What is "muscogee"

The Muscogee people, also known as the Creek people and Creek Confederacy, are a group of related Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. Mvskoke (; Mvskoke ) is their autonym. Originally from Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and northern Florida, Muscogee people were forcibly relocated in the early 19th century to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. Their languages, Muscogee and Hitchiti-Mikasuki belong to the Eastern Muskogean branch of the Muscogean language family.

The Muscogee are descendants of the Mississippian culture peoples, who built earthwork mounds at their regional chiefdoms located throughout the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries. Early Spanish explorers encountered ancestors of the Muscogee when they visited Mississippian-culture chiefdoms in the Southeast in the mid-16th century.

The Muscogee were the first Native Americans considered to be "civilized" under George Washington's civilization plan. In the 19th century, the Muscogee were known as one of the " Five Civilized Tribes", because they had integrated numerous cultural and technological practices of their more recent European American neighbors. Influenced by their prophetic interpretations of the 1811 comet and earthquake, the Upper Towns of the Muscogee, supported by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, began to resist European-American encroachment. Internal divisions with the Lower Towns led to the Red Stick War (Creek War, 1813–1814); begun as a civil war within the Muscogee Nation, it enmeshed the Northern Creek Bands in the War of 1812 against the United States while the Southern Creeks remained US allies. General Andrew Jackson then seized the opportunity to use the rebellion as an excuse to make war against all Creeks once the northern Creek rebellion had been put down with the aid of southern Creeks. The result was a weakening of the Creek Nation and the forced ceding of Creek lands to the US.

During the Indian Removal of the 1830s, most of the Muscogee Confederacy were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town, Kialegee Tribal Town, and Thlopthlocco Tribal Town, all based in Oklahoma, are federally recognized, as are the Poarch Band of Creek Indians of Alabama, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, and the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas.