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previous: Chapter 4 This webpage reproduces a chapter of The Southern Indians by R. S. Cotterill University of Oklahoma Press Norman, Oklahoma, 1954 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 6

 p100  V
A Time of Indecision

It is not likely that McGillivray himself would have classified as "untoward" that Creek-Chickasaw war which he had done nothing to avoid and much to provoke. But to Spain and the United States, to Panton, Leslie and Company, and to the Northern Indians the war was both an embarrassment and a threat. The United States deplored it because of the probability that the naïve Chickasaws might expect more tangible evidence of the friendship that the United States had been so profusely professing as a substitute for material assistance, and so involve the nation in a southern war at the very time it needed all its energies for the northern one. Spain disliked it because it was manifestly impossible to complete an Indian confederation while two of the prospective allies were earnestly trying to destroy each other. Moreover, the United States might use the war as a pretext for extending its power in the South at Spanish expense. Panton viewed the war as a nuisance interrupting his Indian trade, while the Northern Indians feared that the Creeks would become so engrossed in the delights of killing their neighbors that they would neglect the greater but more remote opportunities in the Northwest.

By way of implementing their earlier proposals made through Dragging Canoe and Taski Etoka, the Northwestern Indians in the fall of 1792 had sent south an accredited delegation of nine Shawnees and a white man to secure formal pledges of aid from  p101 the Southern tribes. These had spent the winter among the Five Towns, probably with their brethren at Running Water, where they doubtless enjoyed the seasonal activities of hunting and raiding the Cumberlands.⁠1 Early in January they had gone on to the Lower Creeks accompanied by a number of Cherokee chiefs and warriors.⁠2 Although they came earlier than was expected and in the absence of McGillivray, the chiefs received them with all the formalities prescribed by intertribal etiquette, built a new "square" for them near Broken Arrow, and appointed times for their talks, February 18 at Coweta for the Lower Creeks and March 7 at Tuckabatchee for the Upper.⁠3 The scarcity of food in the Creek larder, not yet recovered from the famine of 1792, rendered the entertainment of the ambassadors an embarrassing problem until Welbank, although his own supply line from the Bahamas had been cut by the Spaniards, managed by some commercial legerdemain to secure stores from Pensacola. These, with a modicum of arms and ammunition, he distributed among the diplomats through the agency of Little Prince, chief of Broken Arrow.⁠4

It is evident that while the "broken days" (the Indians on calling a meeting sent to those summoned as many little sticks as there were days before the conference and the recipients broke a stick each day)⁠a were running, the Shawnees were interspersing among their feasting and hunting activities a considerable bit of private missionary work. Word of this activity caused Agent Seagrove such acute mental distress that he boldly resolved to interfere, provided it could be done by proxy. Continuing his preference for performing the duties of his agency by correspondence  p102 rather than by personal exposure, he wrote from Georgia to his agents among the Creeks, directing them to kill or capture the Shawnees, adding, by way of incentive, that he would pay a pack load of goods for a captive, half a pack for a scalp.⁠5 That lieutenants of Seagrove, fearing the effect on the Creeks of introducing such advanced ideas into their untutored conceptions of diplomatic usage, refrained from carrying out their instructions, with the result that in due season the Shawnee orators delivered their talks to the Lower Creek council in the name of the thirty-three tribes they claimed to represent. They urged the Creeks to make common cause with them against the Americans; the British had promised supplies; the Creeks should attack Georgia and the Cumberlands as a diversion; and they should send direct aid to the Northwest.⁠6 In answer to these pleas, the Lower Creek meeting took no official action, but most of the towns decided for war.⁠7 With the Upper Creeks, the Shawnees seem to have had no such success, their talk being accepted by only two of the towns. Mad Dog, chief of Tuckabatchee and leading chief of the tribe since McGillivray's death, was presumably trying to continue McGillivray's policy of keeping the war against the Americans unofficial and, as far as possible, inactive. Moreover, since his brother and nephew had been killed by Piomingo's party, the Chickasaw war as a war of revenge took precedence over an American war that was merely a war for principle.

