Creek Paths and Federal Roads

“Hudson makes a truly unique and detailed contribution to our understanding of the push for infrastructure development in the American South during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and of how this development affected the lives of Creek Indians, Africans, and Americans. Only in a few instances have I seen such a successful integration of Indian and American history.” — Robbie Ethridge, McMullan Associate Professor of Southern Studies, University of Mississippi

“In a vivid exploration of old and new routes through Creek Indian country, Hudson sheds new light on contested meanings of territory and mobility in the early South. Brought closer than ever to political negotiation and conflict over travel as well as to cross-cultural interaction along roads, the reader discovers that internal improvement, expansion of slavery, Indian dispossession, and southern political separatism — subjects usually treated separately — were in fact intimately connected to each other.” — Daniel H. Usner Jr., Vanderbilt University

“Gracefully written and carefully argued, [Creek Paths and Federal Roads] deserves the attention of all scholars of Native America and the early American frontier.” — Journal of American History

“Both informs and raises more questions. Recommended” — CHOICE

“This is a sound, well-written, and important work that tells the story of Indians in the South and reveals the complexity and interrelatedness of American history.” — The North Carolina Historical Review

“A logically argued and well-supported work….Of the numerous recent works on the Creeks, none considers the significance of mobility and roadways in a similar manner giving Hudson a truly unique perspective….Intersecting several rarely connected topics, Creek Paths and Federal Roads should have a broad appeal.” — Florida Historical Quarterly

“In this groundbreaking study, which will attract the interest of historians in the fields of ethnohistory as well as southern history, and which is easily accessible to casual readers interested in Indian removal, Creek Paths and Federal Roads represents a major contribution to our understanding of the pathways, both figurative and literal, of United States expansion into the New South.” — The Alabama Review

“Provides a more complete understanding of the development of the antebellum South.” — Journal of East Tennessee History

“[Hudson’s] ventures into new realms of research and analysis will be greatly appreciated by scholars examining the transformation of the Native South into the Old South.” — Georgia Historical Quarterly