Wednesday, September 21, 2011

CVHS Program for Sunday, October 16, 2011 at 3 p.m. (Eastern)

The Second Creek War: Interethnic Conflict and Collusion on a Collapsing Frontier

Speaker: Dr. John T. Ellisor
Location: Lanier Room, H. Grady Bradshaw Library, Valley, AL

Dr. Ellisor’s presentation on his book The Second Creek War: Interethnic Conflict and Collusion on a Collapsing Frontier, published by University of Nebraska Press in 2010, grew out of a doctoral dissertation. Its importance lies in the fact that it is the first book ever written on the Second Creek War, which had always been dismissed as a minor police action called the “Creek War of 1836.”


Surprising though, this war was very significant. It lasted much longer than previously supposed, and has much to tell us about the nature of New Alabama (eastern Alabama) society during the Indian removal era. That society, composed of blacks, whites and Natives, was highly competitive, and the competition and conflict spread across racial and ethnic lines.


The war was not simply a matter of Indians versus whites. Moreover, in that competitive and often violent environment people often reached across ethnic lines to make allies in the struggle to survive or prosper on the cotton frontier. But most importantly, this book drives home the fact that the Second Creek War, Creek removal and the incorporation of our eastern counties into the state of Alabama, sprang from perhaps the worst land fraud in American history.


Dr. Ellisor, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, is Assistant Professor at Columbus State University. His teaching specialties are Early American history, Native American History and the Southern Frontier.