As the Tuckabatchee meeting was ending, a small body of Lower Creeks raided the store of Robert Seagrove (brother of  p103 the agent) on the St. Marys, killed six men, and carried off a considerable quantity of merchandise for home consumption. The possibly sagging morale of the Shawnees was apparently so restored by this action that they remained another month in the congenial atmosphere before departing for the Cherokees. Although the hospitality of the Creeks had possibly felt the strain of a three-months' visit, it is difficult to believe, as the Americans fondly reported, that they accelerated the departure of their guests by putting a price on their heads.

Back among the Lower Cherokees, the Shawnees found that housing facilities had been increased by the building of a new square for them at Running Water. Agent Shaw, having become antagonistic to Blount (presumably at the instigation of Shaw's Cherokee wife), had departed for Philadelphia with the ostensible purpose of regaining their lost land for the Cherokees, pledging the Cherokees to a seventy-five-day truce while he was absent.⁠8 This truce the Cherokees were faithfully observing — except toward Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Kentucky, and the Territory South of the River Ohio. With a desire to negotiate some measure of reconciliation between theory and practice, Secretary of War Knox had urged Blount to send Watts, Little Turkey, and other chiefs to Philadelphia to visit President Washington, reasoning that the Cherokees would feel constrained to keep the peace as long as their chiefs were in American hands. At the time of the Shawnees' return, Watts (with the same reasoning) was busy evading this invitation, being reluctant to interrupt the local indulgence in the simple pleasures of murder and arson.

In a general meeting of both Upper and Lower Cherokees at Willstown on May 13, the Shawnees gave their formal talks, after which the chiefs debated what they should do. It is probable that the opposition to war shown by Little Turkey was sincere and was due, in part at least, to a message sent him by Mad Dog. After the meeting, Little Turkey wrote to Alexander McKee that the nation had declared for war, and to Blount that the nation was  p104 for peace.⁠9 These mutually contradictory statements were both true since the Cherokee Nation had completely mastered the art of keeping the nation officially out of a war in which its every constituent part was participating. As a matter of fact, the Lower Cherokees had for many weeks been streaming to the Northwest without in any way ditching their more local depredations. Immediately after the meeting, the Shawnees, accompanied by Welbank, set out for the Maumee Rapids, where the Northwestern Indians were waiting to receive their report before holding a conference with the Americans.⁠10

In the meantime the Creek-Chickasaw war had continued with increasing verbal intensity, but, thanks to the peace efforts of the Spaniards, without any hostile contact between the belligerents. The Chickasaws, too weak to take the field, had fortified themselves in their towns after the fashion formerly taught them by the English, and, while awaiting the attack which the Creeks were too wary to deliver, had made the expected appeal to the United States for help. James Robertson, their agent, was limited to the sending of food, but enlarged the definition of the term to include such guns and ammunition as he could collect. Wayne sent them a greater supply by water to Chickasaw Bluffs, including in the cargo a quantity of paint and whiskey.⁠11 It was the official attitude of the United States that these supplies were not furnished for war purposes, but solely to encourage the Chickasaws in the normal pursuits of peace. The Creeks, however, hearing about the transaction and apparently distrusting the Chickasaw capacity for discrimination, protested vigorously to  p105 the president.⁠12 As a substitute for supplies of which he was destitute, Seagrove gave the Creeks encouragement to prosecute a war which he hoped might distract their hostile attentions from the Georgians.

