William McIntosh

William McIntosh, 1838 by Charles Bird King

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William McIntosh (1775 – April 30, 1825),^[1] also known as Taskanugi Hatke (White Warrior), was one of the most prominent chiefs of the Creek Nation between the turn of the nineteenth century and the time of Creek removal to Indian Territory. While influential, he collaborated with the US Indian Agent Mitchell on defrauding the Creek of annuity monies, as well as smuggling African slaves into the territory from Spanish Florida. He and eight other chiefs signed the 1825 Treaty of Indian Springs, ceding all the Creek land to the United States. Such alienation of tribal communal lands was considered a capital crime. McIntosh and other chiefs, including one of his sons-in-law, were executed by representatives carrying out the decision of the the The Creek National Council in April 1825.

William McIntosh was of mixed Creek and European descent, chiefly Scots. As his mother was Creek, he was raised as a member of her clan within the Creek nation, which was matrilineal. Because of his mother's status, he inherited a leadership position within the tribe, where he became a chief, or miko. His father was Captain William McIntosh, part of the powerful McGillivray family of Savannah, and associated with the clans Chattan and McGillivray in Scotland. The son McIntosh became a wealthy planter and slaveholder; he was influential in both Creek and European-American society. This pattern was similar to that of several of his high-ranking, mixed-race Creek relatives. For generations, Creek chiefs had approved their daughters' marriages to fur traders, to strengthen their alliances and trading power with the wealthy Europeans.

For decades, European-American historians attributed McIntosh's achievements and influence to his Scots/European ancestry; more recently, historians have understood how his power related to the Creek matrilineal culture and his heritage.

Early life and education

Taskanugi Hatke (White Warrior) was born to Senoya (also spelled Senoia and Senoy^[1]), a member of the Wind Clan, which was prominent in the Creek Nation. As the Creek had a matrilineal system of property and hereditary leadership, his mother's status determined that of White Warrior. Also called William McIntosh, the boy had a Scots-American father, Captain William McIntosh, connected to a prominent Savannah, Georgia family. Captain McIntosh had worked with the Creek Nation to recruit them as allies to the British during the American Revolutionary War. His mother was Jennet (or Janet in some sources) McGillivray, believed to have been a sister of the Scot Lachlan McGillivray, a wealthy fur trader and planter in Georgia, who was of the Clan MacGillivray Chiefs Lineage).

White Warrior's mother and her line gave White Warrior status among the Creek, more significant than his paternal connection to the McGillivray clan. Raised as a Creek for much of his childhood, McIntosh had little contact with his father, who was a Loyalist in the American Revolution. White Eagle was born to his mother's clan, and in the Creek tradition, his maternal uncle was more important than the father in rearing him, teaching him Creek male ways and introducing him to mens' societies.

Through both his mother and father, McIntosh was related to numerous other influential Creek chiefs, many of whom at the time were of mixed race. They were descendants of strategic marriages between high-status Creek women and the mostly Scots fur traders in the area. Among them were Alexander McGillivray, the son of Sehoy, a Wind Clan mother, and Lachlan McGillivray; and William Weatherford (better known in history as Red Eagle or Lamochatta), also born to the Wind Clan. Both became well established as Creek chiefs and wealthy planters.

Marriage and children

McIntosh married a Creek woman named Susanna Coe, and they had several children, including a son named Chilly.^[2] Two of their daughters married the brothers Samuel and Benjamin Hawkins. As a successful Creek man, he took a second wife, Peggy, who was Cherokee. His third wife lived on a plantation 50 miles away.^[2] She was Eliza Hawkins, the daughter of Stephen Hawkins.^[2]

Career

McIntosh improved a route from Talladega, Alabama to his ferry on the Chattahoochee River. Parts of it are still referred to as the McIntosh Road.

The Creek Nation struggled with internal tensions after the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They were adapting some elements of European culture, as encouraged by the British and Americans. This included education in English; for some, adoption of Christianity; as well as forms of European dress and houses - to show they were equally "civilized". They expanded their farms and some of the elite purchased chattel African slaves to work their plantations. The Creek had allied with the British during both wars, hoping to end the incursions of colonists and later European-American settlers into their lands. They incurred the enmity of the United States. After the wars, European-American settlers were increasingly migrating to the interior of the Southeast from the coastal areas.

Letter to Madison

In 1817 McIntosh wrote to President Madison, telling him that the more influential Cherokee leaders of mixed blood wanted to swap their land with the US government, which had been pushing for American Indian removal west of the Mississippi River. He wrote that the "not so much civilized" full bloods feared that the mixed-bloods would swap all the Cherokee land, leaving them "without any land to walk on."^{[citation needed]} The Creek feared that the powerful Cherokee might then take land from the Creek to regain territory in the Southeast, as they had before.

First Seminole War

Remnants of Creek, other American Indian tribes, and fugitive slaves had migrated to Spanish Florida. During the late 18th century, they formed a new tribe, known as the Seminole. Georgia slaves had escaped and also taken refuge in Spanish-held Florida, where the Crown offered them freedom and land.

