bwantom] KAkl.Y HISTORY OF THE CREEK INDIANS 215 
THE MUSKOGEE 
The dominant people of the Creek Confederacy called themselves 
and their language in later limes by a name which lias become con- 
ventionalized into Muscogee or Muskogee, but it does not appear in 
tin- Spanish narratives of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
and careful examination seems to show that the people themselves 
were complex. If we were in possession of full internal information 
regarding their past history I feel confident we should find that the 
process of aggregation which brought so many known foreign elements 
together had been operating through a much longer period and had 
brought extraneous elements in still earlier. Evidence pointing 
toward a foreign origin for several supposedly pure Muskogee tribes 
will be adduced presently. At the same time we are now no longer 
in a position to separate the two clearly, and will consider all under 
one head. We do know, however, that even though they spoke the 
Muskogee language, there were several distinct bands, the history 
of each of which must be separately traced. 
The name Muskogee was of later origin, presumably, than the 
names of the constituent parts. What it means no Creek Indian 
seems to know. In fact it does not appear to be a Muskogee 
word at all. Several explanations have been suggested for it, 
but the one to which I am inclined to give most weight is 
that of Gatschet, 1 who affirms that it is derived from an Algonquian 
word signifying "swamp" or "wet ground." Gatschet devotes con- 
siderable space to a discussion of the name. It was probably first 
bestowed by the Shawnee, who were held in high esteem by the 
Creeks, especially by those of Tukabahchee, and probably came into 
use for want of a native term to cover all of the Muskogee tribes. 
The origin of the English term "Creeks" seems to have been satis- 
factorily traced by Prof. V. W. Crane to a shortening of "Ocheese 
Creek Indians," Ocheese being an old name for the Ocmulgee River, 
upon which most of the Lower Creeks were living when the English 
first came in contact with them. 2 
A careful examination of the Muskogee bodies proper yields us 
about 12 whose separate existence extends back so far that we 
must treat them independently, although we may have a conviction 
that they were not all originally major divisions. On the other hand, 
there are a few bands not included among the 12 which may have 
had an independent origin, though this seems very unlikely. The 
12 bodies above referred to are the Kasihta, Coweta, Coosa, Abihka, 
Wakokai, Eufaula, Hilibi, Atasi, Kolomi, Tukabahchee, Pakana, and 
Okchai. As we know, they were in later times distinguished into 
Upper Creeks and Lower Creeks, the former including those residing 
» Gatschet, Creek Mig. Leg., pp. 58 < 2. 
s Crane in The Miss. Val. Hist. Rev., vol. 5, no. 3, Dec, 1918. 