Under such conditions the Spaniards, unencouraged and unassisted, strove persistently, if not altruistically, for peace. Since Piomingo was invulnerable to argument, they employed the less subtle method of withholding supplies from his partisans and of undermining his authority among his people. In both respects they had a power­ful weapon in Panton, Leslie and Company. American supplies, open or clandestine, were insufficient to enable Piomingo to prosecute the war, and he could secure more neither from Panton at Mobile nor from Turnbull at Los Nogales.⁠13 The resulting discomfort among Piomingo's followers made them vulnerable to the representations of his rivals. The chief of these was Ugula Yacabe (Wolf's Friend), a war chief second in authority and influence only to Piomingo himself, a devoted follower of Taski Etoka, and a friend and confident of Villebeuvre, the Spanish commissary among the Choctaws and Chickasaws. His efforts were power­fully seconded by the Colberts, who had been associated with Panton in the English regime.⁠14 They gained such an ascendancy that, in June, Ugula Yacabe, presumably with the approval of the tribal council, sent peace talks to the Creeks.⁠15

Among the Creeks, the Spaniards had to contend only against the feeble seductions of Seagrove and the determination of Mad Dog. Upon McGillivray's death the Spaniards rejected, apparently with wisdom, Panton's advice to name McGillivray's brother-in‑law (Milfort) regent of the tribe until McGillivray's son should  p106 come of age, but relied on Olivier and such chiefs as they could influence to hold the tribe steady in its alliance with Spain. But the mantle of McGillivray fell neither on Milfort nor on Olivier but on Mad Dog, who, whether by formal election or by tacit consent, assumed the duties of head chief. Mad Dog had been in McGillivray's confidence and inherited the dead leader's animosity toward the Chickasaws as well as his lack of faith in a general Indian confederation. These factors and his own personal resentment against Piomingo made him the chief obstacle in the way of Spanish peace efforts. But Carondelet persevered. In May he sent Olivier to the Chickasaws to second the peace efforts of Ugula Yacabe; at his direction Milfort (so he said) recalled a Creek army of twelve hundred which had started for the Chickasaw country, and Panton went up into the Creek country from Pensacola with the threat of cutting off supplies.⁠16 Yet when the overtures of Ugula Yacabe came to the Creek council on June 4, 1793, they were rejected, and the "war" went on for another month before the Spaniards were able to effect an uneasy peace.⁠17

The Creek council of June 4, which rejected the Chickasaw peace overtures, also considered the question of Creek representation in the conference of the four nations proposed for perfecting the Indian confederation discussed the preceding year. Mad Dog opposed a conference as unrealistic, asking Olivier, in hope or derision, if Piomingo would be present. The opposition of the Cornells probably indicated only that they were in the pay of Seagrove. Some of the chiefs, objecting to going so far, suggested that the meeting be held on the Tombigbee, where the Creeks would not be so exposed to a corrupt Choctaw environment. In any case, the council decided that the Creeks could attend no conference at all until after they had celebrated their feast of the ripe corn.⁠18

 p107  The Choctaws also developed scruples about sitting in conference with Creeks and Cherokees, who might be expected, judging from past performances, to steal all the horses and other property of the Choctaws while the conference was in progress.⁠19 These indications of an incomplete spiritual accord between Creeks and Choctaws caused Carondelet to consider the holding of two conferences, one at Los Nogales for the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and another at Mobile for Creeks and Cherokees. But evidently reasoning that segregation was an insecure foundation for concerted action, he finally called on all four tribes to meet together at Los Nogales in October.⁠20

A preliminary step toward the contemplated confederation had been taken on May 10, 1793, when the pequeña partida (eastern division) of the Choctaws ceded to Spain the land on the Tombigbee (where the French had formerly erected Fort Tombecbe), whereon Spain should build a storehouse and a fort for the common security.⁠21 In the general meeting of the four tribes held at Los Nogales October 28, 1793, neither Bloody Fellow nor Taski Etoka, the two architects of confederation, was present. The Chickasaw delegation, led by Ugula Yacabe, apparently included no chief of the Piomingo faction. The Cherokees, openly avowing the superior attraction of their war against the Americans, had commissioned the Creeks to represent them. The four chiefs representing the Creeks had been named by Olivier, and none of them was of the highest rank; it is uncertain whether this was an evidence of lack of enthusiasm or of reluctance to risk the lives of their head chiefs among their prospective allies. Franchimastabe led the large Choctaw delegation, which included the head chiefs of the three divisions. By the terms of the treaty here made, the Cherokees joined the other three nations under the protection of Spain, and the four formed an alliance, offensive and defensive, among themselves and with Spain, which  p108 power was to mediate with the United States the question of Indian boundaries.⁠22

