The Indian World of George Washington

by Colin G. Calloway

  The Indian policy that Washington envisioned and implemented continued with variations for more than one hundred years. Indian tribes were nations, but they were not fully independent nations like Britain and France; their sovereignty was limited by the sovereignty of the United States, and their autonomy declined as the United States grew. They would give up most of their land—voluntarily by purchase if possible, by coercion or conquest if necessary, and inevitably, as they made the transition from hunting to agriculture. There would ultimately be no room left for Indian tribes, but individual Indians could survive as farmers. They must adjust to their new circumstances by learning to live as white men.

  Chapter 15

  Courting McGillivray

  The first big test for washington and Knox’s new federal Indian policy came in the South, where still-powerful Indian nations resisted American expansion and exploited the rivalry between Spain and the United States. In an effort to avoid an all-out Indian war and the possibility of international conflict, the president delved into relations between the Creek confederacy and the state of Georgia, as well as Creek relations with Spain. Doing so involved asserting the authority of the national government over a state that regarded federal interference in its Indian affairs as a dangerous threat to its rights and liberty. Making the first treaty since the adoption of the Constitution forever affected how the president and Senate conducted their business under the Constitution’s advice-and-consent provision. It also involved winning the allegiance of the most diplomatically astute Native leader of the age, a Scots Indian named Alexander McGillivray.

  Like Washington, McGillivray was trying to build a confederation into a unified nation. The Creeks or Muskogees were a loose confederacy of fifteen to twenty thousand ethnically and linguistically diverse people living in more than fifty autonomous towns (talwas) and satellite towns (talofas). Creek homelands stretched across northern Florida, western Georgia, northern Alabama, and eastern Mississippi, a block of territory as big as a modern state.1 By the end of the eighteenth century, the confederacy was divided into the Upper Creek towns on the Tallapoosa, Coosa, and Alabama Rivers in present-day Alabama and the Lower Creeks on the Ocmulgee, Chattahoochee, and Flint Rivers in Georgia.2 Creeks who had migrated into northern Florida in the course of the eighteenth century developed a new identity as Seminoles and built an increasingly independent nation during the Revolutionary era.3 Creeks generally sided with Great Britain during the Revolution, but their actual involvement was limited; no armies burned towns in Creek country as they did in Iroquois, Delaware, Shawnee, and Cherokee country, and the Creeks did not suffer significant losses. At a time when the US Army numbered in the hundreds, reports on the military strength of the southern Indian nations estimated that the Creeks could field between four and six thousand well-armed warriors, a figure, said Washington to one of his generals, that “behoves us the more to cultivate their friendship.” Geographic and political realities meant that Alexander McGillivray could never, as the historian Joseph Ellis imagines, “deploy over five thousand warriors at a moment’s notice,” but the Creeks nonetheless represented a formidable force.4

  McGillivray asserted himself as the “Beloved Man” or principal chief of the Creeks after the Revolution. He was a new kind of Creek, whose life and leadership reflected and promoted far-reaching changes as non-Indian traders who married Creek women, and their bicultural children, exerted increasing influence and inculcated capitalist values and practices in Creek society.5 The son of the Scottish trader Lachlan McGillivray and Sehoy Marchand, a French-Creek woman of the powerful Wind clan among the Upper Creeks, Alexander attended school in Charleston, South Carolina, and acquired business experience in Savannah by working in the counting house of a merchant named Samuel Elbert. When the Revolution broke out, Lachlan, like many other Highland Scots in the South, remained loyal to the Crown and lost his plantation. He returned to Scotland.6 Alexander returned to Creek country to live with his mother’s people. Physically frail and chronically ill, afflicted with rheumatism, migraine headaches, alcoholism, and syphilis—a visitor to his home in 1791 said he was thirty-two but looked forty-five7—McGillivray had no reputation as a warrior, but his mental abilities, political savvy, and connections outweighed his military limitations. He was literate and studied Greek, Latin, English history, and literature. He also lived very differently from most Creeks: he accumulated personal wealth and property, owned slaves, managed a large plantation at Little Tallassee on the banks of the Coosa, and functioned effectively in the Atlantic market economy. The British and the Creeks recognized the value of McGillivray’s education and training in colonial society and his influential connections in both societies. During the Revolution, the British appointed him deputy superintendent of Indian affairs. He presented himself to Spain, Britain, and the United States as the leader of all the Creeks, and acted like it, although his power was more impressive in appearance than in reality.8 He inspired mixed assessments. Colonel Arthur Campbell, a former Indian captive, Indian agent, and veteran of Virginia’s Revolutionary War campaigns against the Cherokees, described him to Washington as an insolent “half-breed” who needed to be checked.9 But Pensacola governor Arturo O’Neill (an expatriate Irishman in the service of imperial Spain) thought McGillivray had more influence among the Creeks than any other individual.10 Washington and Knox agreed.

