Congratulations to Gary Zellar, current and as we speak still the undisputed newest member of our department, whose book African Creeks: Estelvste and the Creek Nation was recently (2007) published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

From the publisher: "Among the Creeks, they were known as Estelvste—black people—and they had lived among them since the days of the first Spanish entradas. They spoke the same language as the Creeks, ate the same foods, and shared kinship ties. Their only difference was the color of their skin. Professor Zellar’s book tells how people of African heritage came to blend their lives with those of their Indian neighbors and essentially became Creek themselves. Taking in the full historical sweep of African Americans among the Creeks, from the sixteenth century through Oklahoma statehood, Zellar unfolds a narrative history of the many contributions these people made to Creek history."

For more information, click here for the publisher’s website.