Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey
    The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey
    The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey
    Ebook177 pages2 hours

    The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey

    By Alexander Lawrence Posey and Mint Editions

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “He was a poet of the first order, a humorist, a philosopher, a man of affairs. He achieved fame as an English-Indian dialect writer and journalist. He was the leading man of the Creeks and the one great man produced by the Confederacy known as the Five Civilized Tribes.”

    Published posthumously in 1910, The Poems of Lawrence Alexander Posey both a collection of poetry and short memoir by one of the late nineteenth century’s leading Native American voices, Alexander Posey. Born near Eufaula, Posey was the eldest of twelve children who were raised within the Creek Nation but incorporated into European culture. Being fluent in the Muscogee language, Posey would be encouraged by his father to learn English, ultimately leading to his love of the written word and his exposure to the Indian Journal where he would go on to submit his poetry.

    Professionally typeset with a beautifully designed cover, this edition of The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey is a classic of Native American literature reimagined for the modern reader.

    Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

    With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMint Editions
    Release dateApr 4, 2023
    ISBN9781513127965
    The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey
    Author

    Alexander Lawrence Posey

    Alexander Lawrence Posey (1873 - 1908) was a Creek journalist, poet, and politician. Born near Eufaula, Posey was the eldest of twelve children of Lewis Henderson Posey and Nancy—Creek name, Pohas Harjo—Phillips Posey. Orphaned early, Posey was collectively raised in the Creek Nation along with his siblings by his mother’s Wind Clan in the tribal town of Tuskegee. Leading up to the death of his parents, Posey and his siblings spoke the Muscogee language though their father insisted they learn English, receive somewhat of a formal education and by some means assimilate into a more Euro-centric culture. While Posey would develop the ability to read and write in English (going so far as to be inspired by the naturalism of John Burroughs and Henry David Thoreau) he would never forsake his Native Heritage, working at the Indian Journal throughout his college years and going on to represent his mother’s clan in his membership with the Creek National Council. At the age of 28, Posey gained national recognition for founding the first Native American daily newspaper, the Eufaula Indian Journal. Here he would publish letters under the fictional persona of “Fus Fixico,” a full-blooded Muscogee traditionalist who would comment in Creek dialect—made popular at the time by Black authors and “Negro dialect”— on the state of Native American and European relations as they pertained to U.S. politics and maintaining a sense of sovereignty in the Native territories. In many ways an activist, Posey would use his position as secretary to the Sequoyah Constitutional Convention to draft a constitution in hopes of establishing an indegious-controlled State of Sequoyah. The petition would ultimately be rejected by the United States Federal Government, but as one of Posey’s last major acts before his untimely death in 1908 it nevertheless cemented his legacy as a leading Native American figure of the early twentieth century.

    Related to The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      WHITE GOLD: The Sahara Salt Trade

      Mar 1, 2020

      WHITE GOLD: The Sahara Salt Trade
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      SEARCHING a For A MARY AUSTIN

      Sep 29, 2020

      SEARCHING a For A MARY AUSTIN
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Sung Land

      Aug 22, 2024

      The Sung Land
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Sung Land

      Aug 22, 2024

      The Sung Land
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Herd word

      Jan 7, 2020

      The Herd word
      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Casting The Runes

      Feb 25, 2021

      “I was interested in magic and witchcraft and things like that from an early age,” says Dave Arthur. “Twelve or so. Dennis Wheatley’s novels… I read those. The Devil Rides Out, To the Devil a Daughter, The Ka of Gifford Hillary. Occult novels fascina

      19 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Echoes All Around

      Oct 27, 2022

      Echoes All Around
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      They Were One-offs

      Apr 6, 2022

      HOW I wish I’d written this book! Matthew Kelly celebrates four women whose work created the organisations and attitudes to conservation we take for granted today. Two are well known, two are not; all their stories enrich us. The well-known two are O

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Art of Poetry No. 112

      Dec 6, 2022

      The Art of Poetry No. 112
      26 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      On Memory and Literature

      Jun 30, 2021

      Now we're all possessors of personal supercomputers that can instantly connect us to whole libraries — there can seem little sense to make iambs and trochees part of one's soul. The post On Memory and Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      18 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Art of Poetry No. 111

      Sep 6, 2022

      The Art of Poetry No. 111
      26 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Keeper Of Stories

      May 27, 2022

      The Keeper Of Stories
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Now That It’s Come to This

      Jun 3, 2021

      Now That It’s Come to This
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How the Lark Got Her Crest

      May 30, 2023

      How the Lark Got Her Crest
      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Storytime

      May 20, 2020

      Can true love conquer all? This is the question at the heart of Australian author Felicity Volk’s deeply affecting debut novel, and the answer is complex and devastating. Set over five decades from 1952 and told in alternating narratives, we piece to

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Inbox

      Jun 15, 2024

      Dear Editor: Having spent my childhood in the West Kootenays I particularly enjoyed your spring edition of BC History. My father was a family doctor in Castlegar and had many Doukhobor patients. This was in the days before Medicare, and we often woke

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Mind in Bloom

      Sep 18, 2023

      A Mind in Bloom
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Venice Peach

      Oct 2, 2023

      1. THE DRESSMAKER AND THE HIDDEN SOLDIER by Doug Gold (A&U) WWII thriller about Kiwi soldier and Greek dressmaker 2. SUMMER FAVOURITES by Vanya Insull (A&U) Recipes from @vj_cooks 3. TE REO KAPEKAPE: Māori Wit and Humour by Hona Black (Oratia) Having

