The Creek confederacy was based upon a number of tribes speaking the
Muskogee language, usually called Creek, but many other tribes were
taken into the organization in course of time, most of them speaking
related tongues but a few of entirely distinct stocks. From estimates
made by early writers it would seem as though the Creek population had
increased from about 7000 in 1700 to 20,000 at the time of the removal
(1832). This shrunk again after that date so that the Indian Office
report of 1919 gives 11,952 “Creeks by blood,” to which must be added
2141 “Seminole by blood,” 585 “Florida Seminole,” and 192 Alabama in
Texas. The Seminole and Alabama formerly belonged to the Confederacy.
Probably this includes a great many individuals with very little Indian
blood, because the Census of 1910 returned only about 9000 all told.
When first known to Europeans the tribes of this connection occupied
the eastern two-thirds of Alabama and all of what is now Georgia,
except the northernmost and easternmost parts. Some of the Indians,
then found upon the Georgia coast, seem afterward to have moved into
the hinterland to unite with the confederate body.
The confederacy was gradually extending itself by taking in smaller
peoples driven from their own country or suffering from more powerful
neighbors, among them the Yuchi and a part of the Shawnee. Even
the Chickasaw, though sometimes at war with them, had a sort of
semi-official membership and it is probable that more of the tribes
east and south would have been gathered into the league had it not been
for the coming of the whites. They were, however, equalled and probably
excelled in numbers by the Cherokee on their northeastern border, and
the Choctaw to the southwest, with both of which tribes they waged
bitter wars as well as with the Apalachee and Timucua southeast of
them. These differences were, however, aggravated considerably by the
rival Spanish, English, and French colonists. It should be understood
that the Creek Confederacy was a growing American national organism,
comparable to the Iroquois Confederacy, the states of Central America
and Mexico and some of those of the Old World.