The Creek Census of Eighteen Thirty-Two

You are near Fort Mitchell, on land that was the heart of the Creek Nation. By a treaty signed in March of eighteen thirty-two, the Creek people gave up all their land east of the Mississippi River to the United States. In return, heads of families were promised individual tracts, ideally including the homes and fields they had already improved.

To sort out who got what, two federal agents compiled a census of Creek heads of families, listing their names, town by town, with the size of each household. Those numbered entries became the paper trail used to dispossess them. Fort Mitchell later served as a gathering point for Creeks forced westward on their own trail of tears. The census remains one of the last written records of a nation about to be uprooted.