Creek Nation Trilogy Part I

This piece reflects the world of the Creek Nation before open conflict—an interconnected society of towns, kinship networks, and ceremonial life across what is now Alabama and Georgia. Long before the Creek War, pressures from U.S. expansion, trade dependence, and cultural division were already straining the Muscogee world. The music evokes a time when balance still existed, but change was unavoidable and moving closer.

title: The Traders and the River
style: bluegrass historical ballad

[intro]
(gentle fingerpicked guitar and fiddle melody, evoking early morning on the river)

[verse]
The traders came from Scotland’s shore,
Through the Carolinas down,
They built their posts by the river’s bend,
Where the red clay met the ground.
They brought the cloth, the flint, the steel,
And took the hides away,
And many found a home and wife,
Where the Tallapoosa lay.

[verse]
The Crown kept close its measured hand,
No trader sold alone,
Each license held the King’s command,
Each debt was stamped in stone.
The Creeks walked proud, their ledgers fair,
Their hunters fed the trade,
And peace flowed like a silver thread,
Through every deal they made.

[verse]
But war in Spain and Europe’s cost,
Left England bled and poor,
The bonds were sold, the gates unlocked,
And greed walked through the door.
Now any man with coin to spend,
Could buy the license right,
And deer grew scarce as fortune’s friend,
And hunger woke at night.

[chorus]
Oh, the river runs both deep and wide,
It carries peace and pain,
The same tide feeds the trader’s hand,
And drowns the fields in rain.
The forest fell, the game ran low,
The hunters lost their way,
And whispers rode the southern wind,
Of darker, colder days.

[verse]
The women ground the empty corn,
The children cried for meat,
The elders spoke of ancient oaks,
Where none had left their seat.
The rivers heard the fevered prayer,
Of nations growing thin,
And through the pines the silence came,
Where voices once had been.

[chorus - reprise]
Oh, the river runs both deep and wide,
It carries peace and pain,
The same tide feeds the trader’s hand,
And drowns the fields in rain.
The forest fell, the game ran low,
The hunters lost their way,
And whispers rode the southern wind,
Of darker, colder days.

[outro]
(fiddle and mandolin fade gently, river sounds rising into silence)