2018 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
2019 Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award from the Western History Association

Between 1827 and 1837 approximately twenty-three thousand Creek Indians were transported across the Mississippi River, exiting their homeland under extreme duress and complex pressures. During the physically and emotionally exhausting journey, hundreds of Creeks died, dozens were born, and almost no one escaped without emotional scars caused by leaving the land of their ancestors.

Bending Their Way Onward is an extensive collection of letters and journals describing the travels of the Creeks as they moved from Alabama to present-day Oklahoma. This volume includes documents related to the "voluntary" emigrations that took place beginning in 1827 as well as the official conductor journals and other materials documenting the forced removals of 1836 and the coerced relocations of 1836 and 1837.

This volume also provides a comprehensive list of muster rolls from the voluntary emigrations that show the names of Creek families and the number of slaves who moved west. The rolls include many prominent Indian countrymen (such as white men married to Creek women) and Creeks of mixed parentage. Additional biographical data for these Creek families is included whenever possible. Bending Their Way Onward is the most exhaustive collection to date of previously unpublished documents related to this pivotal historical event.

Author: Christopher D. Haveman
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 02/01/2018
Pages: 864
Weight: 3.11lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 2.06d
ISBN: 9780803296985


Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2018

About the Author
​Christopher D. Haveman is an assistant professor of history at the University of West Alabama. He is the author of Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South (Nebraska, 2016).