One   The Creek Refugees Nine-year-old Billy Powell, the boy who would grow up to become the warrior Osceola, watched as his whole world went up in flames. Billy was in the company of his mother and dozens of other members of the Creek tribe-mostly women, children, and old men-who crouched in the dense underbrush where they had fled from their homes. One by one they cautiously raised their heads to view great plumes of charcoal smoke furiously billowing upward into the distant sky. This fear-inspiring sight indicated that countless fires were raging in the direction of their homes. It was apparent that every residence and building in the town of Tallassee along the Tallapoosa River in the region of present-day Macon County, Alabama, had been set on fire and was burning out of control. Soon nothing would remain but ashes and debris. These displaced people had been on the move for two days, abandoning their town when word was received that the soldiers were on their way. They had been hiding in various places within the thick underbrush between the Tallapoosa and Coosa rivers, waiting for the time when they could return to their homes.

They had survived thus far by scavenging whatever they could find in fields or abandoned villages that still stood, or resorting to stealing when the opportunity arose. It was likely that Billy Powell and the other boys helped provide meat by hunting squirrel, rabbit, or other small game with their bows and arrows. These desperate Creeks, however, now were struck with the gravity of their situation-it could be assumed that all their homes and the town community buildings had been consumed by the fire and they were homeless and in the hands of fate. There were no tears or wailing or shouts of anger and revenge. It was imperative that they remain quiet, secreted, and focused. The U.S. Army invaders who had perpetrated this tragedy upon them would be combing the area to search for the missing inhabitants of this town.

The purpose of those soldiers raiding any Creek town was not only to destroy homes and possessions but also to take lives, and this enemy had proved itself extraordinarily brutal and heartless. Even young Billy Powell understood that if any of the Tallassee Creeks were found, they surely would be killed. The faces of the Creek refugees were grave. No one dared speak the words, but each stunned member of this band was aware that they would be compelled to flee without delay from their homeland-perhaps permanently. They had no home to go back to now that their town had vanished into smoldering ruins, and the soldiers would make certain that Tallassee and any other Upper Creek town they destroyed would never be rebuilt or reoccupied. Billy Powell and his Creek neighbors must try to forget about the loss of their town and possessions and focus all their efforts on escaping from this dangerous place. Such a desperate assessment was not easy to make, nor would flight to a new place be a simple undertaking. The town of Tallassee had been their traditional home for generations.

Where could they go, under duress and on a moment's notice, without any possessions other than those they carried on their backs? This question was not spoken aloud but was foremost on everyone's minds. These Creek people were not by any means prepared for an extended journey. The country beyond was rife with danger from extreme elements, from vicious wild animals, from their enemies, from an unforgiving tangled and soggy terrain of swamps and forests, and most of all from the unknown. Billy Powell watched the final visible vestiges of smoke rise against the blackening sky. It was difficult for him to imagine that everything he knew in life had been destroyed. His mind might have drifted back to relive the memories of his well-ordered childhood in that pastoral place along the Tallapoosa River. He likely could not fathom the fact that he would never again lay eyes on that town and its environs that had become so familiar to him and offered him a sense of security. Billy's people had lived in that place for as long as anyone could remember.

The written history of the Creeks had its foundations in narratives of de Soto's expedition in 1540, but they were much older than that. The Creeks were descendants of the Mississippian culture, the first great civilization in North America, which arose some four thousand years before the Spanish arrived. These prehistoric Muskogees or Muscokees and affiliated tribes were known to build earthwork mounds at regional chiefdoms that spread across two-thirds of the United States. By the time of de Soto's landing on the islands of coastal Georgia, however, the Muskogean people, who would become known as Creeks, no longer built mounds and had established a confederacy that occupied the greater portion of Alabama and Georgia. This Creek Confederacy had grown to great numbers and was powerful enough to fight off any invasion or threat to their territory from the strong northern tribes-the Catawba, Cherokee, Iroquois, and Shawnee, to name a few. They spoke a typical Muskogean language that was closely related to the Choctaw language, with many words identical in pronunciation. This rather common language was quickly learned by early white frontiersmen with whom the tribe traded. During the American Revolution, the Creek Nation made an effort to maintain its neutrality, although the tribe had earlier allied with the English.

In 1786, the Creek Nation declared war on the state of Georgia, and several attempts at negotiating a treaty had failed. At the time of Billy Powell's birth in the early 1800s, there was no peace between the Creeks and the white people to the north. Incidences of violence between the two enemies were relatively minor, but tensions remained high and those border whites closest to the Creek Nation were in constant fear of an attack. This was the state of the world into which Billy would be born and reared.1 The birth and lineage of Billy Powell has been a source of question and controversy over the years. Most historians agree that he was born in or near the town of Tallassee, Alabama-northeast of modern-day Montgomery-in the year 1804. The identities of both his parents and his ancestors, however, are a less settled matter.2 The most credible and widely accepted account of Billy's ancestry relies mainly on the reminiscences of Thomas S.

Woodward, a contemporary white soldier and distinguished Creek historian. Woodward claimed that Billy's lineage could be traced back to James McQueen, a Scottish sailor who had jumped ship in Charleston in the late 1690s and in 1716 became the first white man to trade with the Creeks. McQueen remained with the Creeks as a trader from that day forth until, according to Woodward, he died at the remarkable age of 128 in the year 1811. James McQueen, who was known among the Creek people as the Soft-Shelled Turtle, fathered many children during his lifetime. At some point, McQueen married a young Creek woman from Tallassee, who bore him a son, Peter McQueen, and a daughter named Ann. James McQueen's daughter Ann grew up to marry a white man or a man of mixed race named Jose Copinger. Ann Copinger then gave birth to a daughter named Polly, who married a white trader named William Powell. Billy Powell was said to have been born from this union between Polly and William Powell, thereby making him of mixed blood, with Scottish and Creek, or Muskogee, being the most prevalent that flowed through his veins.

3 There are those interested parties and historians who dispute this accepted theory that Billy was of mixed blood-including Billy himself. He was quoted by George Catlin, who painted his portrait in 1838, shortly before his death, as saying, "No foreign blood runs in my veins; I am pure-blood Muskogee."4 This adamant denial has created a major contradiction, because this youngster who grew up to become Osceola has been called "Billy Powell" in countless references. There has been speculation ranging from the idea that Billy Powell was merely a nickname or that William Powell was not his real father but his stepfather to the idea that he could not have had white blood because the man Osceola did not speak English. Lieutenant L. L. Cohen, a contemporary and historian, wrote in 1836 that he believed that Billy's father was a full-blooded Creek who died after Billy was born-Polly then married the trader William Powell. No evidence exists to confirm any of these theories.

5 Cohen, however, must have known that the Creek family structure was matrilineal, with each person belonging to his or her mother's clan and with descent and inheritance evolving from that side. Young Billy, and later the man Osceola, would have accepted the fact that his mother was full-blooded Creek because her mother had been full-blooded Creek, which, to his way of thinking, would have made him a full-blooded Creek-regardless of whether or not William Powell had been his biological father. Dr. John K. Mahon, a respected historian of Southeastern Native American traditions, wrote that "among both the Creeks and the Seminoles a man was a member of his mother's clan, and home to him was where the mother of his clan lived."6 William Powell disappeared from Billy's life by about 1808, as best as can be determined, although he might have remained as late as 1814. In keeping with Creek tradition, however, William Powell would have had little or no influence through the years on his son. His mother and her male relatives-in this case his well-known warrior grand-uncle, Peter McQueen-would have been responsible for rearing the boy.

Billy's.