"The Injin is civilized and aint extinct no more than a rabbit": Transformation and Transnationalism in Alexander Posey's Fus Fixico Letters

Abstract

Opposing narratives of Alexander Posey's death quickly set the ambivalent tone of his legacy. In short, his drowning in his beloved Oktahutche ("Sand Creek"), or North Canadian, river at the age of thirty-five has been seen either as a type of return to a part of the natural world with which he had a close affinity or as a just punishment for his work for the Dawes Commission and his speculation in the sale of Indian land allotments.1 Posey's friends, family, and supporters "romanticized [Posey] as a literary artist snatched from life before he had achieved the greatness he was destined for" (Littlefield, Alex Posey 5). Others believed—and some continue to believe—it was no accident that he drowned in the Oktahutche, the home of Tie-Snake, a member of the Creek underworld associated with chaos and known to lure people to drowning (see Womack, Red on Red, 133). Both interpretations of Posey's life and death have some basis in truth. However, like most absolute and oppositional views, each fails to fully capture the complexity of Posey and his ever-evolving vision for his people's future. Although Posey considered himself a progressive, due to his belief that the Creeks' best means of survival was appropriating aspects of Euroamerican culture for their own ends, his Fus Fixico letters (fictionalized letters to the editor written in Creek-English dialect, published in epistolary installments between 1902 and 1908 in Indian Territory newspapers) illustrate that he was, in fact, highly critical of U.S. Indian policy and sympathetic to the arguments of conservative Creeks who advocated resistance to allotment and maintenance of traditional Creek social and political systems.
The complexity and evolution of Posey's political thought can be discerned through a historicized consideration of an aspect of the Fus Fixico letters that has not yet received sustained scholarly attention: the letters' brief but significant references to the plans of some members of the conservative Creek faction, the Snakes (and other conservative groups in Indian Territory, such as the Cherokee Kee-too-wahs), to emigrate to Mexico, where they hoped to secure lands and live free of the U.S. government's paternalistic policies.2 These groups aimed to escape the forced transition from communal to private land ownership and the dissolution of their tribal governments (as mandated by the 1898 Curtis Act and carried out by the Dawes Commission), as well as the incorporation of Indian Territory (along with Oklahoma Territory) into the state of Oklahoma.3 Initially, Posey dismissed the plan as far-fetched and unrealistic, but he finally endorsed emigration based on his contention that staunch Creek traditionalists could not survive in what was to become Oklahoma. His evolving views of emigration to Mexico correspond to his growing understanding of the increasing difficulty of life in the Creek Nation for conservative Creeks who opposed the changes sweeping Indian Territory at the turn of the twentieth century. Further, his ultimate endorsement of emigration for staunch traditionalists exemplifies his contention that only certain Creeks—namely those who embraced allotment and participation in U.S. social and political systems—could survive within the United States.
In this article I first introduce my critical approach to Posey's life and work in conjunction with an overview of the Fus Fixico letters, as situated in their historical and cultural context. I position my argument in relation to the ideological framework outlined by Creek/Cherokee writer and theorist, Craig Womack (one of the most significant Posey scholars), and throughout the article I draw upon the groundbreaking historical and archival research of Daniel Littlefield. Following an introduction to the letters and an outline of my central arguments, I analyze Posey's conception of transformation, as it manifests in the Fus Fixico letters, as an alternative to both traditionalist resistance and the assimilationist view that full participation in U.S. society requires the wholesale abandonment of American Indian cultural norms. I follow this discussion with an exploration of the letters' references to emigration plans vis-à-vis Posey's vision for transformation. Finally, by way of conclusion, I offer some thoughts about the implications of Creek...