“The Removal of the Creek Indians from Alabama and Georgia, 1827-1849”

While most people are familiar with the Cherokee "Trail of Tears," fewer know that approximately twenty-three thousand Creek Indians were also forced from Alabama and Georgia to Indian territory, west of the Mississippi River between 1827 and 1849. This talk will explain how federal officials relocated the Creek people (including removing those who fled to the Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Seminole Nations) and discuss the Creeks' experiences as they traveled over dusty roads and along frozen rivers to present-day Oklahoma.

Christopher D. Haveman is associate professor of history at the University of West Alabama and the author of Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South and Bending Their Way Onward: Creek Indian Removal in Documents. Haveman earned his Ph.D. from Auburn University in 2009. He grew up in Bellingham, Washington, and graduated from Western Washington University before receiving an MA from Marquette University.

The lecture is a part of the Draughon Seminars in State and Local History sponsored by the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University. The series is funded by the Kelly Mosley Endowment in honor of Dr. Ralph B. Draughon, president of Auburn University from 1947 to 1965. Draughon was a historian with a deep commitment to both state history and public education.

For more information about Draughon Seminars and the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities, please visit auburn.edu/cah.