Creek Indian Author, Journalist, Teacher. One of the first Native American writers to achieve a national reputation. He grew up listening to Creek tales from his mother Pohas Harjo, a full blood Creek, whose white name was Nancy Phillips and who married a Scotch and Irish man named Lewis H. Posey. He developed an understanding of the human spirit and loved nature. He attended Bacone University, now Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he acted as a librarian on Sundays and set type after school hours for the Bacone Indian University Instructor. He was elected in 1895 to a seat in the House of Warriors, of the Creek Legislature. In 1896, he was Superintendent of the Creek Nation Orphan Asylum at Okmulgee, OK, until 1897. He became the editor of the "Indian Journal" in Eufaula, Creek Nation, Indian Territory, for two years and then was employed at the "Muskogee Times" in Muskogee, Indian Territory. He then worked for the United States Indian Agency at Muskogee where he took charge of the Creek Enrollment Pary of the Five Civilized Tribes at the request of the Dawes Commission. He then returned to Eufaula as editor of the "Indian Journal." Due to a railroad bridge being washed out, he and his companion R. D. Howe, an attorney, on a trip from Muskogee to Eufaula, rented a boat to cross the river; the river overcame the boat, and they were forced to jump in the water where Alex drowned along with a negro who was rowing the boat. His body was recovered about a month later. His biography is entitled "Alex Posey: Creek Poet, Journalist, and Humorist" by Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr. His poetry was entitled "Alex Posey, the Creek Indian Poet: The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey" by Alexander Lawrence Posey, his wife Minnie Harris Posey, and William Elsey Connelley; there is also "Chinnubbie and the Owl: Muscogee (Creek) Stories, Orations and Oral Traditons" by Alexander Lawrence Posey, Alexander Posey, and Matthew Wynn Sivils.