Alexander McGillivray
historyAlexander McGillivray (December 15, 1750 – February 17, 1793) was a leader of the Creek (Muscogee) Indians during and after the American Revolution who worked to establish a Creek national identity and centralized leadership as a means of resisting American expansion onto Creek territory.
McGillivray was born Hoboi-Hili-Miko ("Good Child King") in the Coushatta village of Little Tallassee on the Coosa River, near present-day Montgomery, Alabama. His father, Lachlan McGillivray, was a Scottish trader (of the Clan MacGillivray chief's lineage) who built a trading-posts among the Upper Towns of the Muscogee confederacy, who had traded with French Louisiana. His mother, Sehoy Marchand, was the daughter of Jean Baptiste Louis DeCourtel Marchand, a French officer at Fort Toulouse, and Sehoy, a mixed-blooded Creek woman of the prestigious Wind Clan. »http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=:1704986&id=I79039665 As a child, he briefly lived in Augusta with his father, who owned several large plantations and was a delegate in the colonial assembly. In 1773, McGillivray moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he learned Latin and Greek, then apprenticed at a countinghouse in Savannah, Georgia. He returned to Little Tallassee in 1777 after the revolutionary governments of Georgia and South Carolina confiscated the property of his Loyalist father, who then returned to Scotland. McGillivray obtained the rank of colonel in the British army, and brokered a British-Muscogee alliance. An inept military strategist, he rarely participated in battle, but was a skillful diplomat.
McGillivray became the principle chief of the Upper Creek towns after his predecessor, Chief Emistigo, died in the summer of 1782, leading a war-party to relieve the British garrison at Savannah, besieged by the Continental Army under General 'Mad' Anthony Wayne. He opposed the 1783 Treaty of Augusta, under which two Lower Creek chiefs ceded Muscogee lands from the Ogeechee to the Oconee rivers to the new state of Georgia. In June 1784 he negotiated the Treaty of Pensacola with Spain, which recognized Muscogee sovereignty over three million acres of land claimed by Georgia, guaranteed access to the British fur-trading company Panton, Leslie & Company, and made him an official representative of Spain, with a $50 monthly salary.»http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2313 McGillivray became a partner in Panton, Lesie & Col., and used his control over the deerskin trade to expand his power. He sought to end the traditional village autonomy that allowed individual chiefs to sign treaties by creating mechanisms of centralized political authority. Armed by British traders operating out of Spanish West Florida, the Muscogee raided back-country white settlers to protect their hunting grounds. From 1785 to 1787 Upper Creek war-parties fought alongside the Cherokee in the Chickamauga Wars in present-day Tennessee, and in 1786 a council of the Upper and Lower Creeks in Tuckabatchee declared war against Georgia. When Spanish officials informed him that they would have to reduce their aid, he entered into talks with the U.S.
A loyalist like his father, McGillivray resented much of American Indian policy, however, did not wish to leave the United States. McGillivray became a leading spokesman for all the tribes along the Florida-Georgia border areas. Georgia's Yazoo land scandal convinced George Washington that the federal government needed to control Indian affairs, and in 1790 he sent a special emissary who convinced McGillivray to attend a conference with Secretary of War Henry Knox in New York City, then the capital of the U.S., that resulted in the Treaty of New York. McGillivray and 29 other chiefs signed the treaty on behalf of the 'Upper, Middle and Lower Creek and Seminole composing the Creek nation of Indians.' The first treaty negotiated after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, it established the Altamaha and Oconee Rivers as the boundary between Creek lands and the U.S., with the federal government promising to remove illegal white settlers, and the Muscogee agreeing to return runaway black slaves who sought refuge with the tribe, a decision which angered the Seminoles, who included a large number of escaped slaves. Under this treaty, McGillivray became a brigadier general of the U.S., with an annual salary of $1,200. With this money, he acquired three plantations and sixty slaves.»http://nativenewsonline.org/history/hist0905b.html The Treaty of New York pacified the Southern frontier, but the U.S. failed to honor its obligations. In 1792 he repudiated the treaty and negotiated another treaty with Spanish officials in Louisiana, who promised to respect Muscogee sovereignty. McGillivray became a resident of Pensacola and a member of the Masonic Order. He died on February 17, 1793. Two of his nephews, William Weatherford and William McIntosh, were the most important Muscogee leaders in the early 19th century, fighting on opposing sides of the Creek War.
- Forman, Carolyn Thomas. »"Alexander McGillivray, Emperor of the Creeks", Chronicles of Oklahoma 7:1 (March 1929) 106-120 (retrieved August 18, 2006).
- Ellis, Joseph J. "American Creation", pp. 127 to 164. 2007.
- »Encyclopedia of North American Indians
- »FindaGrave.comMcGillivray page at Find a Grave
- [http://books.google.com/books?id=A7T2HCPyMhkC&pg=PT254&lpg=PT254&dq=William+Panton+buried&source=bl&ots=Y7YKxKlGTr&sig=AdY7MHC1dKaAfm0LVIDikcbY-AE&hl=en&ei=BcC7SsjlHYiOswOu9NzcBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#v=onepage&q=William%20Panton%20buried&f=false McGillivray headstone tracing, page 256]Googlebooks.com
- »Greatest Native American, #128