ABSTRACT
The definition of "law" in traditional and modernizing Cherokee and Muskogee societies became a point of personal and political contention in the late nineteenth century. African American and Native American "lawmen" and "outlaws" negotiated individual compliance with tribal and federal laws. The analysis then turns from the personal to the political by describing two movements in the Muskogee Creek Nation in the words of participants on all sides. During the nativistic Green Peach War of 1882 and Chitto Harjo's Uprising, which lasted from 1901 to 1909, there was a three-fold struggle: first, over political legitimacy, second, over ethnic or racial identity, and third, over access to resources.
