The decades following the American Revolution were a critical period for Native peoples in the southeastern United States. With the loss of British support, Native Americans had to establish relations with the Spanish, who had regained Florida, while grappling with expansionist Americans. The Creeks, as Kevin Kokomoor describes in Of One Mind and of One Government: The Rise and Fall of the Creek Nation in the Early Republic, eventually chose an accommodationist policy toward Americans. The result, Kokomoor argues, was an unprecedented unification of the Creeks under the National Council, which for several years managed to maintain Creek sovereignty against American encroachment.
Before the revolution, the Creeks, apart from their geographical grouping into upper and lower communities, generally identified with their towns and clans rather than any larger polity. Yet all Creeks shared a commitment to retaining their land, as Kokomoor demonstrates with a discussion of the Ceded Lands...