In the sequel, if not in the design, this power of mediation was the most significant article of the treaty. Spain had supported the Indians against the United States primarily as a means of increasing their dependence on Spain: now Indian hostilities were no longer necessary to insure a dependence already confirmed by formal treaty. Consequently, Spain made prompt use of her power of mediation to end the Creek and Cherokee attacks, which, if continued, might have involved both Indians and Spaniards in a full-scale war with the United States. The first effects were seen among the Creeks, whom Panton and Olivier encouraged in inviting a visit from Agent Seagrove.

The expectation of President Washington that Seagrove would be a resident agent had remained unrealized because of Seagrove's fear (perhaps not unjustified) of assassination if he entered the Creek country. After McGillivray's death Seagrove on three separate occasions fixed a date for visiting his charges, and each time felt forced to postpone it because of hostile encounters between Creeks and Georgians.⁠23 Unable to condone such a solicitude for continued existence in a mere agent, the War Department gradually became restive and, after a series of ineffective hints, gave him positive orders to enter the Creek country.⁠24

Delaying only long enough to solicit and receive from the Creeks a bodyguard of 130 friendly chiefs and warriors, Seagrove on November 5 set out from Fort Fidius on the Altamaha and in due season came to the peace town, Cusseta. Warmly welcomed here, he went on to Tuckabatchee, where Mad Dog had called a meeting of the National Council. Here he was met and welcomed by Olivier and delivered his talk to the nation. He remained in Creek country until April 25, 1794, living with Olivier at Little  p109 Tallassie and always under close guard, ostensibly to prevent malcontents from hampering his labors by assassination. One may suspect that the tales of homicidal intent were concocted by the Creeks in order to justify their watchfulness; and that, under the pretense of guarding him as an ambassador, they were in reality detaining him as a hostage. In his long sojourn, his polite hosts made elaborate agreements with him for an exchange of prisoners, a surrender of criminals, and even a restoration of stolen horses. On the question of trade and of marking the boundary, the Creeks evaded any commitments, having been advised by Panton and Olivier to be at peace with the Americans but to yield neither trade nor territory. When Seagrove finally departed in April, 1794, after several real or pretended attempts on his life, he left behind him Timothy Barnard as his deputy among the Upper Creeks and James Jordan among the Lower. Upon his return the Georgia militia, always dependable, negatived all his work for peace by attacking the Indian delegation which accompanied him.⁠25

The attainment of peace between Cherokees and Americans was more arduous because of their accumulated bitterness and their mutual inability to control their irresponsible people. The first of these irresponsible acts after the Willstown meeting came in June, 1793, when some of the territorial militia under Captain John Beard, in direct violation of instructions from Governor Blount, attacked a friendly group of chiefs gathered at Coyatee for the purpose of arranging their long-deferred trip to Philadelphia. In this act of unrelieved villainy, Hanging Maw, war chief of the Upper Cherokees, was gravely wounded; but John Watts, war chief of the Lower Cherokees, led his vengeful warriors in a series of retaliatory raids so damaging that in October, 1794, Brigadier General John Sevier himself felt constrained to invade the accessible territory of the Lower Cherokees in Georgia, where he burned several towns, including  p110 Oostanaula.⁠26 It was in November after, although not in consequence of, this visitation that a delegation of Cherokee chiefs, including Little Turkey, John Watts, and Bloody Fellow, went to Los Nogales, where in an intertribal conference they formally signed the confederation treaty of the month before.⁠27 It seems likely from the personnel of the delegation that it went to solicit from the Spaniards aid, not in making war, but in making peace. Certainly, it was peace that Carondelet enjoined on them. On their return they brought a commission as commissary to John McDonald, whom the Spaniards hoped to use in controlling trade and promoting peace in the same way that they were using Olivier among the Creeks.⁠28

