When Mary R. Haas died in 1996, she left behind several thousand pages of notes and texts in the Creek (Muskogee) language collected in Oklahoma from 1936 to 1940. The majority of the texts come from the unpublished writings of James H. Hill of Eufaula, an especially knowledgeable elder who composed texts for Dr. Haas using the standard Creek alphabet. Twelve other speakers served as sources for dictated texts.
When Mary R. Haas died in 1996, she left behind several thousand pages of notes and texts in the Creek (Muskogee) language collected in Oklahoma from 1936 to 1940. The majority of the texts come from the unpublished writings of James H. Hill of Eufaula, an especially knowledgeable elder who composed texts for Dr. Haas using the standard Creek alphabet. Twelve other speakers served as sources for dictated texts.
Beginning Creek provides a basic introduction to the language and culture of the Mvskoke-speaking peoples, Muskogee (Creek) and Seminole Indians. Written by linguistic anthropologist Pamela Innes and native speakers Linda Alexander and Bertha Tilkens, the text is accessible to general readers and students and is accompanied by two compact discs. The volume begins with an introduction to Creek history and language, and then each chapter introduces readers to a new grammatical feature, vocabulary set, and series of conversational sentences. Translation exercises from English to Mvskoke and Mvskoke to English reinforce new words and concepts. The chapters conclude with brief essays by Linda Alexander and Bertha Tilkens on Creek culture and history and suggestions for further reading. The two audio CDs present examples of ceremonial speech, songs, and storytelling and include pronunciations of Mvskoke language keyed to exercises and vocabulary lists in the book. The combination of recorded and written material gives students a chance to learn and practice Mvskoke as an oral and written language. Although Mvskoke speakers include the Muskogee (Creek) and Seminole Nations of Oklahoma, the Poarche Band of Creek Indians in Alabama, and some Florida Seminoles, the number of native speakers of Mvskoke has declined. Because the authors believe that language and culture are inextricably linked, they have combined their years of experience speaking and teaching Mvskoke to design an introductory textbook to help Creek speakers preserve their traditional language and way of life.
The result of more than ten years of research, A Dictionary of Creek/Muskogee draws on the expertise of a linguist and a native Creek speaker to yield the first modern dictionary of the Creek language of the southeastern United States. The dictionaryøcontains over seven thousand Creek-English entries, over four thousand English-Creek entries, and over four hundred Creek place names in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Oklahoma. The volume also includes illustrations, a map, antonyms, dialects, stylistic information, word histories, and other useful reference material. Entries are given in both the traditional Creek spelling and a modern phonemic transcription. A Dictionary of Creek/Muskogee is the standard reference work for the Creek language.
Totkv Mocvse/New Fire presents the work of Earnest Gouge, an important early Creek (Muskogee) author, and makes available for the first time-in Creel and English—the myths and legends of a major American Indian tribe. In 1915, Earnest Gouge was encouraged by ethnographer John Reed Swanton to record Creek legends and myths. Gouge's manuscript lay in the National Anthropological Archives for eighty-five years until two Creek-speaking sisters, Margaret McKane Mauldin and Juanita McGirt, and linguist Jack B. Martin, began translating and editing the document. In Totkv Mocvse/New Fire, Gouge's stories appear in parallel format, with the Creek text alongside the English translation. The stories cover many themes, from the humorous allegories of Rabbit, Wolf, and other personified animals, to hunting stories designed to frighten a nighttime audience in the woods. An insightful foreword by Craig Womack and Jack Martin's introduction frame the stories within Creek literature and history. Martin and Mauldin also provide brief introductions to each story, highlighting key elements of Creek culture.
Josh Henneha has always been a traveler, drowning in dreams, burning with desires. As a young boy growing up within the Muskogee Creek Nation in rural Oklahoma, Josh experiences a yearning for something he cannot tame. Quiet and skinny and shy, he feels out of place, at once inflamed and ashamed by his attraction to other boys. Driven by a need to understand himself and his history, Josh struggles to reconcile the conflicting voices he hearsÑfrom the messages of sin and scorn of the non-Indian Christian churches his parents attend in order to assimilate, to the powerful stories of his older Creek relatives, which have been the center of his upbringing, memory, and ongoing experience. In his fevered and passionate dreams, Josh catches a glimpse of something that makes the Muskogee Creek world come alive. Lifted by his great-aunt LucilleÕs tales of her own wild girlhood, Josh learns to fly back through time, to relive his peopleÕs history, and uncover a hidden legacy of triumphs and betrayals, ceremonies and secrets he can forge into a new sense of himself. When as a man, Josh rediscovers the boyhood friend who first stirred his desires, he realizes a transcendent love that helps take him even deeper into the Creek world he has explored all along in his imagination. Interweaving past and present, history and story, explicit realism and dreamlike visions, Craig WomackÕs Drowning in Fire explores a young manÕs journey to understand his cultural and sexual identity within a framework drawn from the community of his origins. A groundbreaking and provocative coming-of-age story, Drowning in Fire is a vividly realized novel by an impressive literary talent.
A Listening Wind, a collection of translated original texts and commentary edited by Marcia Haag, highlights the large array of Indigenous linguistic and cultural groups of the U.S. Southeast. A whole range of genres and selected texts represent language groups of the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Yuchi, Cherokee, Koasati, Houma, Catawba, and Atakapa. The traditional and modern Native literature genres showcased in A Listening Wind include stories that speakers perceive to be in the past (or “fixed”), genres that have developed alongside these stories, and modern story types that have sometimes supplanted traditional tales and are now enjoying trajectories of their own. These texts have been selected to demonstrate particular literary themes and the cultural perspectives that inform them. Introductory essays illuminate how they fit into Native American religious and philosophical systems. Overall this collection discloses the sometimes hidden connections among genres as well as their importance to language groups of the Southeast.
Though he died at the age of thirty-four, the Muscogee (Creek) poet, journalist, and humorist Alexander Posey (1873-1908) was one of the most prolific and influential American Indian writers of his time. This volume of nine stories, five orations, and nine works of oral tradition is the first to collect these entertaining and important works of Muscogee literature. Many of Posey's stories reflect trickster themes; his orations demonstrate both his rhetorical prowess and his political stance as a "Progressive" Muscogee; and his works of oral tradition reveal his deep cultural roots. Most of these pieces, which first appeared between 1892 and 1907 in Indian Territory newspapers and magazines, have since become rarities, many of the original pieces surviving only as single clippings in a few archives.
