The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey

"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 is both a collection of poetry and a 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.

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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 indigenous-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.