalism in an Age of Revolution steps far beyond dated notions of the inevitability of Indigenous destruction to lend new eyes to the issue of Indigenous sovereignty as it was understood by people on both sides of the Atlantic in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

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