Red Sticks

Red Sticks is the English language term for a traditionalist faction of Muscogee Creek people in the American Southeast in the early 19th century. They led a resistance movement to European-American encroachment and assimilation; the tensions culminated in the outbreak of the Creek War in 1813. Initially a civil war among the Creek, the conflict drew in United States state forces, when the nation was already engaged in the War of 1812 against the British.

The term "red sticks" was derived from their red-colored war clubs and the ceremonial red sticks used by Creek medicine men. This faction was made up mostly of Creek of the Upper Towns, who supported traditional leadership and culture, including the preservation of communal land for cultivation and hunting. It was a time of increasing pressure on Creek territory by European-American settlers. Creek of the Lower Towns, who were closer to the settlers and had more mixed-race families, had already been forced to make numerous land cessions to the Americans.