Participation by the Local Creek

¶ … participation by the local Creek Indians in the Indian slave trade.

The Creek Indians exploited their own race by selling war captives and their families into slavery and they even began attacking neighboring tribes specifically to capture and sell slaves. This is interesting because many people typically think of slavery as a racial issue in which the slave owner justifies the practice by invoking the notion that there is one race that is vastly superior to another. Certainly, this is the case we are most familiar with in the history of America and its black slave trade. However, the collusion of the local Creek Indians with the white settlers of the Carolina economy show the slavery issue to be more about exploitation of the weak for economic gain than racism.

The Creek Indians had a fear of becoming slaves themselves showing that they were well aware of what a horrible life that could be. but, that fate, as far as the Creek Indians were concerned, was good enough for those tribes who were unlucky enough to be weaker than the Creek Indians. and, the Creek Indians were even willing to collude with the white settlers even though the Creek Indians knew that the settlers could easily add the Creeks to their growing list of slavery victims.