In the execution of his twofold duties, McDonald was confronted with many difficulties. The supplies, which by the treaty of 1793 the Cherokees were to receive through Pensacola, were by April, 1794, beginning to grow scanty as a result of depredations on Spanish shipping by French privateers subsequent to the British-Spanish alliance on May, 1793. But the same alliance that brought this embarrassment to Spain also extricated her from it when in July, 1794, the British sent in supply ships to Pensacola.⁠29

The first faint promise of peace appeared in June, 1794, when as a result of deceit, caprice, ambition, war weariness, or Spanish counsel, a Lower Cherokee delegation led by Doublehead, accepting a renewed invitation from Blount, visited Philadelphia. In a series of amicable conferences with Knox, they promised peace and received, in deferred (and probably uncontemplated) payment  p111 for the land ceded at Hopewell, an increase in the Cherokee annuity from $1,500 to $5,000. The advance collection of this money engendered in the delegation such a strong, although temporary, enthusiasm for the possibilities of peace that they returned in late October with the intention of not again going to war.⁠30 While Doublehead was absent, two events occurred that may have inclined the Cherokee heart to an acceptance of the peace (with increased pay) which he had negotiated. One of these was the news of Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers and the subsequent collapse of Indian resistance in the Northwest.⁠31 The other was the destruction of Nickajack and Running Water by a combined force of Territorial and Kentucky volunteers in September.⁠32 On November 7, 1794, practically all the chiefs of the Upper and Lower Cherokees met Governor Blount at Tellico Blockhouse in a conference confirming the peace.⁠33 The absence of Doublehead from this conference was probably to avoid embarrassing inquiries about the nondistribution of the $5,000 he had brought back with him.

To the United States in 1793 and 1794, the Creeks and Cherokees had given peace but nothing more. Both tribes remained bound to Spain not merely by formal alliance but by the stronger  p112 ties of trade. The Creeks, under the careful tutoring of McGillivray, had never admitted American trade, while the exclusive trading rights granted to the United States by the Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws had stimulated that nation only to a profusion of promises and preparations. Until 1794 the United States had been content to copy the British Indian organization without any subsequent effort to make it function; it made provision for licensed traders but neglected to grant them any licenses. The modicum of trade brought in illegitimately and clandestinely by unlicensed traders only served to impress on the Indians their practically entire dependence on Panton, Leslie and Company for the supplies necessary to maintain that high standard of living and fighting which they had adopted from their white neighbors. Panton, indeed, by 1794 had eliminated all competition except a few unlicensed traders among the Cherokees and Chickasaws, and Turnbull among the Choctaws; the latter he was preparing to drive out by establishing a store at the mouth of the Yazoo.⁠34 He was confident he could overcome any private competition, but was dismayed on learning from Washington's message to Congress in December, 1793, that the United States was contemplating an establishment of government stores for the Indian trade. In the last two years the Panton interests had survived the depredation of Bowles, the death of McGillivray, the capture of ships by French privateers, the competition of Turnbull, and the devastation of Spanish red tape. Panton reflected, sadly and erroneously, that he could not meet this last blow of government competition. He wrote to Carondelet on May 2, 1794, proposing that Spain either buy out the firm for $400,000 or make it a loan of that sum for ten years without interest.⁠35

The evident reluctance of Congress to accept Washington's repeated suggestions for establishing government stores was due more to its dislike of the socialistic flavor of the proposition than to any knowledge Congress had that such a measure had once  p113 been tried by South Carolina and had dismally failed. By the act of March 3, 1795, Congress strained its philosophy to the extent of appropriating $50,000 for the purchase of trade goods to be sold in that year to Indians within the limits of the United States. The avowed purpose of this act was to secure control of the Indians by controlling their trade; and since it was the Southern Indians who were the most restive, Washington decided to expend the entire appropriation in the South. Accordingly, a beginning was made with the Creeks and Cherokees, who were at once the most dangerous and the most accessible, by establishing "factories" (stores) at Tellico Blockhouse and at Colerain. But the quantity of trade goods had been so depleted by the demands of the Greenville treaty and the Cherokee annuities that it was not until the fall of 1795, when new supplies came from England, that merchandise could be sent to either factory.⁠36

