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by Hodalee C. S. Sewell (Author)
"Their primitive and equal government had lost its form, and had become an oligarchy, governed chiefly by a few white men, called half-breeds, because there was a tinc-ture of Indian blood in their veins." This observation of the Lower Creeks by Thomas Simpson Woodward excerpted from Woodward's Reminiscences could be said to be an accurate description of what was happening among the Low-er Creeks as they hurtled towards the Indian Removal of the 1830's and beyond, as families of mixed blood had become empowered after generations of intermarriage and for many the adoption of non-Mvskoke values and life ways, often to the detriment of the Creek people. My own ancestral families of Islands and Doyle played a part in the arising of the that "oligarchy" that in some cases cast aside tradi-tional Mvskoke values in exchange for personal profit. Their identities were racially complicated, their politics often ethically so. There is an event from the spring of 1829 that is the "anchor event" of this work, a moment in time from which the days before it and the times after-ward can be measured. It is the wedding of three Creek girls to three white soldiers on March 3, 1829. On that day Alexander Hill, George R. W. Hill, and James Hill, soldiers from Darlington District in South Carolina and stationed at Fort Mitchell, Creek Nation were married by their relative and a missionary to the Creeks, the "Reverend Mr. Hill". They were wed to Sarah Doyle, Nancy Doyle, and Amanda Doyle, Indian girls described as "belles of the Creek Nation" who were attending the As-bury Missionary Institute.
