Anthropologists define Muskogean as the language spoken by the majority of cultural groups in the Deep Southeast at the time of the European Contact.  The name comes from the Muskogees who lived in the Chattahoochee River Valley,  but later became the core of the People of One Fire,  known to the English as the Creek Confederacy.  Because the Muskogees were pretty much at the center of these chiefdoms,  their language became the "trade language" that was used for communication between the groups.   Many Muskogean chiefdoms disappeared or merged,  but today the Muskogee (Creek),  Choctaw,  Chickasaw,  Seminole,  Alabama, Koasati,  Houma,  Ouchita and Caddo speak Muskogean dialects.  Creek is a name that the English called the Muskogeans in Georgia and Alabama because their towns and village were usually near navagable streams.  The majority of Native Americans in Georgia in 1700 actually spoke Hitchiti,  not Muskogee.  Hitchiti is a language that is roughly halfway between true Muskogee and Choctaw.  Many Seminoles speak Hitchiti today.    The Alabamas,  Koasati and Tuskegee spoke a language that was even more similar to Choctaw.