¹ During the colonial period, the Creeks organized their world into a system of autonomous towns with distinct cultural and economic characteristics. Geographic location and clan affiliation divided the towns into Upper Town and Lower Town divisions held together in a flexible coalition. During removal, factionalism divided the Upper and Lower towns, but following removal Creeks increasingly centralized into a nation rather than a confederacy. For a colonial political history of the Creeks, see Hahn, Steven C., The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670–1763 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014); and for a history of removal in the early nineteenth century, see Green, Michael D., The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985).Google Scholar

² Opothleyohola from Morrison, W. B., “Father Murrow” in My Oklahoma, n.d., file 1, box 1, Opothleyohola Collection, Native American Manuscripts, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma (hereafter WHC). The typescript is undated, but Murrow attended Creek Councils in the late 1840s when Opothleyohola began publicly advocating education after the resettlement in Indian Territory. Also see Mary Jane Warde, George Washington Grayson and the Creek Nation, 1843–1920 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 41.Google Scholar

³ In 1825, the Choctaws negotiated a treaty with the federal government in which leaders agreed to establish Choctaw Academy in Blue Springs, Kentucky. Under pressure from the federal government, state legislatures, and white intruders to cede their land, Choctaws wished to produce a generation of educated leaders as a strategy to protect their sovereignty. An alternative to missionary-led education, the school became the first national school for Native Americans in the United States. Although largely funded by the Choctaw Nation, children from other Southern indigenous groups attended. Foreman, Carolyn Thomas, “The Choctaw Academy,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 6, no. 4 (December 1928), 453. Also see Fortney, Jeff, “Robert M. Jones and the Choctaw Nation: Indigenous Nationalism in the American South,” unpublished dissertation, University of Oklahoma, 2014, 77–83.Google Scholar

⁴ Warde, George Washington Grayson and the Creek Nation, 41.Google Scholar

⁵ For more on early Cherokee education, see Mihesuah, Devon A., Cultivating the Rosebuds: The Education of Women at the Cherokee Female Seminary, 1851–1909 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Parins, James, Literacy and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820–1906 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013); McLoughlin, William G., Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 350–36. McLoughlin also traces the careers of missionaries Evan and Jones, John B., who served the Cherokees for fifty years, in McLoughlin, William G., Champions of the Cherokees: Evan and John B. Jones (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). For a discussion of Choctaw schools and missionaries, see Kidwell, Clara Sue, Choctaws and Missionaries in Mississippi, 1818–1918 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995).Google Scholar

⁶ I use the term Creek to describe the diverse members of the nineteenth-century Creek Nation, including those with Native, European, and African heritage. Although Muskogee is often used interchangeably with Creek, historically it applied to one of the language groups that had coalesced into the Creek Nation. Yuchis, for example, belonged to the Creek Nation but maintained their own distinct language. In the twenty-first century, Muscogee (Creek) Nation is the official designation.Google Scholar

⁷ For an outline of this process, see Neuman, Linda K., Indian Play: Indigenous Identities at Bacone College (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 1–28. In this study, Neuman traces the transformation at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, arguing, “Students used Bacone as a space for the exploration of their own and others’ Indian identities, as they learned from one another.” It is worth noting that, although Bacone's founder, Bacone, Almon C., and the Baptist Mission operated the school with assimilationist goals, the Creek government, which gave Bacone permission and a land grant to move the school into the Creek Nation at Muskogee, had a different understanding of the institution. They viewed it as a supplement to their own education system, which began in the period discussed in this article. See “Samuel Checote to the National Council,” October 27, 1881, slide 36083, roll 43, Creek Nation Records, Oklahoma Historical Society (hereafter cited as OHS); Neuman, Indian Play, 42.Google Scholar

⁸ Several works examine assimilation policy and the federal boarding schools. For example, see Hoxie, Frederick E., A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001); and Adams, David Wallace, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995). A number of case studies examine Indian identity and agency at specific schools. For example see Lomawaima, K. Tsianina, They Called It Prairie Light The Story of Chilocco Indian School (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994) and Ellis, Clyde, To Change Them Forever: Indian Education at the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, 1893–1920 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996).Google Scholar

