Dear Wind-dancer - I am responding to your message about researching Creek Indians/Black Native Americans. You said: "There were Alabama Indian's that was a name of the tribe in those days. some intermarried with A Native Americans. that is a tribe you should explore also." ========== In a book I have, entitled "Creeks and Seminoles", by J. Leitch Wright, Jr., U. of Nebraska Press, 1986, in Chaper One of his book, Mr. Wright attempts to differentiate between all the tribal or linguistic groups in the area, as follows. Things in brackets [ ] are my language... "Chapter One--The Southeastern Muscogulges This is the story of an Indian people--the Muscogulges--who were not a people, and of Indian nations--the Creeks and Seminoles--that were not nations. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries assorted Indians lived in the present-day Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. The alternative to referring to them as Muscogulges, Creeks and Seminoles is to rely of a welter of tribal (or linguistic) names: Yamasee, Tuckabatchee, Hitchiti, Koasati, Alabama, Timucua, Natches, Shawnee, and Tuchi. The list is a long one, fifty to a hundred or so. By the late eighteenth century these tribes, remnants of those who greeted de Soto in the sixteenth century, had been incalculably reduced in numbers, and many approached extention. It would be more accurate to refer to them by their individual tribal names, but it would also be more awkward. Thus, in the name of expediency, we refer to Creeks, Seminoles, and the imprecise but all-encompassing Muscogulgee." Another couple of enlightening sentences: o "Oral traditions recount how Hitchiti speakers had lived for many centuries thoughout the Southeast, including on the Ocmulgee River in Georgia. Subsequently western intruders (Muskogees) settled on Hitchiti lands. The Hitchiti word for these Muskogees was Ochesee. English settlers founded Charleston in 1670, and within a short time Carolinians traded with Indians in the Southeast, among who were those living on Ochesee Creek (the upper Ocmulgee River). Traders from Charleston and their packhourse trains stopped by Ochesee Creek, bartering manufactures for deerskins. They referred to the Indians there as Ochesee Creeks, Ochesees, and eventually simply as Creeks....... Ochesee Creeks along with other Indians [eventually] retired westward to the Chattahoochee River [that divides AL and GA] and settled various towns near Columbus, Georgia...Coweta and Kasihta....[these] Indians ...sometimes known as Cowetas and other times as Ochesee Creeks or Creeks." o "The trouble with all this [the myrid of names] is that the Indians considered themselves what they had always been--Yuchis, Cowetas, Coosas, Alabamas, Shawnees, Tuskegees, among many others. As far as we know Muskogee was the language of the true Muskogees, of Coweta, Kasihta, Coosa, and Abihka, the core of founding towns of the Creek nation...." Later discussions in the book include a chapter on "Black Muscogulges [also referred to as "Creek"] and other chapters relate the Creek relationship to and history shared by the Seminoles, those found predominantly in Florida. I don't know anything about the quality or reliability of Mr. Wright's scholarship...looks pretty darn authoritative to me... but his book has provided useful background about the history of the Southeastern region and has helped me to understand that identyfing southeastern tribes is not as simple as going to the standard registers for the five so-called civililized tribes. It also explains a lot about place names in the area--especially in AL-- and clarifies that not every Native east of the Mississippi was a Cherokee--which, after a time, seem to have become the generic definition for anyone with Native ancestry. I suspect the same linguistic challenges occur with every Native group. Thank you for sharing your interest and comments. Annette