释义 |
Creek, n.3 [f. creek n.1] A. n. 1. An Indian people, also called Muskogee, formerly inhabiting a wide region in south-eastern North America, now settled in Oklahoma; a member of this people. 2. The language of this people, belonging to the Muskogean stock. B. adj. Of or pertaining to this people or their language. C. n. A confederacy (later Nation) of several peoples and languages of which the Muskogee or Creek proper were the most numerous and prominent. D. adj. Of or pertaining to this confederacy.
1725G. Chicken Jrnl. in N. D. Mereness Trav. Amer. Col. (1916), I hope your Honour will be speedy to me in your Expresses, Especially in your answer to me when you have heard from the Creeks. Ibid., Do you understand the Creek Language? 1732in Cal. State Papers Amer. & W. Indies 217 They [sc. the Spanish] have a party among the Creek Indians as well as we. Ibid., Two of our Indian traders having been killed near the Creek nation in their way thither. 1736[see Indian n. 2 a]. 1775Adair Amer. Ind. 2 A large body of the English Indian traders, on their way to the Choktah country, were escorted by a body of Creek and Choktah warriors. 1789W. Bartram Creek & Cherokee Indians in Trans. Amer. Ethnol. Soc. (1853) III. i. 11 The Cricks, or, as they call themselves, Muscoges, or Muscogulges, are a very powerful confederacy. 1791― (title) Travels through North and South Carolina,..the extensive territories of the Muscogulges or Creek confederacy, and the country of the Chactaws. 1837Penny Cycl. VIII. 146/1 Creek Indians were, at the beginning of the present century, one of the most powerful native tribes within the limits of the United States of America. 1868S. W. & L. C. Perryman (title) Constitution and laws of the Muskokee or Creek nation, translated into Muskokee language. 1877L. H. Morgan Anc. Society iii. 440 In Crow my husband's brother's wife is ‘my comrade’.., in Creek my ‘present occupant’. 1921Hist. Amer. Lit. I. ii. i. 209 Gaily dressed Creeks, quite oriental in appearance. 1933Bloomfield Language iv. 72 The Muskogean family includes, among other languages, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole. 1946G. Foreman Last Trek of Indians 163 They were recorded as part of the Creek Nation, their chiefs participating in the Creek general councils. 1965Canad. Jrnl. Linguistics Spring 145 The Yuchi..were conquered by the Creeks... All the Yuchi are bilingual, and there couldn't be two languages further apart than Creek and Yuchi. |