⁹ In his seminal study on federal boarding school education, historian David Wallace Adams explains that the schools “exempted from this study are those associated with the so-called ‘five civilized tribes,’ a story sufficiently unique as to require a separate investigation.” See Adams, Education for Extinction, x. Only two works, Devon Mihesuah's Cultivating the Rosebuds and Amanda Cobb-Greetham's Listening to Our Grandmothers’ Stories: The Bloomfield Academy for Chickasaw Females, 1852–1949 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), offer case studies of schools operated by Native governments. These foundational studies offer the closest opportunity for comparison in the historiography. In particular, Cobb-Greetham's assertion that “Because they knew that education was crucial to their economic success and ultimately to their survival, Chickasaws urgently desired to continue the education of their children and made appropriations for a tribal academy” reveals the similar processes and motivations by which the Creeks and Chickasaws adapted schools for their own purposes. These works offer histories of female academies in the Cherokee and Chickasaw Nations, the various forms of literacy that emerged from these institutions, and the effects of education on social relations. My work attempts to broaden the scope of these case studies to examine the experiences of diverse male and female Indians and Afro-Indians residing within the multicultural society of the Creek Nation.Google Scholar

¹⁰ For more on the early common school movement, see Kaestle, Carl, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983) and Reese, William J., America's Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind” (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2011). For a discussion of race and the common school movement, see Moss, Hilary J., Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).Google Scholar

¹¹ Five Tribes, or so-called “Five Civilized Tribes,” is commonly used to refer collectively to the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations.Google Scholar

¹² Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 62.Google Scholar

¹³ Benjamin, W. Griffith Jr., Mcintosh and Weatherford, Creek Indian Leaders (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988), 11–22.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Creek-US relations emerged within a framework of settler colonialism. According to historian Hixson, Walter L., settler colonialism is the ideology in which “Euro-American settlers imagined that it was their destiny to take control of colonial space and nothing and nothing would deter them from carrying out that process. Many came to view the very existence of Indians as an impediment to individual and national aspirations.” Hixson, Walter L., American Settler Colonialism: A History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), viii. For a discussion of Native American education and settler colonialism, see Jacobs, Margaret, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880–1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Viola, Herman J., Thomas L. McKenney: Architect of America's Early Indian Policy, 1816–1830 (Chicago: Sage Books, 1974).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Lee Comprere to McKenney, Thomas, May, 20, 1828, Letters Received by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Creek Agency, 1824–1876, slide 703, roll 221, record group 75, National Archives, M234.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Parins, Literacy and Intellectual Life, 68, 77–78.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Armstrong, William to Medill, William, 20 October 1846, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1846–1847 (hereafter cited as ARCIA), 340.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Following removal, Creeks and the other members of the Five Tribes” rebuilt their societies based on the recognition of their national sovereignty promised to them in the removal treaties and upheld by the 1832 Worcester v. Georgia Supreme Court decision. Worcester v. Georgia defined Native nations as “distinct political communities having territorial boundaries, within which their authority is exclusive, and having a right to all the lands within those boundaries, which is not only acknowledged but guaranteed by the United States.” Following this decision, the Five Tribes rejected federal intervention until the 1898 Curtis Act, which legally dissolved them. This decision continues to be the basis for Native legal sovereignty in the US Bureau of Indian Affairs. See Murchison, Kenneth S., ed., Digest of Decisions Relating to Indian Affairs, vol. I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1901), 524.Google Scholar

²⁰ Armstrong, William to Medill, William, ARCIA, 1846, 342.Google Scholar

²¹ Loughridge, Robert M., “History of Mission Work Among the Creek Indians from 1832 to 1888 Under the Direction of the Board of Foreign Missions Presbyterian Church in the U.S.,” folder 1, Loughridge, Robert M. Collection, OHS; Angie Debo, The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979), 120–121; and Lauderdale, Virginia E., “Tullahassee Mission,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 26 no. 3 (Fall 1948), 285–300.Google Scholar

²² Ruble, Thos. B. to Colonel Raiford, Agent of the Creeks, Oct. 8, 1849, ARCIA, 1849, 1124.Google Scholar

²³ Loomis, A. W., Scenes in the Indian Country (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1859), 39–40.Google Scholar

²⁴ Debo, The Road to Disappearance, 120–21.Google Scholar

²⁵ Several scholars chronicle assimilation policies and student experiences in federal boarding schools during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Adams provides the most extensive synthesis on the topic. Employing a framework of colonialism, he asserts agents of assimilation believed that the “last great Indian war should be waged against the children.” He argues assimilationists sought “the eradication of all traces of tribal identity and culture” and to replace them with the “values of white civilization” through boarding school education. See Adams, Education for Extinction, 335–36.Google Scholar

²⁶ Balentine, A., Superintendent of Kowetah School, to Colonel Raiford, Oct. 3, 1849, ARCIA, 1849, 1126.Google Scholar

²⁷ Loughridge, R. M. to Colonel Raiford, 28 Ausust 1851, roll 16, no. 75, Presbyterian Historical Society (hereafter cited as PHS); See also the Order of Examination Subjects, 1853, folder 9, box 8, series 1, Alice Mary Robertson Collection, Special Collections, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa (hereafter cited as AMR).Google Scholar

