Editing Muscogee (section)

===Pre-removal (late 18th–early 19th centuries)===
{{Further|Five Civilized Tribes}}

[[Image:Benjamin Hawkins and the Creek Indians - higher resolution.jpg|thumb|Painting (1805) of Benjamin Hawkins on his plantation, instructing Muscogee Creek in European technology]]

[[George Washington]], the first U.S. president, and [[Henry Knox]], the first U.S. Secretary of War, proposed a cultural transformation of the Native Americans.<ref name=perdue>
{{Cite book
 | last = Perdue
 | first = Theda
 | title = Mixed Blood Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South
 | year = 2003
 | publisher = The University of Georgia Press
 | chapter = Chapter 2 'Both White and Red'
 | page = 51
 | isbn = 0-8203-2731-X
}}
</ref> Washington believed that Native Americans were equals as individuals but that their society was inferior. He formulated a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process, and it was continued under President [[Thomas Jefferson]].<ref name=remini_reform_begins>
{{Cite book
 | last = Remini
 | first = Robert
 | title = Andrew Jackson
 | publisher = History Book Club
 | chapter = The Reform Begins
 | page = 201
 | id = {{Listed Invalid ISBN|0-9650631-0-7}}
 }}</ref> Noted historian Robert Remini wrote, "[T]hey presumed that once the Indians adopted the practice of private property, built homes, farmed, educated their children, and embraced Christianity, these Native Americans would win acceptance from white Americans."<ref name=remini_submit_adoption>
{{Cite book
 | last = Remini
 | first = Robert
 | title = Andrew Jackson
 | publisher = History Book Club
 | chapter = Brothers, Listen ... You Must Submit
 | page = 258
 | id = {{Listed Invalid ISBN|0-9650631-0-7}}
 }}</ref> Washington's six-point plan included impartial justice toward Indians; regulated buying of Indian lands; promotion of commerce; promotion of experiments to civilize or improve Indian society; presidential authority to give presents; and punishing those who violated Indian rights.<ref name=eric_miller>
{{Cite web
 | url = http://www.dreric.org/library/northwest.shtml
 | title = George Washington And Indians
 | access-date = May 2, 2008
 | last = Miller
 | first = Eric
 | year = 1994
 | publisher = Eric Mille
}}

</ref> The Muscogee would be the first Native Americans to be "civilized" under Washington's six-point plan. Communities within the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole tribes followed Muscogee efforts to implement Washington's new policy of civilization.

In 1796, Washington appointed [[Benjamin Hawkins]] as Principal Temporary Agent for Indian Affairs, dealing with all tribes south of the [[Ohio River]]. He personally assumed the role of principal agent to the Muscogee. He moved to the area in Creek country that is now [[Crawford County, Georgia|Crawford County]] in [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]]. He began to teach agricultural practices to the tribe, starting a farm at his home on the Flint River. In time, he brought in [[slaves]] and workers, cleared several hundred acres, and established mills and a trading post as well as his farm. The goal was to transform the Natives into "respectable Americans" in the republic, in a way that didn't involve violence. 

One of the ways Hawkins did this was that he worked to change the gender roles that had been established in Creek society long before, to how the new American republic considered gender roles. For example, convincing the men to take up things like ranching and planting, and giving up things like hunting and being warriors, and for the women to leave behind their roles in farms and instead participate in “household manufactures.” Hawkins also tried to convince the men to take over family property and “assume command over their wives and daughters.”  

There were many different factors that explained how men and women considered the plan of civilization:“Deep-seated tensions, characterized relations between sexes in the 1700s, rather than static balance; etc.” <ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Saunt |first=Claudio |title=A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816 |date=1999 |publisher=Cambridge: Cambridge University Press |year=1999 |isbn=0521660432 |pages=139-165}}</ref>Men and women were separated starting from childhood, including having masculine and feminine versions of the Muscogee language where both genders had different dialects. The men and women would live separated for weeks on end; men hunting and going to war and the women caring for the children, elderly, and making clothes and preparing food. There were many instances where men and women avoided each other in ceremonies due to fear of any type of consequences, like war, childbirth, or menstruation. 

