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CHAPTER tinental regiment distributed at the posts along the Ohio, to march, should there be need, to the assistance of the 1789. Cherokees. At the same time, a new negotiation was directed with the Southern Indians, the Creeks as well as the Cherokees, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs to be joined for that purpose by commissioners from the states of North Carolina and Georgia. This vigorous interference of the expiring Continental Congress had the effect to put a stop to a project then on foot among the militia officers in the back counties of North Carolina, to raise fifteen hundred men for a new expedition against the Cherokees; the state authorities had exerted themselves to restore peace; and shortly after the June 16. meeting of the new Congress, a truce had been arranged, by which it was stipulated that a treaty should be held as soon as possible, all hostilities in the mean while to cease. Taking advantage of this truce, the Cherokees had hastened to send a delegation to New York, under the guidance of a friendly trader, to appeal to "their elder brother General Washington and the great council of the United States," to secure them in their rights under the treaty of Hopewell. But, as North Carolina had not yet acceded to the new Constitution, the Senate declined to recommend any immediate movement beyond a message to the Cherokees, promising full justice as soon as the obstacle growing out of the present position of North Carolina should be removed.

An Indian war, originating in similar causes, had also sprung up in Georgia; but the Creeks had been more fortunate than their northern neighbors. The Creek warriors, estimated at between four and five thousand, were mostly well armed with good rifles, and amply furnished with ammunition. In this respect, through the aid of the Spaniards in Florida, they had greatly the

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advantage of the Cherokees, whose fire-arms were poor CHAPTER and few, and their supply of powder limited and precarious. The upper Creeks dwelt principally on the upper 1789. waters of the Alabama; the lower Creeks on the Appalachicola and its two branches, the Chattahoochee and the Flint. The Seminoles, a branch of the lower Creeks, extended into Florida. The towns, or sub-tribes of the Creeks, including both divisions of the nation, were about eighty in number, but very different in population and importance, a few, called "mother towns," having the principal direction of affairs. The Creeks had the great advantage of an able and accomplished head chief in Alexander M'Gillivray, the son of a Creek woman of the family of the principal chiefs, by a Scotchman who, as a means of increasing his influence, had intermarried with her, according to a common practice among the Indian traders. Having been put to school at Charleston, where he learned Latin and acquired a tolerable education, the young M'Gillivray, at the age of seventeen, had been placed by his father in a counting-house. But, though not without capacity for mercantile affairs, he still devoted most of his time to reading and study. His father, who had large possessions in Georgia, adhering in the Revolution to the British side, had been banished, and his property confiscated; circumstances not likely to bias the son in favor of the Georgians. Taking refuge among the Creeks, the young M'Gillivray, as well by reason of his superior talents and knowledge as by his claims of birth, transmitted, according to the Indian custom, in the line of the mother, had risen to be the head chief, or, in the phraseology of the Creeks, "the beloved man" of the nation.

Shortly after the peace with Great Britain, the Georgians had, as they alleged, concluded a treaty at Augusta

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CHAPTER (Nov., 1783) with that great body of the Creek nation II. which had adhered to the British during the late strug1789. gle. This treaty, confirmed by two others the one of Galphinton (Nov., 1785), the other of Shoulderbone (Nov., 1786)—had ceded to Georgia a considerable tract of the Creek lands west and south of the Oconee. the Creeks denied the validity of these treaties, which, indeed, under the Articles of Confederation, the State of Georgia had no right to make, the management of Indian affairs being expressly reserved to the Continental Congress. According to the Creeks, the two pretended treaties of Augusta and Galphinton had been entered into, without any authority from the nation, by two or three border chiefs, who had maintained during the late war a neutrality and friendly intercourse with the Georgians. So far as related to the treaty of Galphinton, this account found support in the conduct of the United States commissioners, who had negotiated at Hopewell three cotemporaneous treaties with the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, but who had declined a journey to Galphinton to negotiate with the Creeks, for the express reason that only two chiefs were present there; a circumstance, however, which did not prevent the agent of Georgia from proceeding with the negotiation. As to the treaty of Shoulderbone, that had been imposed, so M'Gillivray alleged, by threats of personal violence, upon a council attended by a few chiefs only, the six hostages pretended by the Georgians to have been given for its fulfillment being in fact six prisoners forcibly seized.

The Georgians having hastened to distribute as military bounties the lands west and south of the Oconee alleged to be thus ceded, and new settlers having moved on to occupy them, the Creeks had resented what they deemed an intrusion; a war had followed (1787), and

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notwithstanding the efforts of the late Continental Con- CHAPTER gress to bring about an arrangement, it was still carried on, the Creeks insisting on the restoration of their land. 1789. In this war the Georgians had suffered severely, and the alarm had spread even to the town of Savannah. was among the victorious Creeks that the defeated Cherokees had found refuge. The Georgians had called on the neighboring states for assistance, but without much effect, and it was the hope of aid from the new federal government which had prompted so speedy a ratification by Georgia of the Federal Constitution. These hostilities had not been confined to Georgia alone, but had extended to the distant and isolated settlements about Nashville, which had suffered not a little from occasional inroads of the Creeks.

For more than a century the Creeks had been allies of the Anglo-Americans and enemies of the Spaniards. These same relations they were still disposed to maintain; but, finding the Georgians hostile, they had entered into a close alliance with the Spanish government, lately re-established in Florida. A mercantile firm, in which M'Gillivray was a partner, supplied them with goods, introduced through that province, on which the Spanish government allowed a partial remission of duties. The Creeks consumed annually about $50,000 worth of European goods, paid for in furs and skins. M'Gillivray was much courted by the Spanish governor of Florida, and was said to have a commission as colonel in the military service of Spain. Having it thus in their power to obtain ready supplies of arms and ammunition, the Creeks were much more formidable enemies than the interior and ill-armed Cherokees.

Both these confederacies had made some steps in advance of their original savage state. Though still, for

CHAPTER the most part, hunters, they cultivated considerable crops II. of corn and sweet potatoes; they had cattle and horses, 1789. and a few slaves, refugees from their white neighbors, or captured in war. Lately, in some instances, they had introduced the use of the plow.

An appropriation being made by the new Congress to meet the expense of that renewed negotiation with the Southern Indians which the Continental Congress had ordered, Washington had appointed as commissioners for that purpose General Lincoln, Colonel Humphreys, and David Griffin, late president of Congress, and afterward district judge of Virginia, all purposely selected from states having no relations with the southern tribes. These commissioners were instructed to investigate the history of the three treaties between Georgia and the Creeks, and if they should appear to have been fairly made, to endeavor to induce the Indians to conform to them, being authorized to hold out, in the last resort, the threat of war on the part of the United States. Should it appear that the treaties were of such a character that the United States could not sustain them consistently with justice, the commissioners were to endeavor to obtain by a new treaty the tract west of the Oconee, which, being already occupied by settlers, could not be relinquished without great inconvenience. Arrangements had already been made by the Indian agent for holding a treaty with the Creeks at Rock Landing, on the Oconee, and there, at the time Sept. 20. appointed, the commissioners met M'Gillivray and the other principal chiefs. They were received with great marks of friendship, the Indians being disposed to grant to the agents of the United States the same tokens of respect hitherto yielded to the British Indian agents, and to substitute the President of the United States as their

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