The placid assumption by the United States that the Tellico factory would serve the Chickasaws as well as the Cherokees ignored not only such realities as distance and tribal animosities, but also the aggressive steps being taken by Carondelet and Panton to extend their control over Chickasaw affairs. Taski Etoka had died in 1794 and had been succeeded by his brother Tinebe, who was closely allied to Ugula Yacabe and was even more pro-Spanish than his predecessor had been.⁠37 From him and other chiefs of the anti-Piomingo faction, the Spaniards secured a grant of land at Chickasaw Bluffs, where in May, 1795, they erected Fort San Fernando de las Barrancas. This measure, inspired by the threat of the new Yazoo companies, extended Spanish trade as well as Spanish influence because Panton, apparently recovering from his earlier dejection, now established a store at the Bluffs and thus increased his monopoly of Chickasaw trade.⁠38

The building of Fort San Fernando was the final effort of  p114 Spain's Anglo-American officials in their apparently success­ful struggle to dominate the territory disputed with the United States and, as a step toward that domination, to control the Indians resident therein. It is one of the ironies of history that the Treaty of San Lorenzo (Pinckney's Treaty), which made all their efforts vain, came at a time when these efforts seemed most likely to succeed. The mass of Southern Indians had perhaps never understood what was involved in the dispute of Spain and the United States over territory which both conceded to belong to the Indians themselves. But all Southern Indians realized that the Treaty of San Lorenzo ended their alliance with Spain and that for the future they could depend on Spain neither for support against encroachment nor for mediation in their quarrels with the United States. To the Choctaws and Chickasaws, this Spanish support was of only theoretical importance, since neither had white neighbors near nor any boundary in dispute. But to the Cherokees it meant acquiescence in the American interpretation of the Hopewell line, and to the Creeks, the execution of the long-evaded provisions of the Treaty of New York.

The handwriting on the wall became visible to the Creeks in the spring of 1796, when messengers arrived from Agent Seagrove summoning them to Colerain for a treaty with United States commissioners Benjamin Hawkins, Andrew Perkins, and George Clymer. Had the Creeks known that the United States had been prodded into this treaty by the Georgians and that Georgia commissioners were to be present, it is unlikely that their desire to placate the United States or their long-suppressed yearning for free rations would have led them to accept.⁠39 When on their arrival at Colerain they found the Georgia agents there accompanied by a considerable number of Georgia militia, they no doubt applauded their own perspicacity in storing meat supplies along the route to facilitate their return. But the United  p115 States commissioners, by pla­cing a federal guard around the Creek camp, prevented the militia from exercising its customary diplomatic influence and so enwrapped the Georgia agents in the coils of proto­col that they felt constrained to withdraw to their ship. Under such conditions the Creeks were emboldened to give an emphatic and derisive rejection to the inept demands of the Georgians for a land cession. To the commissioners they expressed their willingness to carry out the terms of the Treaty of New York, objecting only to the commissioners' contention that the boundary line followed the Apalachee fork of the Oconee. Before the inflexible attitude of the commissioners, they finally conceded the point, and on July 29, 1796, having protracted their oratory and eaten American food for twelve days, they signed the treaty.⁠40

Supplies for the Creeks during the negotiations had been furnished from the government factory at Colerain, which had finally opened for business in January, 1796, after a considerable delay in the erection of a storehouse and the gathering of goods. The commissioners explained to the assembled Indians the arrangements that the government had made for their welfare provided they paid higher prices for what they got, paid for it in cash, and came for it themselves. This "felicity," the commissioners explained, the Creeks could expect to be permanent, since Congress by an act of April 18, 1796, had appropriated $150,000 as a revolving capital for the Indian trade and had authorized the President to establish factories on the Indian frontier wherever he found it desirable.⁠41 In response to a suggestion from the commissioners, the Creeks ceded a tract of land, five miles square, on the Indian side of the Oconee, to which the factory should be removed from  p116 Colerain. This amiable conduct on the part of the Creeks was caused neither by their elation over the $6,000 they received for the tract nor by any enthusiasm for a cash-and‑carry system of commerce but to the condition of their trade, which was at times precarious. The imminence of war between Great Britain and Spain made it difficult for Panton to keep his traders supplied, and trade with the Americans had made only a modest beginning. Seagrove began granting trading licenses in 1796, but both the licensed traders and the many unlicensed ones had difficulty getting supplies. The factory was forbidden to sell to traders.⁠42

