Loskiel, George Henry. History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians in North America, London, 1794.
Skinner, Alanson. The Indians of Greater New York, Cedar Rapids, 1915.
The Lenape Indians of Staten Island. (Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. III, New York, 1909.).
The Indians of Manhattan Island and vicinity. (Guide leaflet No. 41, American Museum of Natural History.)
Zeisberger, David. David Zeisberger’s History of the Northern American Indians. Edited by Archer Butler Hulbert and William Nathaniel Schwarze. (Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, vol. XIX, Nos. 1 and 2, Columbus, 1910.)
Creeks
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.