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"Creek Nation" is an old-time breakdown, known mainly in Oklahoma, in C Major.
The parts are played AABB (Thede) or AA'BB' (Phillips).
Marion Thede's description: The Creek Indians formerly owned land and farmed in the States along the Gulf of Mexico before their removal in 1832 to the Indian Territories in what is now the state of Oklahoma. As the Creek Nation they conducted their own government under the protectorate of the United States.Thede reported her source, fiddler Claude Keenan, said it was tradition among Oklahoma fiddlers that this tune was one formed on a Creek song used on the "Trail of Tears" when the Creeks were forcibly removed from their southeastern homelands to the territory in Oklahoma. Fiddler John Dee Kennedy (1914-1997) of Pawnee, Oklahoma called his version of this tune "Spotted Pony" even though the tunes are distinctly different. It was printed in Phillips' Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1 (1994) and Thede's The Fiddle Book (1967). |