Editing Muscogee (section)

===British, French, and Spanish expansion===
{{Further|Yamasee War}}
[[File:OcmulgeeRaid.JPG|thumb|left|A raiding party against Spanish missions in Florida passes the Ocmulgee [[trading post]]]]

Britain, France, and Spain all established colonies in the present-day Southeastern woodlands. Spain established [[Jesuit missions in North America|Jesuit missions]] and related settlements to influence Native Americans. The British and the French opted for trade over conversion. In the 17th century, [[Franciscan]] friars in [[Spanish Florida]] built [[Spanish missions in Florida|missions]] along [[Apalachee Bay]]. In 1670, English colonists from [[Barbados]] founded [[Charleston, South Carolina|Charles Town]] (modern-day Charleston), the capital of the new [[Province of Carolina|colony of Carolina]]. Traders from Carolina went to Muscogee settlements to exchange [[firearm]]s, gunpowder, axes, glass beads, cloth and West Indian rum for [[white-tailed deer]] pelts (as part of the [[deerskin trade]]) and [[Indian slave trade in the American Southeast|Indian slaves]]. The Spanish and their "mission Indians" burned most of the towns along the Chattahoochee after they welcomed Scottish explorer [[Henry Woodward (colonist)|Henry Woodward]] in 1685. In 1690, English colonists built a trading post on the [[Ocmulgee River]], known as Ochese-hatchee (creek), where a dozen towns relocated to escape the Spanish and acquire English goods. The name "Creek" most likely derived from a shortening of Ocheese Creek (the [[Hitchiti]] name for the body of water known today as the [[Ocmulgee River]]), and broadly applies to all of the Muscogee Confederacy, including the [[Yuchi]] and [[Natchez people|Natchez]].<ref>Walker 390</ref><ref>Incomplete source</ref>

In 1704, Irish colonial administrator [[James Moore Sr.|James Moore]] led the Carolina militia and Ochese Creek and Yamasee warriors on a [[Apalachee massacre|series of raids]] against [[Spanish missions in Florida|Spanish missions in the Florida interior]] during [[Queen Anne's War]]. These raids captured thousands of Spanish-allied Indians, primarily [[Apalachee]], who were sold into slavery in Carolina and the West Indies. A decade later, tensions between colonists and Indians in the American Southwest led to the [[Yamassee War]] of 1715–17.<ref name="RowlandMoore1996">{{cite book|last1=Rowland|first1=Lawrence Sanders|last2=Moore|first2=Alexander|last3=Rogers|first3=George C.|title=The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: 1514–1861|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WjdhnfG0tYcC&pg=PA88|access-date=8 October 2011|year=1996|publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press|isbn=978-1-57003-090-1|pages=88–89}}</ref>

[[Image:ChiefTomochichiAndNephew.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Yamacraw]] leader [[Tomochichi]] and nephew in 1733]]

