Native American Heritage Month – Meet the Poarch Creek Indians

In South Alabama, roughly 210 miles from Birmingham, there rests a 300-acre community unlike any other in the state. The area, located right outside Atmore, belongs to the Poarch Band of Creek Indians — descendants of the original Creek Nation that covered most of Alabama and Georgia in the early days of America’s history. Poarch, Alabama, also known as the Poarch Creek Indian Reservation, has been the tribe’s home for hundreds of years.

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, the Hibbett | City Gear team visited the reservation to learn more about the Poarch Creek tribe through interviews with several community members. We were humbled by the welcoming nature and willingness to educate our team about Native American culture and their heritage, and we are honored to share some of their stories as an expression of our appreciation and gratitude for the significant contributions made by the Native American community as a whole.

We first spoke with Chris Rutherford, a veteran officer with the tribal police department. Though he was born in the area, Chris spent his youth in different parts of the world as the child of a military parent. Yet, he has always considered Poarch, Alabama home, and after serving in the US Military himself for more than two decades, Chris returned to Poarch 27 years ago to plant his roots in the tribal land’s soils at last.

His Native American lineage comes from his mother’s side. She, her grandparents, their parents before them, and ancestors as far back as the 1800s were all raised on what is now the reservation and in the adjacent areas. This connection to Poarch Creek tribal lands and the community gave Chris a sense of grounding and belonging throughout his nomadic upbringing.

Like Chris, his ancestors traveled far and wide before coming to live permanently in South Alabama. The story of how the original Creek Indians came to settle this area was a narrative he shared with us proudly.

The Poarch Band of Creek Indians have lived together for nearly 150 years, another community member we interviewed told us. Cassidy Murphy is the 2019-2021 Poarch Creek Indian Senior Princess, an honor awarded to tribal women who win the PCI’s annual Tribal Princess contest. The cultural arts contest, a tradition in and of itself, consists of a series of skills competitions that includes traditional basket weaving, traditional hymn singing, traditional dress, and more.

Another component of the contest: A well-rounded knowledge of tribal history. In addition to learning the Creek language, dances, and arts, Cassidy studied the origin of the Poarch Creek Indians.

Many years ago, the original Creeks were a unified tribe within the Muskogee Nation, but in the early 1800s tension among European settlers and several members of the tribal community reached its peak. In 1813, a faction of the Creek tribe retaliated against attacks by settlers, eventually prompting a Creek Civil War and the division of the tribe into the “Red Sticks” and the “White Sticks.”

Following the “Red Stick War,” as it was called, the Creek Nation lost much of their ancestral lands along the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers near Montgomery and the Alabama River. Still, a group of Creeks who served as innkeepers and local business owners were permitted to stay in the area until the growing population and decreasing availability of land in nearby Tenasaw caused several Creek families to move inland into the Poarch area.

As time passed, this grouping of families formed their own distinct tribe – The Poarch Creek Indians.

Today, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians hold another distinction that makes the community unique. They are the only federally recognized Native American tribe in Alabama.

Despite the tribe’s federal recognition, the community still battled inequality for many decades. Tribal members faced poverty, lack of amenities, and limited access to education. Justin Stabler, a 29-year-old community member born and raised on the reservation, is a testament to the Poarch Creek Indians’ perseverance and grit through the years.

As a child, he remembers stories told by his parents and grandparents about how little the tribe had in their youths. These stories fueled his passion for pursuing higher education so that he could return to the community and give back to the people who gave him so much growing up. Today Justin works for PCI Aviation, just one of several Tribal-owned companies that contribute financial resources, job opportunities, and economic stimulation to the surrounding area.

His generation still remembers the tribe’s growth and transformation from living in abject poverty to the many blessings and amenities afforded to the Poarch Creek Indians today, witnessing in his lifetime the construction and development of community centers, a museum, gaming facilities, accommodations, and more.

Justin now has two children of his own that he is raising as part of the tribe as he was. His upbringing taught Justin to never forget where his people came from, and it’s that history, his ancestors’ traditions, and their stories of triumph and resilience that he is passing down to the next generation of Poarch Creek Indians.

Maggie Gordon and Yanasa Alvarez are part of this next generation. Like Justin, their parents are raising them to uphold tribal teachings and traditions, like Native dance, language, foods, and music.

During our interview nine-year-old Yanasa, whose name means Buffalo Born in Spring, demonstrated a few steps of native stomp dancing. Dressed in a traditional stomp dress, Yanasa performed these steps in a pair of soccer cleats, an interesting visual intersection of her Native and American heritages. In place of her soccer cleats, she explained that shells or cans adorn the dancers’ feet.

Yanasa, along with Maggie, also practices a second form of tribal dance. The Jingle Dress dance, named for the metal cones that ornament the artform’s traditional regalia, is a medicine dance that represents and is said to bring healing.

Participation in these cultural arts provides opportunities for the youngest Poarch Creek Indian tribal members to learn not secondhand the traditions of their people, but to take part in them themselves. The Jingle Dress dance, for example, is performed annually at the PCI Pow Wow, which takes place each year on Thanksgiving Day and the day after.

This gathering brings together hundreds of spectators and participants from other tribes and non-Native American visitors from across the country for a time of celebration and community.

The largest and most iconic event hosted by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, the Pow Wow personifies the Poarch Creek Indians’ legacy – past, present, and future.

On behalf of the Hibbett | City Gear team, we extend special thanks to the Poarch Creek Indian tribe and to the community members not featured directly in this article but whose interviews and personal experiences helped inform our understanding of the Native American culture, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians and their community.

If you would like to learn more about the Poarch Creek Indians, please visit their website at https://pci-nsn.gov/.