The letters are arranged from earliest (1878) to last (1905). Each letter has a faithful transcription of the original spelling with an English translation ("Side-by-Side"), a scanned image of the original letter ("Image"), a sound recording ("Recording"), and an analyzed version ("Analysis"). Some technical details follow:

• "Side-by-Side" and "Image" files are in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). You may need to download the free application Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™ to view and print the files. The images were scanned in color at 300 dpi and optimized for viewing.
• The sound recordings were made in 1994 by Margaret Mauldin on a cassette recorder. These were transferred to 8 bit mono WAV files, then converted to MP3 format at 36K mono resolution. The sound files can be played using Windows Media Player or by downloading the freely available RealPlayer.
• The analyzed versions contain three lines of information:
  • a respelling of the original in a 'standard' version of Creek ("\c") (so a dictionary may be used)
  • a phonemic transcription that shows the important sound contrasts in Creek ("\p")
  • an English translation ("\e")

Four letters from the collection were sent by A. E. W. Robertson's daughters to the Bureau of American Ethnology as specimens of the Creek language. These now form part of the Smithsonian Institution's National Anthropological Archives, and may be added to this site at a later date.

This project grew out of a larger project to build a collection of Creek language materials for use in creating a new dictionary of the language. Our conventions are explained more fully there.*

We are grateful to the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa for allowing us to use their collection for this project, Lori Curtis for encouraging this collaboration, and Gina Minks for scanning the documents in the collection. The translation and editing of these letters were supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (RT-21566-94), the College of William and Mary, and the National Science Foundation (SBR-9809819).

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*Martin, Jack B. and Margaret McKane Mauldin. 2000. A Dictionary of Creek / Muskogee, with notes on the Florida and Oklahoma Seminole dialects of Creek. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.