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Table Talk

      Mar 1, 2021

      Table Talk
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Memorable Folk Trail

      Sep 6, 2022

      A Memorable Folk Trail
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Great Read

      May 17, 2023

      Great Read
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Parsonage in New Hope

      Dec 4, 2023

      A Parsonage in New Hope
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Color of the River Is Light

      Apr 1, 2024

      The Color of the River Is Light
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dear Paul

      May 14, 2021

      Dear Paul
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Warning To The Fortean

      Jul 14, 2022

      A Warning To The Fortean
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Women Of The Palace

      Sep 19, 2022

      At Georgia’s ragged edge stands a causeway made of earth piled by hand atop bricks and tires, long grown over with grass and sandspur and sea oxeye. It is a tenuous ribbon of stability cutting through mud and salt and spartina, connecting land and ri

      11 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey - Alexander Lawrence Posey

      I

      ALEXANDER LAWRENCE POSEY WAS A CREEK INDIAN

      He was a poet of the first order, a humorist, a philosopher, a man of affairs. He achieved fame as an English-Indian dialect writer and journalist. He was the leading man of the Creeks and the one great man produced by the Confederacy known as the Five Civilized Tribes.

      Posey was born in what is now McIntosh County, Oklahoma, eight miles west of Eufaula, August 3, 1873. He was accidentally drowned in the North Canadian river, near Eufaula, May 27, 1908.

      Posey’s father was Lewis H. Posey, a Scotch-Irish native of the Indian Territory, who claimed to be one-sixteenth Creek blood. The elder Posey was born in the Creek country about the year 1841, and, his parents having died when he was a child, he was reared by a Creek woman who lived near Fort Gibson. It is quite probable that he had no Indian blood, for his children are officially enrolled as of half Creek blood by the Dawes Commission. His parents wandered into the Creek country from Texas, and little is now known of them. He was a jolly, mirth-loving man, who never lost an opportunity to perpetrate a practical joke. For some time he was a Deputy U.S. Marshal at Fort Smith. After his marriage to a Creek girl he established himself on a large ranch at Bald Hill, up the Canadian some eight miles west of Eufaula, where he lived until his death. He is said to have been the only white man of his time who could speak the Creek language perfectly. He attended a school taught by one Lewis Robertson, and there learned to read and write English, and he secured some knowledge of arithmetic. He is said to have been rather unruly at school, and it is related that when Robertson went away to get married he left his school in charge of Mrs. Mary Herod. She found it necessary to bring Posey up to the front and seat him where she could have an eye on him all the time, it being otherwise impossible to maintain any semblance of order in the school.

      The mother of the poet is still living. She is the daughter of Pohos Harjo, but her English name was Nancy Phillips. She is a Creek of full and pure blood. She belongs to the Wind Clan, the strongest clan of the Creeks, and is a member of the Tuskegee Town or Band of the Muscogee Nation. She was married to Lewis H. Posey about October, 1872, when but fifteen years old. Her famous son was born when she was in her seventeenth year.

      The Harjo family is noted as one of big warriors, and is the oldest of the Muskogees or Creeks. It was also the largest as far back as we have any knowledge of this people, the tribal census of 1832 showing almost one-fourth of the tribe as members of it. This proportion diminished up to the time of making the final rolls, but even these show the family to be very large.

      It is recorded of Mrs. Posey that she was a devoted mother, as most Indian women are. She gave her whole time to the comfort of her family, and saw to it that her children had at all times an abundance of wholesome food.

      If there was little left from the midday meal she would often bake an extra pan of bread, that they might have all they wished to eat until supper was served. She was a tidy housekeeper, and the dirt supposed to be indigenous to an Indian dwelling was not to be found in her home. She was careful of her personal appearance, and had the Indian fondness for decided colors. In hot weather she would frequently put cold water on her head and the heads of her children, believing it a protection from extreme heat. She is a very sincere and devout Christian and a member of the Baptist Church. Once she was in the house of a white woman who was dying, and who requested that someone should pray for her. Mrs. Posey offered the prayer, speaking in her own tongue, and those present always remembered the earnestness and eloquence of her appeal for the dying woman.

      Concerning his parents I find this written by Posey:

      I was born near Eufaula, in the Creek Nation, Indian Territory, August 3, 1873. Both my parents were Creek Indians, but they belonged to different clans, my father being a Broken Arrow, and my mother a Tuskegee. My father also possessed a percentage of Scotch-Irish blood, but my mother is a pure-blood Creek Indian. My grandparents came from Alabama, the former home of the Creek people. My father was a self-educated man of uncommon intelligence, with a philosophical and scientific turn of mind, while my mother, though uneducated and unable to speak a word of English, is a woman of rare native sense.

      The statement that Broken Arrow and Tuskegee are the names of clans in the Creek social organization is a slip of the pen of the poet. He had in mind the Bands or Towns into which the tribe is divided for the purposes of civil government. And I am satisfied that his father had no Indian blood.

      II

      Of these parents came the poet. He seems to have been a child of deep feeling, very quick and accurate observation, and often self-conscious and reflective. He was sensitive and reticent and an enthusiastic lover of nature—streams, hills, prairies, trees, flowers, birds, animals, the tangled wildwood, the heavens at night, and the magnificent cloud-displays seen in his native land. But, with all these, he was a genuine boy. From his father he had inherited a sense of humor and a love for practical jokes. He was in much innocent mischief from the time he could run about, and as the good old law of punishment for disobedience was in vogue in the Posey household, few months passed that did not bring him a whipping. This punishment was administered in a proper spirit and was wholesome correction. The

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1