²⁸ Mihesuah, Cultivating the Rosebuds, 21.Google Scholar

²⁹ Loughridge, R. M. to Garrett, Colonel W. H., U.S. agent to the Creek nation, 13 September 1859, ARCIA 1859, 548.Google Scholar

³⁰ Schreiber, Rebecca McNulty argues that the Creek schools differed from previous Hawaiian manual labor schools in the early nineteenth century. She explains, “Whereas Hawaiian missionaries tended to emphasize political, legal, and land tenure reform as the best way to create a producer society, the Robertsons (and Loughridge, to a certain extent) tended to favor a more domestic approach. They envisioned the manual labor boarding school as a true replacement family.” See Schreiber, Rebecca McNulty, “Education for Empire: Manual Labor, Civilization, and the Family in Nineteenth-Century American Missionary Education” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007), 112.Google Scholar

³¹ Kerber, Linda K., Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 10.Google Scholar

³² Robertson, William Schenk to Walter Lowrie, 12 November 1851, quoted in Schreiber, “Education for Empire,” 112.Google Scholar

³³ Loomis, Scenes in the Indian Country, 69.Google Scholar

³⁴ Bass, Althea, The Story of Tullahassee (Oklahoma City: Semco Color Press, 1960), 35–49; Cahill, Cathleen details how late nineteenth- and twentieth-century schools under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs replicated the emphasis on married couples. Instead of modeling the Christian family, however, she argues these couples represent the larger project of “intimate colonialism” because they served “symbolically as federal fathers and mothers to their wards.” See Cahill, Cathleen, Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 83.Google Scholar

³⁵ Grayson, George W., A Creek Warrior for the Confederacy: The Autobiography of Chief G. W. Grayson, ed. Baird, W. David (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 43. For an extensive biography of Grayson, see Warde, Mary Jane, George Washington Grayson and the Creek Nation, 1843–1920 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999). For details about the history of the Grayson family, see Saunt, Claudio, Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

³⁶ List of Kowetah Students, roll 16, no. 150, PHS.Google Scholar

³⁷ James Ross Ramsay Autobiography, folder 1, box 1, James Ross Ramsay Collection, Seminole Nation Papers, Native American Manuscripts, WHC, 23–24.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid, 24.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Bass, The Story of Tallahassee, 53.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Mihesuah, Cultivating the Rosebuds, 34–35.Google Scholar

⁴² Mcintosh, William (cousin) to Henry Shaw, 1850, folder 10, box 5, series 2, AMR.Google Scholar

⁴³ Grayson, Creek Warrior for the Confederacy, 43–44.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Balentine, A., Superintendent of Kowetah School to Colonel Raiford, 3 October 1849, ARCIA, 1849,1126.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Loughridge, “History of Mission Work,” folder 1, Robert M. Loughridge Collection, OHS, 30.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Eakins, David W. to Colonel Raiford, 25 October 1849, ARCIA, 1849, 1120.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Holway, Hope, “Ann Eliza Worcester Robertson as a Linguist,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 37 (Spring 1959), 3 5–44.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Loughridge, “History of Mission Work,” 19–20.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ For example, see Barnett, Charles, Autobiography of a Creek Student, folder 6, box 1, series 2, AMR.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Loomis, Scenes in the Indian Country, 70.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Robertson, W. S. to Lowrie, Walter, Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions 3 October 1851, no. 85, roll 16, PHS.Google Scholar

⁵² Loughridge, “History of Mission Work,” 27.Google Scholar

⁵³ Grayson, A Creek Warrior for the Confederacy, 42.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Loughridge, R. M. to Garrett, Colonel W. H., 13 September, 1859, ARCIA 1859, 548.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Robertson, W. S. to Lowrie, Walter, 3 October 1851, no. 85, roll 16, PHS.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Lowrie, Walter to Lea, Luke, Esq., 30 September 1850, Letters Received by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, school files, roll 785, slide 339, record group 75, National Archives, M234.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Loughridge, “History of Mission Work,” 30.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Debo, The Road to Disappearance, 120.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Stremlau, Rose, Sustaining the Cherokee Family: Kinship and the Allotment of an Indigenous Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 13–14.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Bass, The Story of Tullahassee, 52.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Grayson, A Creek Warrior for the Confederacy, 45.Google Scholar

