Br'er Rabbit - Creek Indian Origins

Creek Indian Origins

Many Native American cultures have oral traditions that involved animals that spoke. Throughout eastern North America, it was typically the rabbit that was the "trickster." However, the Uncle Remus Tales have similarities to the ancient children's stories of the Creek Indians of Georgia, the Carolinas and Alabama. Furthermore, Creek Indian farmers made frequent use of pine tar from long leaf pines. This was also applied to carved wooden objects and statues as a means of catching rodents near granaries and barns.

In 1929, an ethnologist for the Smithsonian Institute, John R. Swanton, published a book on Creek folklore. The stories correspond verbatim with the tales of Uncle Remus. Swanton directly linked the original stories published by Joel Chandler Harris to Creek oral literature that predated the arrrival of Europeans or Africans. Both Joel Chandler Harris and Martha Ann "Minnie" Bulloch Roosevelt grew up in the heart of Creek Indian territory in Georgia. A significant percentage of the population in central Georgia (both nominally Caucasian and African) still has Creek ancestry. The Bullochs were a prominent family in Savannah, Georgia, on the eastern coast of Georgia. Harris began publishing the individual stories as special newspaper columns, immediately after being hired by the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. In its archives, the Georgia Historical Society has copies of Creek oral literature that match both Swanton's and Harris's books.

There are two possible explanations for the Creeks' stories being passed on by the Cherokee Indians and by African slaves. During the late 1600s and early 1700s, the Cherokees got most of their trade income from capturing Native American slaves. Cherokee slave raiding parties ranged from southern Florida to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. The territory of the tribe spread southward as earlier tribes in that area were wiped out by the slave raids. Cherokee raiders often kept the most attractive of their female captives as concubines or wives. Thus, the Muskogean Indian culture was absorbed into the Cherokee culture.

The connection between Creek culture and African-American culture is more obvious. Once Muskogean slaves were mixed with African slaves, intermarriage occurred. King George II freed all of the Native American slaves in his North American territory in 1752. However, the individual colonial assemblies passed their own laws that classified slaves of mixed racial background as being African, not Native American. It was also common for Creek men or women to marry slaves of mixed heritage, and then buy up their freedom. By the early 1800s, many slaves in Georgia were practicing cultural traditions that mixed those of Africa and the Creeks.