2018 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
2019 Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award from the Western History Association
Between 1827 and 1837 approximately twenty-three thousand Creek Indians were transported across the Mississippi River, exiting their homeland under extreme duress and complex pressures. During the physically and emotionally exhausting journey, hundreds of Creeks died, dozens were born, and almost no one escaped without emotional scars caused by leaving the land of their ancestors.
Bending Their Way Onward is an extensive collection of letters and journals describing the travels of the Creeks as they moved from Alabama to present-day Oklahoma. This volume includes documents related to the "voluntary" emigrations that took place beginning in 1827 as well as the official conductor journals and other materials documenting the forced removals of 1836 and the coerced relocations of 1836 and 1837.
This volume also provides a comprehensive list of muster rolls from the voluntary emigrations that show the names of Creek families and the number of slaves who moved west. The rolls include many prominent Indian countrymen (such as white men married to Creek women) and Creeks of mixed parentage. Additional biographical data for these Creek families is included whenever possible. Bending Their Way Onward is the most exhaustive collection to date of previously unpublished documents related to this pivotal historical event.
2018 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
2019 Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award from the Western History Association
Between 1827 and 1837 approximately twenty-three thousand Creek Indians were transported across the Mississippi River, exiting their homeland under extreme duress and complex pressures. During the physically and emotionally exhausting journey, hundreds of Creeks died, dozens were born, and almost no one escaped without emotional scars caused by leaving the land of their ancestors.
Bending Their Way Onward is an extensive collection of letters and journals describing the travels of the Creeks as they moved from Alabama to present-day Oklahoma. This volume includes documents related to the "voluntary" emigrations that took place beginning in 1827 as well as the official conductor journals and other materials documenting the forced removals of 1836 and the coerced relocations of 1836 and 1837.
This volume also provides a comprehensive list of muster rolls from the voluntary emigrations that show the names of Creek families and the number of slaves who moved west. The rolls include many prominent Indian countrymen (such as white men married to Creek women) and Creeks of mixed parentage. Additional biographical data for these Creek families is included whenever possible. Bending Their Way Onward is the most exhaustive collection to date of previously unpublished documents related to this pivotal historical event.
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1. The Voluntary Emigrations 1827-1836
1. The First McIntosh Party, 1827-1828
2. The Second McIntosh Party, 1828
3. The Third Voluntary Emigrating Party, 1829
4. Chilly McIntosh’s Emigrating Party, 1833
5. The Fourth Voluntary Emigrating Party, 1834-35
6. The Fifth Voluntary Emigrating Party, 1835-36
Part 2. The Forced Removals, 1836
7. Removal of the First Detachment of Creek Prisoners, July
1836-August 1836
8. Second Detachment of Creek Prisoners
Part 3. The Coerced Relocations, 1836-37
9. Detachments 1-6
10. Detachment 1
11. Detachment 2
12. Detachment 3
13. Detachment 4
14. Detachment 5
15. Detachment 6
Part 4. The Refugee Removals, 1837
16. The Removal of the Refugee Creeks in the Cherokee and Chickasaw
Countries
Part 5. The Voluntary Self-Emigrations and Reunification
Emigrations, 1831-77
17. The Reunification Emigrations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Christopher D. Haveman is an assistant professor of history
at the University of West Alabama. He is the author of Rivers of
Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in
the American South (Nebraska, 2016).
"Fast earning a reputation for being one of the most insightful
historians of the Native South, Haveman (Univ. of West Alabama)
adds to his impressive record of scholarship with what amounts to
the best single volume yet published of annotated primary sources
on Creek Indian removal. . . . An invaluable collection of
archival documents that will be welcomed by professional historians
and advanced undergraduate and graduate students."—G. D.
Smithers, Choice
"Muscogee genealogists, as well as scholars of Native America and
removal, will find Bending Their Way Onward an excellent and useful
addition to their libraries."—Robert M. Owens, Tribal College
Journal of American Indian Higher Education
"Bending Their Way Onward is an immense complement to studying the
removal era of the Muscogee Creek Indians from Alabama. The sheer
number of documents contained in this book is outstanding. Haveman
gives a glance on the physical, emotional, and mental tolls the
Muscogee people had to endure during their removals from 1827 to
1837. . . . These documents and other sources may give a more
accurate look into the removal of the Muscogee Nation."—Savannah
Waters, Chronicles of Oklahoma
“Bending Their Way Onward explores the messy day-to-day process of
physically moving thousands of Indians off their lands and
orchestrating the accompanying administrative challenge. These
documents complicate and humanize the process without excusing or
vindicating the agents involved or reducing the Creeks to passive
victims. Many of the documents are eye-opening.”—Andrew K. Frank,
Allen Morris Associate Professor of History at Florida State
University and author of Creeks and Southerners: Biculturalism on
the Early American Frontier
“No such collection currently exists for the Creek Indians. Most
histories of the removal era devote copious space to the historical
context, while the actual process of removal seems to have
attracted less scholarly attention. The documents themselves,
however, are intrinsically interesting. The muster rolls will be of
enduring value to demographers as well as to modern-day
Muscogee (Creek) Indians interested in genealogy and
history.”—Steven C. Hahn, professor of history at St. Olaf College
and author of The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670–1763
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