⁶² List of Kowetah Students, roll 16, no. 150, PHS.Google Scholar

⁶³ Zellar, Gary, African Creeks: Estelvste and the Creek Nation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 39–40.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Saunt, Black, White, and Indian, 78.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Ramsey, J. Ross to Lowrie, Walter, Nov. 13, 1851, no. 98, roll 16, PHS.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Templeton, H. to the Secretary of Indian Affairs, 23 November 1851, Letters Received by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, slide 1444, roll 785, record group 75, National Archives, M234.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Creek Chiefs in Council to Luke Lea, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1851, Letters Received by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, slide 50–51, roll 786, record group 75, National Archives, M234.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Moss, Schooling Citizens, 13.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Aspberry, D. B. to Garrett, Colonel W.H., July 24, 1853, ARCIA, 1853, 390.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ For example, see Grayson, A Creek Warrior for the Confederacy, 41.Google Scholar

⁷¹ See Reports on Creek Schools, ARCIA, 1853, 388–95.Google Scholar

⁷² Carr, Thomas to Garrett, Colonel W. H., 20 August 1853, ARCIA, 1853, 394–95.Google Scholar

⁷³ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Reports on Creek Schools, ARCIA, 1855, 461–471.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Allen, W. H. to Garrett, Colonel W. H., 5 September 1855, ARCIA, 469.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Lewis, M. J. to Garrett, Colonel W. H., 28 August 1855, ARCIA, 468.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Loughridge, R. M. to Garrett, Colonel W. H., 13 September 1859, ARCIA 1859, 549–50.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Foreman, Grant, The Five Civilized Tribes (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1934), 206–07.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 106.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Euro-American educators in the Southwestern territories also aced the language barrier with the Spanish-speaking population. For a community-level analysis, see Blanton, Carlos Kevin, The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981 (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2004), 24–41.Google Scholar

⁸² Carr, Thomas to Garrett, Colonel W. H., 15 September 1855, ARCIA, 470–71.Google Scholar

⁸³ “Treaty with the Creeks, etc. 1856,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, ed. Kappler, Charles Joseph, vol. II (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 760.Google Scholar

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⁸⁵ Duncan, W. A., Superintendent of Public Schools, to the National Council, ARCIA, 1856, 693–94.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Garrett, Colonel W. H. to Dean, C. W., Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 24 August 1855, ARCIA, 1855, 458; Herrod, G. to Garrett, Colonel W. H., Sept. 8, 1858, ARCIA, 1858, 499; James, M.C. Smith to Garrett, Colonel W. H., 24 September 1858, ARCIA, 1858, 501.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ S. Rep. No. 744, at 112 (1839).Google Scholar

⁸⁸ The Five Tribes excluded noncitizens residing within their territory from their public schools, unless they received permission and paid tuition. After numerous petitions from settlers, Congress commissioned an investigation. The report, “Education of White and Negro Children in The Indian Territory,” indicated an estimated 30,000 white children and 25,000 African-American children “were shut out from the schools supported by the governments of the five nations of Indians who control the territory, as well as from those supported by the United States for the benefit of Indian youth.” The result was “a mass of more than 50,000 children of both races, of school age, for whose education, either industrial or literary, there is no provision whatever.” See Department of the Interior, “Education of White and Negro Children in Indian Territory,” (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1898), 1–2.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Warren, Donald provides critique of the focus on institutions within the history of Native American education by arguing they can imply “prior to Euroamerican invasions the Indigenous peoples of the United States lacked enduring practices and teaching and learning.” Natives not only possessed diverse and enduring forms of education prior to European contact but also continued to employ them during the nineteenth century. Creeks did not simply borrow western systems of knowledge and western-style schools. Instead, they adapted English literacy and schools as their own institutions. I maintain that there are important historical lessons to be learned from examining indigenous-controlled social institutions. This essay complements David Wallace Adams's response to the essays in the History of Education Quarterly's thematic issue on the education history of Native Americans. Adams argues that while there is still much work to be done, “don't forget about the schools.” Warren, Donald, “American Indian Histories as Education History,” History of Education Quarterly 54, no. 3 (August 2014), 263; and Adams, David Wallace, “Beyond Horace Mann: Telling Stories about Indian Education,” History of Education Quarterly 54, no. 3 (August 2014), 385.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Lomawaima, K. Tsianina and McCarty, Teresa L., “To Remain an Indian”: Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 2006), 5 Google Scholar

⁹¹ Lomawaima and McCarty, Lessons in Democracy, 5.Google Scholar

⁹² Reese, William J., America's Public Schools, 1. For an examination of the urban North as the nexus of the common school movement, see pages 10–44.Google Scholar

⁹³ Opothleyohola from Morrison's, W. B. “Father Murrow” in My Oklahoma, file 1, box 1, Opothleyohola Collection, Native American Manuscripts, WHC.Google Scholar