The British turned over Fort Gadsden, on the lower Apalachicola River, to blacks in the area. It was occupied by about 300 black men, women, and children, 20 renegade Choctaw, and a few Seminole warriors, led by a black named Garcon. Georgia slaveholders called it the "Negro Fort," and worried that the independence of the blacks would encourage their slaves to escape or rebel. McIntosh fought for the United States in the First Seminole War and helped capture Fort Gadsden. When the Americans shot a heated cannon ball into the fort, it struck the magazine and set off a huge explosion. Most of the people within the fort died immediately.

Treaty of Indian Springs, 1825

Under pressure from the United States and the state of Georgia, some Creek chiefs had ceded land. The United States was trying to encourage the Creek and other Southeast tribes to cede their lands in exchange for payments and land west of the Mississippi River, in what was called Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma and Arkansas.) The National Council, including McIntosh, passed legislation making it a capital crime to alienate communal land.

On February 12, 1825, McIntosh and eight other chiefs, including his sons-in-law Samuel and Benjamin Hawkins, signed the Treaty of Indian Springs.^[3] They ceded all the Creek land in Georgia in exchange for $400,000. The fifth article of the treaty stipulated, "That the treaty commissioners pay the first $200,000 directly to the McIntosh party." Historians continue to argue over whether McIntosh ceded the land for personal gain, or because he believed removal was inevitable, and he was trying to achieve some security for the Creek Nation.

Death

The National Council ruled that the signatories had to be executed for ceding the land. On April 25, 1825, the Red Stick leader Menawa, and 120-150 Law Menders, from towns in the ceded territory, set McIntosh's house on fire.^[3] McIntosh escaped from the house with Etommee Tustunnuggee, another Creek chief who signed the 1825 treaty. They were killed by gunfire. Later that day, the Law Menders found the Hawkins brothers; they hanged Samuel and shot Benjamin, but he escaped.^[3]

Members of the National Council, including Menawa, went to Washington to protest the 1825 treaty. The US government rejected the 1825 treaty as fraudulent, and negotiated the 1826 Treaty of Washington, which allowed the Creek to keep about 3 million acres (12,000 km²) in Alabama.^[4] In this new treaty, the Creek received an immediate payment of $217,660 and a perpetual annuity of $20,000. The state of Georgia ignored the new treaty and worked to evict the Creek from their lands.

Notes

References

• « McIntosh, William, Jr. » in Hoxie, Frederick E. Encyclopedia of North American Indians Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996. ISBN 9780585077642
• Adapted from Carole E. Scott, "Chief William McIntosh", Rootsweb ©, with permission of the author.
• Benjamin W. Griffith, McIntosh and Weatherford, Creek Indian Leaders (University of Alabama Press, 1998) ISBN 0-8173-0340-5 (Page 238, 248, 249)
• "Captain William McIntosh", Floripedia

Further reading

• George Chapman, Chief William McIntosh: A Man of Two Worlds (Atlanta, 1988).
• R.S. Cotterill, The Southern Indians: The Story of the Civilized Tribes before Removal (Norman, Okla., 1954). This book introduced the idea of the Creek War as a civil war within a divided Indian nation (rather than a red-white race war).
• Ebenezer H. Cummins, A Summary Geography of Alabama, One of the United States (Philadelphia, 1819). This short book includes an example of the praise heaped on McIntosh during his lifetime by white admirers.
• Andrew K. Frank, Creeks and Southerners: Biculturalism on the Early American Frontier (Lincoln, Neb., 2005).
• Michael D. Green, The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1982
• Michael D. Green, "William McIntosh: The Evolution of a Creek National Idea", in The Human Tradition in the Old South, ed. James C. Klotter (Wilmington, Del., 2003).
• Benjamin Griffith, McIntosh and Weatherford, Creek Indian Leaders (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1988).
• Bert Hodges, "Notes on the History of the Creek Nation and Some of Its Leaders," Chronicles of Oklahoma 43 (1965): 9-18.
• Joel Martin, Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees’ Struggle for a New World (Boston, 1991). An interesting take on the Creek War as a religious struggle.
• John Bartlett Meserve, "The MacIntoshes" [sic], Chronicles of Oklahoma 10 (1932): 310-25.
• Royce Gordon Shingleton, "David Brydie Mitchell and the African Importation Case of 1820," Journal of Negro History 58 (3) (July 1973): 327-340. (McIntosh and Mitchell's activities as slave smugglers).
• Claudio Saunt, A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816 (Cambridge, 1999).
• Thomas S. Woodward, Woodward's Reminiscences of the Creek, or Muscogee Indians (Montgomery, 1859). Includes an admiring portrait of McIntosh's generalship by one who served under him.

Fiction

• Betty Collins Jones, Clouds across the Moon (Carrollton, Ga., 1991), romance novel.
• Billie Jane McIntosh, Ah-ko-kee, American Sovereign (Flagstaff, Ariz., 2002). (Written by a descendant, it is an imaginative romance novel starring one of William McIntosh's daughters, and should not be mistaken for history.)
• William Gilmore Simms, "The Broken Arrow," in The Book of My Lady: A Melange. By a Bachelor Knight (Philadelphia, 1833). A poem about McIntosh.

External links

• "William McIntosh", Encyclopedia of American Indians; password required.
• "William McIntosh", New Georgia Encyclopedia
• "William McIntosh", Encyclopedia of Alabama
• "McIntosh grave/marker"
•  "McIntosh, William". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.