Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees' Struggle for a New World

In the bloodiest battle waged between the U.S. Army and Native Americans, 800 Muskogee (Creek) Indians were killed in 1814 along the Tallapoosa River in what is now Alabama. In this scholarly and ground-breaking study, Martin, an assistant professor of religious studies at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, places the tragedy in a new--and religious--context. He writes that the so-called Redstick Revolt began years before the Battle of Tohopeka (or Horseshoe Bend) as a civil war among the Muskogees. He traces the revolt to the Native Americans' attempt to adjust their spiritual life in a ``new world'' of contact with Anglo-Americans, which arose largely from inter-breeding and such commerce as the deerskin trade. The book underscores yet another bleak case of how the West was won by a greedy and powerful Anglo culture. (June)