Muklasa Tribe

Still another town in this neighborhood not speaking Muskogee was Muklasa. The name means "friends" or "people of one nation" in Alabama, Koasati, or Choctaw, therefore it is probable that the town was Alabama or Koasati, the Choctaw being at a considerable distance. According to the list of 1761 it was then estimated to contain 30 hunters. William Trewin and James Germany were the traders.¹ In 1797 the trader was Michael Elhart, "an industrious, honest man; a Dutchman.''² Bartram visited it in 1777,³ and in 1799 Hawkins gives the following account of it:

Mook-lau-sau is a small town one mile below Sau-va-noo-gee, on the left bank of a fine little creek, and bordering on a cypress swamp; their fields are below those of Sau-va-no-gee, bordering on the river; they have some lots about their houses fenced for potatoes; one chief has some cattle, horses, and hogs; a few others have some cattle and hogs.

In the season of floods the river spreads out on this side below the town, nearly eight miles from bank to bank, and is very destructive to game and stock.⁴

After the Creek war we are informed that the Muklasa emigrated to Florida in a body. At all events we do not hear of them again, and the Creeks in Oklahoma have forgotten that such a town ever existed. Gatschet says ''a town of that name is in the Indian Territory," but nobody could give the present writer any information regarding it.

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Footnotes:

1. Ga. Col. Docs., VIII, p. 523.
2. Hawkins in Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., IX, p. 169.
3. Bartram, Travels, p. 444 et seq.
4. Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., III, p. 35.
5. Gatschet, Creek Mig. Leg., I, p. 138.

Back to: Early History of the Creek Indians

Notes About Book:

Source: Swanton, John R., Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors. Pub. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 73. Washington, 1922.

Notes about Online Publication: This manuscript has been ocr'd and heavily edited. Many of the Native American words have been reproduced as clearly as online publication will allow us, but not all are exactly the way they were in the original work. The structure of this manuscript has been changed to allow better online presentation.

  Back to: Early History of the Creek Indians