December 14: Among the Creek Indians

Alabama became the 22nd state of the United States on this date in 1819. Among its earliest settlers was Abraham Mordecai, a veteran of the American Revolution who came to the region in the 1780s and served as a go-between for the Creek Indians and Europeans. Mordecai believed and attempted to prove that Native Americans were descendants of one of the fabled Lost Tribes of Israel. He was married for fifty years to a Creek woman and became known to the Creeks as “Muccose,” Little Chief. Yet he assisted U.S. cavalry forces in subduing an insurrectionary faction among the Creeks, who were forcibly removed from their lands in 1836. Mordecai’s commercial activities (he ran a cotton gin, among other enterprises) helped to found the city of Montgomery.

“During his final years, Mordecai lived simply in Dudleyville. Many locals stated that he either built his own coffin or had one commissioned several years before his death and ate his meals on it. . . . On July 4, 1933, the Tohopeka Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a granite marker on his grave in honor of his service during the American War of Independence.” —Claire M. Wilson, Encyclopedia of Alabama