Defeat during war was seen as feminine, which was considered negative. Enemies who lost or ceded land would be degraded by being called “old women,” and how it was seen as a disgrace and humiliating to be referred to as a woman. Later around the 1760s, there were changes to the deerskin trade that affected the relationship between women and men. European markets had an increased need for raw deerskin which meant that the labor of women who would dress the skins was no longer needed, while before that happened both men and women shared labor from the deerskin trade. <ref name=":0" />

There was also a huge issue with drunknesses, in which the state of being drunk was associated with madness and bravery of warriors as well as distancing themselves from “household-oriented and feminine trade in clothing,” because they traded deerskin for sugar-cane liquor. Creek men drank much more than the women did, many young Creek men when drunk thinking they were warriors. The women were against the behavior of how these warriors acted as well as against drinking rum. <ref name=":0" />

Women’s labor and manufacturing grew less needed as deerskin trade increased and the clothing was from foreign traders, their main job later being to finish the clothes with beads and gartering, but women had no say in the actual material or use of it. Even most kettles and bowls grew to be from foreign traders. There were also plantations that were started by traders, these plantations were pushing women who farmed and traded produce out of the market. <ref name=":0" />

Creek women didn’t agree with the “masculine pursuits” that their male family members had done, including instances of hostility towards women, humiliating enemies and others by calling them “old women,” the raping, murder, and mutilation of white women that happened because of how some Creek warriors violently expressed their masculinity, as well as the Creek women thinking of the safety of their own households. The women considered Hawkins “plan of civilization” around 1797 with interest compared to most of the men. The plan didn’t agree with the warrior culture and promised availability of goods like food and clothing. The ranchers and planters also seemed in agreement with Hawkins, while many warriors didn’t agree with his ideas nor liked his plan because they didn’t want to give up hunting or their warrior culture. <ref name=":0" />

The Plan of Civilization wanted them to take up farming, which was seen as women’s work and the Creek warriors resisted that because they saw it as their masculinity being taken away. The alcohol consumption among Creek men had increased because of this shift in their gender roles as many of the warriors resisted being farmers, and the violence against women, mainly domestic, also increased. 

While the women agreed with many of the changes and reforms that started happening from Hawkins’ plan, they refused to submit to the patriarchy, and they used the economic changes to their advantage. <ref name=":0" />

The Creeks had started to gain property of their own, and Hawkins had said that “they had began to know the value of property and the necessity of defending it.” From the lead of Hawkins, the Creeks had formed a national police force to force Muscogees to “respect their neighbors property,” also because there were some Creeks who were protective of their land and violent in the defense of the land. 

There were different changes in the settlement, those who were going by Hawkins’ plan of civilization and those who didn't go along with the plan that was happening under fenced communities in the Deep South. This was causing conflict between the Creek settlements. <ref name=":0" />

For years, Hawkins met with chiefs on his porch to discuss matters. He was responsible for the longest period of peace between the settlers and the tribe, overseeing 19 years of peace. In 1805, the Lower Creeks ceded their lands east of the [[Ocmulgee River|Ocmulgee]] to Georgia, with the exception of the sacred burial mounds of the [[Ocmulgee National Monument|Ocmulgee Old Fields]]. They allowed a [[Federal Road (Creek lands)|Federal Road]] linking [[New Orleans]] to Washington, D.C. to be built through their territory. A number of Muscogee chiefs acquired slaves and created cotton plantations, grist mills and businesses along the Federal Road. In 1806, [[Fort Benjamin Hawkins]] was built on a hill overlooking the [[Ocmulgee National Monument|Ocmulgee Old Fields]], to protect expanding settlements and serve as a reminder of U.S. rule.

Hawkins was disheartened and shocked by the outbreak of the [[Creek War]], which destroyed his life work of improving the Muscogee quality of life. Hawkins saw much of his work toward building a peace destroyed in 1812. A faction of Muscogee joined the Pan-American Indian movement of [[Tenskwatawa]] and [[Tecumseh]], rejecting accommodation with white settlers and adaptation of European-American culture. Although Hawkins personally was never attacked, he was forced to watch an internal civil war among the Muscogee develop into a war with the United States.