  The Creeks had become so accustomed to being courted by rival colonial powers that it had made them “haughty” and “full of their own importance,” complained one British agent.11 They were shocked by the news of the Peace of Paris. One chief dismissed it as “a Virginia Lie.” McGillivray denounced it as a shameful act of betrayal: after the Indians had answered calls for help and fought for the king, Britain had made peace for itself and divided their lands between the Spaniards and Americans. The king had no right to give up a country he never owned.12 Britain returned Florida to Spain, but the boundary line between Spanish Florida and the new United States remained vague. Spain, the United States, Georgia, and North Carolina all claimed territory north of the 31st parallel and east of the Mississippi, as of course did the Indian nations who lived there. “The whole Continent is in Confusion,” McGillivray wrote O’Neill. “Before long I expect to hear that the three kings must Settle the matter by dividing America between them.”13 The United States, Spain, and Britain all vied for control of Creek country and influence within the Creek nation. The United States took the position that most Creeks lived on American soil, and Georgia claimed the Mississippi as its western boundary. But Spain viewed the Tennessee River as the northern limit to its territory and tried to use the tribes who lived there as buffers against its aggressive new republican neighbor.14 Like the Ohio country in the 1750s, the American Southwest was an area many contested but none controlled.

  Following Britain’s withdrawal, McGillivray and the Creeks adjusted to the new international situation and charted new foreign policies. “As a free Nation we have an undoubted right to chuse what Protection we think proper,” McGillivray told Esteban Miró, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, and he preferred “the protection of a great Monarch … to that of a distracted Republic.”15 Although a Spanish alliance was preferable to an American one, McGillivray made the best of the chaotic new situation and played the field. Arthur Campbell described his tactics to Washington in August 1789. Sometimes he threatened the southern states with war; at other times he appeased them with talk of a treaty. At the present time he was working to form a league among the four southern Indian nations, with himself at their head, “that he may, with the aid of Britain, be able to bid defiance to Spain as well as the United States.”16

  Although Britain had relinquished Florida, many Loyalist refugees continued to live among the Indians, and traders and agents still promoted British interests, influence, and intercourse. Since Creek country extended to the sea, it was accessible to British traders from the West Indies.17 When Spain took over Florida, it allowed the Loyalist Scottish merchants
Panton, Leslie & Company, headquartered in the Bahamas, to stay on. Although it did not grant a formal monopoly, Spain permitted the company to sell British guns, gunpowder, goods, and cloth to help keep the Creeks and Seminoles in the Spanish interest. McGillivray issued the licenses traders needed to operate in Creek towns and oversaw the flow of valuable commodities into Creek country. He also served as a secret partner for Panton, Leslie & Company and grew wealthy as the company extended its operations from Florida to the Mississippi. Centering its business empire at Spanish Pensacola, it effectively controlled the whole southeastern trade, with trading posts and packhorse trains operating from Nassau in the Bahamas to western Tennessee.18

  Meanwhile, Georgian frontiersmen and speculators were grabbing Creek lands in the western region of the state. Southern states needed Indian lands to repay their debts and reward their veterans after the Revolution. Georgia in 1780 passed a headright law granting every adult white male head of household who had not served Britain in the Revolutionary War 200 acres of backcountry land, with an additional 50 acres for each of his dependents. Subsequent acts gave veterans priority in obtaining headrights. The system generated confusion and overlapping land clams as speculators amassed multiple headrights by buying up the land warrants of the poor, and it ensured constant pressure on Creek land.19 The Assembly offered land grants to veterans in the area between the Ogochee and Oconee Rivers, which it named Washington County, but the Creeks treated the Americans they found there as trespassers.20 Creeks called Georgians Ecunnaunuxulgee, roughly translated as “people greedily grasping after the lands of the red people.”21 Georgia ratified the Constitution—“If a weak state with powerful tribes of Indians in its rear and the Spaniards on its flank did not incline to embrace a strong national government,” it must be due to “either wickedness or insanity,” Washington commented. But unlike the northern states, Georgia did not cede its western land claims to the federal government until 1802. It relied on disposal of those lands to satisfy its land-hungry citizens and settle its dues.22

  On a personal level, McGillivray sought to avenge himself upon the United States for the financial losses that he had suffered with the confiscation of his Loyalist father’s property. He also realized that the Spaniards posed less of a threat to Creek lands than did the Americans and could offer protection against Georgian frontiersmen. And the United States could not match Spain in providing trade. Congress was burdened by heavy war debts in Europe and at home, he told O’Neill; consequently, the Americans “had no trade for us, they were poor.” Claiming to speak for the entire Creek nation and playing on Spanish fears of an American invasion, McGillivray courted Spanish officials to establish a favorable relationship with the Creeks. He said the southern states were trying to win over the Creeks, which could turn the Indians from Spain’s friends to dangerous neighbors, and he warned that the Americans would try to involve the Indians in plans to seize places like Mobile or Pensacola.23

