Okfuskee: A Creek Indian Town in Colonial America.

Okfuskee: A Creek Indian Town in Colonial America. By Joshua Piker. (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, c. 2004. Pp. xiv, 270. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-674-02253-9; cloth, $47.50, ISBN 978-0-674-01335-3.)

Joshua Piker's stated purpose is to map the features of one particular Creek town, Okfuskee, and, in the process, to show that Native American and European American towns and the people who inhabited them "are broadly comparable," without ignoring their differences (p. 4). The comparison of Creeks with colonists is the thread he uses to unite the book's two sections.

Part 1 focuses on the relationship that the Okfuskees and the colonists created over a period of roughly sixty-six years. The narrative begins in 1708 when Thomas Nairne witnessed the "Coronation" ceremony of Cossitee, a "Great Captain" (pp. 16, 17). Sacred fire was central to this ceremony and to the relationship forged between the Okfuskees and the British. When the town of Okfuskee established diplomatic ties with Charleston, the two communities became fictive kin who "were of the Same Fire" (quoted on p. 69). But by 1773 the Okfuskees admitted the shared fire had gone out.

Piker deserves the praises he has received for having illuminated the important diplomatic role certain towns like Okfuskee had in initiating and maintaining relationships with the British and their allies. The focus on Okfuskee/Creek and British political and economic relations, however, obfuscates indigenous diplomatic relations. Piker has elsewhere suggested that intertribal diplomatic structures existed prior to European contact and were utilized by natives and newcomers alike to form diplomatic relationships. That larger context, even if not well understood, is critical for gaining further insight into Okfuskee and Creek political actions.

Another difficulty is that in focusing on a particular Creek town, Piker downplays the clan system that united Upper Creek towns and Upper Creeks with Lower Creeks. While Piker acknowledges the importance of Creek clans, he dismisses the need to factor them into the political equation. If clans are known to be of such importance and yet do not appear to be so in the colonial records, the discontinuity may be more a reflection of ignorance than practical irrelevance. A better understanding of the clan system not only would facilitate our understanding of the larger picture but also would further illuminate particular events such as the punishment of colonial traders (probably because they had been adopted into a clan) and nuances of the matrilineal clan structure--wouldn't orphaned children automatically inherit their mother's clan?

In part 2 Piker describes how Creek economies in general and the Okfuskees in particular were increasingly stressed during these six decades and how they adapted to external pressures. His explanation of the devolution of Okfuskee social life, especially in the areas of gendered and generational relationships, in the face of changing economic and environmental conditions, is a valuable summation of previous work.

Piker's attempt to uncover similarities between Okfuskee and colonial towns and their respective inhabitants appears to be more veneer than substance. Framing these brief analogies may be like summarily comparing the social structure of a beehive with a hornet's nest. While both bees and hornets fly and sting, the social characteristics are different enough to warrant making careful distinctions. Finding commonalities between the dispossessor and the dispossessed is a very delicate business. Just how comforted the Okfuskees might have been in knowing "that their Euro-American contemporaries faced comparable problems" is a question one might pose to their descendants (p. 131). However, Piker is to be commended for his careful research and innovative approach in focusing on one particular southeastern Indian town. Okfuskee: A Creek Town in Colonial America gives the reader significant insights into the Okfuskee/Creek world and creates a foundation upon which other works can build.

CARRIE MCLACHLAN

Western Carolina University