4 - Forging a social compact

Summary

Caleb Swan, who visited the Deep South in 1791, wrote of the Creeks:

Every individual has so high an opinion of his own importance and independency, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to impress on the community at large the necessity of any social compact, that should be binding upon it longer than common danger threatened them with the loss of their lands and hunting ranges.

Like earlier observers, Swan was struck by the difference between Muskogee and European political organization. Creek leaders, as Chigellie and Antioche had explained to Georgians in the 1730s, relied solely on persuasion to command their people. By contrast, the governments familiar to Swan often resorted to coercion, a power ostensibly granted in the social contract between ruler and ruled. Swan keenly observed that Muskogees had no similar binding contract. In fact, they did not even think in such terms. Yet, in the 1780s and 1790s, a few mestizos and other Creeks began forging a social compact, forcing it on the mostly unwilling inhabitants of the region. In the language of European political theory, promoters of the compact violated natural rights; in the language of the Creeks, they supplanted fair persuasions with the tomahawk.

The emerging compact dictated that the Creeks turn over judicial and political authority, which had traditionally resided in the clans, to a small number of “national leaders” who would act for the good of the “nation.” Creeks objected to the compact on two grounds.