The Poarch Band of Creek Indians ( ;) are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans in Alabama. Speaking the Muscogee language, they were formerly known as the Creek Nation East of the Mississippi. They are located mostly in Escambia County. Since the late twentieth century, they have operated three gaming casinos and a hotel on their reservation. This has enabled them to generate revenues for education and welfare. History The Poarch Band members descend from Muscogee Creek Indians of the Lower Towns who sided with the United States against the rebelling Northern Creek "Red Sticks" in the Creek War of 1813–1814. Prior to this event, Band ancestors intermarried with whites to a high degree. Descendants primarily were the product of unions between British traders and Creek Indian women. Predominant surnames in the group included the names Weatherford, McGillivray, Durant, McGhee, Moniac, Cornell, Gibson, Colbert, and Rolin. These ancestors adopted more European-American practices than many other Creek families stemming from their closer working relationships with whites. Because of conflicts with other Creeks, ancestors of the Poarch Band petitioned the Creek Nation to migrate to lands in the southwest of Creek Nation territory in the early 1800s near the Tensaw River and the headwaters of the Perdido River. Many of these Creek families remained in Alabama despite the Indian Removal Act of 1830, by which the majority of the tribe ceded their land and were forcibly moved to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi River. Under provisions of the Treaty of Fort Jackson, Poarch Creek ancestors selected four sections of land that would serve as the nucleus of the modern Poarch Band of Creek Indian community. These Indian reserves were held subject to federal trust restrictions. The "McGhee Reserve," a 240 acre tract taken by Lynn McGhee became a center of the Creek community. After the Civil War, other Creeks established homesteads on lands near the McGhee Reserve. They formed a tight-knit Indian community near Poarch, Alabama, with a high degree of endogamy within the Creek group. The Poarch Band struggled to survive throughout the nineteenth century. Most were small subsistence level farmers and sharecroppers in the latter decades of the century. They supplemented their diet with game and fish largely taken from neighboring public lands. With the coming of the railroad in the late nineteenth century, the lumber and turpentine industries arrived. Large corporations bought public lands, closing access to