Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: Alexander Posey, Creek poet and journalist

Alexander Posey, born August 3, 1873 in Indian Territory, near what is now Eufaula, Oklahoma, was a poet, journalist, politician, and satirist in late 19th century and early 20th century.  He grew up speaking Muscogee as their first language but later, his father insisted he and his siblings speak English.  

Posey attended Bacone Indian University in Muskogee, Oklahoma where he studied writing. In 1901, he founded the Eufaula Indian Journal, the first Native American daily newspaper.  He wrote a series of letters which were published in the Eufaula Indian Journal from a fictional persona, Fus Fixico, satirizing the political climate between Indian Territory and the US government.  When the Dawes Act and the Curtis Act of 1898 were enacted to dismantle tribal governments to make way for statehood for Oklahoma, the Five Civilized Tribes met to draft a constitution, which Posey wrote, to establish an indigenous-controlled State of Sequoyah.  The proposal was rejected by the US Government and President Theodore Roosevelt.

Posey drowned while trying to cross the flooded North Canadian River in April 1908.