University of Virginia Library

Alexander Lawrence Posey (Muscogee)

Alexander Lawrence Posey was born near Eufaula, Creek Nation, on August 3, 1873, the son of Louis H. Posey and Nancy Phillips. The elder Posey was a Scot who had been born in Indian Territory. The writer's mother was the full-blood daughter of Pohos Harjo.The young Posey preferred to speak Muscogee until his teachers at the Creek Nation public schools in Eufaula insisted on his using English.

He attended the Indian University at Muskogee (later Bacone University) and graduated with honors in 1895. That year, he was elected to the House of Warriors, the lower house of the Muscogee Nation legislature, and in the next year was appointed superintendent of the Creek National Orphan Asylum at Okmulgee.

In 1896, he married Minnie Harris of Fayetteville, Arkansas, a matron at the Asylum. He held several posts in education including superintendent of Public Instruction of the Creek Nation, principal of the Creek National High School, and high school principal at Wetumpka. He edited the weekly Indian Journal in Eufaula, a newspaper in which he published some of his most successful works. Later, he assisted in editing the Muskogee Times. For a time, Posey helped enroll Muscogees with the Dawes Commission. In 1905, he served as secretary of the Constitutional Convention for the proposed state of Sequoyah.

A prolific writer, he wrote poetry under the name of Chinnubbie Harjo and political satire as Fus Fixico. He drowned on May 27, 1908. Posey's poem appeared in Twin Territories magazine in April 1899. His address on Sequoyah was printed in the Cherokee Advocate of July 22, 1893.