  Spanish officials responded by calling a meeting with the Creeks at Pensacola in 1784. McGillivray acted as the Creeks’ principal spokesman for the negotiations. At the Treaty of Pensacola, signed on June 1, the Creeks acknowledged themselves under Spanish protection and swore to “Maintain an Inviolable Peace and fidelity” with his Catholic Majesty’s provinces and subjects and with the neighboring Indian tribes. In return, King Carlos III declared his paternal love for the Creeks, and Spain promised to keep their lands secure and protect their towns that lay within Spanish territory. Spain agreed to provide the Creek nation with a “permanent and unalterable commerce,” unless prevented by war, and the Creeks agreed to exclude all traders except those holding Spanish licenses. The treaty also appointed McGillivray as the Spanish commissary for the Creeks, at a monthly salary of fifty pesos, about $600 per year, the equivalent, points out the historian Claudio Saunt, of “what a Creek hunter might have grossed over a quarter of a century.” McGillivray emerged from the treaty as the key intermediary between the Creek and Spanish nations.24

  However, many Creeks objected to McGillivray’s increasing authority and affiliation with Spain. Although McGillivray presented himself as a national leader, various Creek towns and divisions did not agree, and other micos, meaning “kings” or “chiefs,” played different roles.25 While McGillivray was courting the Spaniards, a dissenting faction under the leadership of Hoboithle (or Hopoithle) Mico, also known as the Tame King, Tallassee King, or Good Child King (see figure 4), dealt with the Americans. After Georgian representatives invited the chiefs of the Creek nation to Augusta to make peace, Hoboithle Mico, Eneah Mico (also called Cussitah Mico or the Fat King), and a handful of followers turned up and, on November 1, 1783, conceded to Georgia’s demand for the cession of Creek lands between the upper waters of the Oconee River and the Ogeechee River.26 McGillivray called Hoboithle Mico “a roving beggar, going wherever he thinks he can get presents”; Marinus Willett, a former officer in the Continental Army and emissary to Creek country, described him as “a weak man of little influence and easily perswaded to any thing.”27 But Hoboithle Mico and Eneah Mico were peace chiefs whose assigned role was to pursue peaceful relations with Georgia and the Carolinas, and they likely attracted a greater following than McGillivray acknowledged.28 McGillivray called the Augusta Treaty unjust and absurd. He was furious that the signers had denied his leadership and claimed it was they who spoke for the nation. He called for a council at the Upper Creek town of Tuckabatchee to make this minority group “give an account of themselves.” Georgia insisted that the agreement was binding on the whole Creek nation and proceeded to take over the ceded lands throughout 1783 and 1784.29 Confident in the protection that he had acquired from Spain at Pensacola, McGillivray dispatched war parties to remove the Georgians from the disputed lands.30

  Figure 4 John Trumbull sketched Hoboithle Mico and several other members of the Creek delegation “by stealth” during their visit to New York in the summer of 1790.

  Yale University Art Gallery.

  The federal government tried to offset the advantage Spain gained by the Treaty of Pensacola and to prevent the escalating clashes between Creeks and Georgians from embroiling the United States in a war from which it which it stood to gain nothing.31 In 1785, Congress resolved to hold conventions with the southern Indians to establish boundary lines and extinguish “as far as possible all occasion for future animosity, disquiet and contention.”32 Appointed as peace commissioners were Benjamin Hawkins, a Princeton graduate and member of the Continental Congress, Lachlan McIntosh, Joseph Martin, a Virginian Revolutionary general now serving as Indian agent for North Carolina, and the South Carolina general and politician Andrew Pickens, who had fought against the Cherokees in 1760–61 and in the Revolution. In June they invited the Creek headmen and warriors to meet at Galphinton on the Ogeechee River in late October.33

  McGillivray responded that he was pleased the United States wanted to settle affairs with the Creeks, but the effort was long overdue. He had expected the country to resolve its differences with the Indians soon after achieving independence. Whereas Georgians had assumed they had the Creeks at their mercy and “their talks to us breathed nothing but vengeance,” Spain had promised to protect Creek territory and provide free trade through the Floridas. “We want nothing from you but justice.” McGillivray told the commissioners. “We want our hunting grounds preserved from encroachments. They have been ours from the beginning of time, and I trust that, with the assistance of our friends, we shall be able to maintain them against every attempt that may be made to take them from us.”34 Everyone understood who he meant by “our friends.” Although he said he would attend the meeting, in the end he stayed away and tried to sabotage it instead. Boycotting the Galphinton conference allowed him to demonstrate his loyalty to the Treaty of Pensacola and follow Governor O’Neill’s advice not to negotiate with the Americans.35 Delaying an agreement between the Creeks and the Americans also bought him time to see what he could get from both the Spanish and the American
s.36 As they had at Augusta, Hoboithle Mico, Eneah Mico, and a handful of Creeks defied McGillivray’s leadership and attended the Galphinton congress. To his satisfaction, however, fewer than twenty Indians traveled to meet the commissioners.37