The Ochese Creeks joined the Yamasee, burning trading posts, and raiding back-country settlers, but the revolt ran low on gunpowder and was put down by Carolinian militia and their [[Cherokee]] allies. The Yamasee took refuge in [[Spanish Florida]], the Ochese Creeks fled west to the [[Chattahoochee River|Chattahoochee]]. [[French Canadian]] explorers founded [[Mobile, Alabama|Mobile]] as the first capital of [[Louisiana (New France)|Louisiana]] in 1702, and took advantage of the war to build [[Fort Toulouse]] at the confluence of the [[Tallapoosa River|Tallapoosa]] and [[Coosa River|Coosa]] in 1717, trading with the [[Alabama (people)|Alabama]] and [[Coushatta]]. Fearing they would come under French influence, the British reopened the deerskin trade with the Lower Creeks, antagonizing the Yamasee, now allies of Spain. The French instigated the Upper Creeks to raid the Lower Creeks. In May 1718, the shrewd [[Emperor Brim]], ''mico'' of the powerful [[Coweta (tribal town)|Coweta]] band, invited representatives of Britain, France, and Spain to his village and, in council with Upper and Lower Creek leaders, declared a policy of Muscogee neutrality in their colonial rivalry. That year, the Spaniards built the presidio of [[San Marcos de Apalache]] on [[Apalachee Bay]]. In 1721, the British built [[Fort King George]] at the mouth of the [[Altamaha River]]. As the three European colonial powers established themselves along the borders of Muscogee lands, the latter's strategy of neutrality allowed them to hold the balance of power.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Purcell |first1=Kim |title=Fort King George |url=https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/fort-king-george/ |website=New Georgia Encyclopedia |publisher=Georgia Center for the Book |access-date=18 February 2025 |language=English |date=5 September 2018 |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Image:Tomo-chi-chi and other Yamacraws Native Americans.jpg|thumb|left|Yamacraw [[Creek (people)|Creek]] Native Americans meet with the trustee of the colony of Georgia in England, July 1734. Notice the Native American boy (in a blue coat) and woman (in a red dress) in European clothing.]]
The colony of [[History of Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] was created in 1732; its first settlement, [[Savannah, Georgia|Savannah]], was founded the following year, on a river bluff where the [[Yamacraw]], a Yamasee band that remained allies of Britain, allowed John Musgrove to establish a fur-trading post. His wife [[Mary Musgrove]] was the daughter of an English trader and a Muscogee woman from the powerful Wind Clan, half-sister of 'Emperor' Brim. She was the principal interpreter for Georgia's founder and first Governor Gen. [[James Oglethorpe]], using her connections to foster peace between the Creek Indians and the new colony.<ref>"[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3543&hl=y Mary Musgrove] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130614175158/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3543&hl=y |date=June 14, 2013 }}", [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/ Georgia Encyclopedia Online] (accessed May 12, 2010).</ref> In 1735, Georgia constructed [[Fort Okfuskee]] near Oakfuskee to compete with French trade with the Creeks at Fort Toulouse.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wood |first1=Brian M. |editor1-last=Waselkov |editor1-first=Gregory A. |title=Fort Toulouse Studies |date=1984 |publisher=Auburn University at Montgomery |location=Montgomery, Alabama |chapter=Fort Okfuskee: A British Challenge to Fort Toulouse aux Alibamons |page=41}}</ref> The deerskin trade grew, and by the 1750s, [[Savannah, Georgia|Savannah]] exported up to 50,000 deerskins a year.<ref>"[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-579 Creek Indians] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130723170652/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-579 |date=July 23, 2013 }}", ''[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/ New Georgia Encyclopedia]'' (accessed May 12, 2010).</ref>

In 1736, Spanish and British officials established a neutral zone from the [[Altamaha River|Altamaha]] to the [[St. Johns River]] in present-day Florida, guaranteeing Native hunting grounds for the deerskin trade and protecting [[Spanish Florida]] from further British encroachment.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Kokomoor|first1=Kevin|title='Burning & Destroying All Before Them': Creeks and Seminoles on Georgia's Revolutionary Frontier|journal=Georgia Historical Quarterly|year=2014|volume=98|issue=4|page=300|url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=110131795&site=eds-live&scope=site|access-date=February 14, 2018}}</ref> Ca. 1750 a group of [[Hitchiti|Ochese]] moved to the neutral zone, after clashing with the [[Creek language|Muskogee]]-speaking towns of the [[Chattahoochee River|Chattahoochee]], where they had fled after the [[Yamasee War]].

Led by Chief Secoffee ([[Cowkeeper]]), they became the center of a new tribal confederacy, the [[Seminole]], which grew to include earlier refugees from the [[Yamasee War]], remnants of the 'mission Indians,' and escaped African slaves.<ref>Forbs, Gerald, "[http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v015/v015p102.html#fn30 The Origin of the Seminole Indians] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080509185956/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v015/v015p102.html#fn30 |date=May 9, 2008 }}", p. 108, ''Chronicles of Oklahoma'', Vol. 15, No. 1, March 1937.</ref> Their name comes from the Spanish word ''cimarrones'', which originally referred to a domestic animal that had reverted to the wild. ''Cimarrones'' was used by the Spanish and Portuguese to refer to fugitive slaves—"[[maroon (people)|maroon]]" emerges linguistically from this root as well—and American Indians who fled the Europeans. In the [[Hitchiti]] language, which lacked an 'r' sound, it became ''simanoli'', and eventually Seminole.