| OCR Text |
Show 198 WESTERN WILDS. the Creeks at home, and started afoot for the Agency, traveling over a beautiful, rich prairie, gently rolling, rising from the river into long ridges, which occasionally terminated in sharp bluffs, crowned with pretty groves. The prospect was delightful by nature, and not a little enlivened by the numerous herds of cattle cropping the rich herbage. The tasty groves, the high prairie, and the slow- moving herds, with an occasional group of horses, produced the exact likeness of an old and wealthy estate, with pretty parks and stock grazing about the lawns and meadows. Eight or ten miles west of Muscogee, we entered a region of rude log- cabins and gaunt farm stock, where black faces peered at us through the cracks of " worm fences," and occasional '' free nigger" patches showed something like civilization. A colored girl replied, in answer to our queries, " Agency over thar," and a mile further brought us to a beautiful grove, in which was an irregular square of log- cabins, including some three or four acres. " We saw no signs of Government buildings, and but one neat, commodious house. There we were directed to a double log building, correspond-ing to those of the poorest farmers in Indiana, some distance from the square in a field, and that we found to be the Agency. The place is overrun by freedmen. A continuous line of settle-ments, with " patches " rather than farms, extends for ten miles along the Arkansas, with a population of perhaps a thousand freedmen and a hundred Creeks. Only the poorest and lowest of the Indians live among the blacks, but there has been more amalgamation in this than in any other tribe. The pure Creeks differ noticeably from the Cherokees. They are shorter, broader, and rather darker; without the high cheek bones and solemn gravity of the others, and with a more cheerful and kindly expression. The white traders say they are more industrious than the Cherokees, but less intelligent. Their history is an aboriginal romance. They long ago occupied a district far west of the Mississippi, whence they slowly moved eastward and northward a nation of predatory warriors. Just before them were the Alabamas. The two fought at every encounter, and the latter invariably retreated. Thus they fought through Arkansas and Mis-souri, then across the Mississippi and Ohio, then through Kentucky and Tennessee, and into Alabama. Here tradition says the old chief and prophet of the foremost tribe, supposing the Creeks would not follow them, struck his standard into the earth and shouted: " Ala-bah- ma Ala- bah- ma!" " Here we rest! Here we rest!" But the Creeks were soon upon them, and finally conquered and absorbed them, as they did all they conquered, if the vanquished had |
