Michael Green

Research Interests

Michael Green's field of specialty is Native American history, his area of research is on the history of the Creeks. His research and publications on Creek history have focused on the period prior to their removal to Indian Territory in the 1830s. Mostly he has worked on the early 19th century period marked by the growing demands of Georgia and Alabama that the Creeks be expelled. These demands challenged Creek political systems to respond in novel ways. Creek leaders developed new ideas about politics and government that they hoped could enable them to remain in their homelands and retain their sovereignty. Central to these new ideas was a growing sense of Creek nationalism. His research has been on how the Creeks developed these changes in political theory and practice, how they tried to make them work, and how they impacted the relations between the Creeks and the US and the states.

Green has also worked on the history of the Creeks in the early 18th century, especially in the early years of Georgia when a new set of relations between a Native group and an English colony were first established. He has focused this work on a Creek woman, Mary Musgrove, and her role as interpreter, advisor, and agent to James Oglethorpe, Georgia's founding father.

His work is now taking him west, to Indian Territory, in the period between Creek removal and the establishment of Creek constitutional government in 1867. The Creeks were the last of the southern tribes moved to Indian Territory to adopt a constitutional government, the ideas of which continue to divide Creek people into politically opposing camps. His interest here is to study the economic, social, and political history of the process of reestablishing the Creek Nation in the west, particularly with an effort to understand how the ideas of nationhood developed in this new historical environment.

Courses Offered (as Schedules Allow)

For current course listings, consult the Directory of Classes.

• HIST 231 (AMST 72A) -- Native America: The East
• HIST 233 (AMST 72C) -- Native America: The West
• HIST 235 (AMST 72E) -- Native America in the Twentieth Century
• HIST 878 (AMST 248) -- Readings Seminar in Native American History
• HIST  948 (AMST 348) -- Research in Native American History

Contact

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Department of History
CB # 3520, Greenlaw Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520
mgreen@email.unc.edu