6 - New roles for women and warriors

Summary

In December 1796, Benjamin Hawkins arrived in Creek country to assume his new position as Principal Temporary Agent for Indian Affairs South of the Ohio. A proponent of what later became Jeffersonian Indian policy, Hawkins intended to transform the Creeks gradually and peacefully into respectable members of the new American republic. He explained in 1807:

The plan I persue is to lead the Indian from hunting to the pastoral life, to agriculture, household manufactures, a knowledge of weights and measures, money and figures, to be honest and true to themselves as well as to their neighbors, to protect innocence, to punish guilt, to fit them to be useful members of the planet they inhabit and lastly, letters.

Behind his inexact reference to “the Indian,” Hawkins hid another goal: to reshape gender roles in Creek country. He encouraged men to abandon the chase in favor of ranching and planting, and women to vacate their farms for the production of “household manufactures.” In addition, the Indian agent urged men to take control of family property and to assume command over their wives and daughters. Any analysis of the Creek response to the “plan of civilization” must therefore first consider the relationship between men and women before Hawkins's arrival, for when Creeks welcomed or rejected the Indian agent's proposals, they did so in large part because of the quality of this relationship.