The comparatively small attendance of the Upper Creeks at Colerain had been due in part to the counter attraction of a new war with the Chickasaws. This war had begun in January, 1795, when a party of Chickasaws on a visit to Nashville presented to Robertson five Creek scalps, which they had lifted from their respective possessors on Duck River. Anticipating Creek disapproval of their action, the Chickasaws asked Robertson for aid, which Robertson gave with some manifest uneasiness over the correctness of his attitude. In addition to supplying other munitions of war, Robertson encouraged the recruiting of men in the Cumberland settlements to such effect that when a Creek invading column reached the Chickasaw towns, there were some fifty Americans present to aid in the success­ful defense. Meanwhile, the Spaniards, as in the former war, worked actively for peace; Gayoso, at Los Nogales, in the latter part of May sent an agent to the Chickasaw king, who readily agreed to the ending of a war which he had not begun and in which he had not participated. A resulting peace overture from the Chickasaws in June was accepted by the Creeks in July without materially affecting the  p117 course of hostilities, since in neither the proposals nor the acceptance did the factions at war take any part. The Chickasaws, too weak to take the field even with American assistance, kept within their fortified towns, from which in September they beat off another Creek attack led by Mad Dog. Meanwhile, William Colbert applied to Blount for aid and, being refused, went on to Philadelphia, where the new Secretary of State and War, Timothy Pickering, gave him scant sympathy. Pickering, in fact, had already written Blount and Robertson a scathing reprimand of their conduct, blaming the Chickasaws for provoking the war and peremptorily ordering Blount to mediate. Blount called the Creeks to meet him at Tellico on October 10, and in November sent the trader J. D. Chisholm to them. Mad Dog agreed to peace and sent proposals to the Chickasaws by Chisholm, as a result of which a truce was arranged pending a meeting of the two parties with Blount at Knoxville. After these amenities had been observed the war went on as before.⁠43

In December, 1796, the Creeks were surprised by a visit from Benjamin Hawkins in his new capacity as "principal temporary agent" of Southern Indians, to which position he had been appointed on December 1, 1796, thereby taking on the duties, without the title, of superintendent.⁠44 The Creeks welcomed him so warmly that he remained among them for three months, getting  p118 acquainted with his charges, discouraging the war against the Chickasaws, and inquiring into the state of their trade, which he noted (without any indication of disapproval) was almost completely monopolized by Panton.⁠45 The visit with the Creeks was, however, merely a prelude to Hawkins' immediate business, the running and marking of the Cherokee and Creek boundaries as specified in the act of May 19, 1796. Accordingly, late in March he set out from the Creek country for Tellico, where on April 1 he was to meet Andrew Pickens and James Winchester, who had been named to assist him. In his subsequent efforts in the Cherokee country, he was aided by the Cherokees and opposed by the white squatters, neither of whom seems to have learned from experience that the sequel to encroachment was not removal but cession.⁠46

Cherokee disgruntlement, minor in comparison with their active antagonism of former years, was revealed to Hawkins in a conference at Tuskegee on April 25. Here, without success and probably without expectations, the Cherokees protested the American interpretation of the Hopewell line and the decadent condition of the merchandise sold them at the factory. The factory goods, hauled in wagons from Philadelphia through the long valley of Virginia, as a rule reached Tellico Blockhouse appreciably diminished in quantity and deteriorated in quality. Notwithstanding their dissatisfaction with the goods and the high prices, the Cherokees had been compelled to resort to the factory for much of their supplies, since the private traders, licensed and unlicensed, were unable to bring in adequate supplies and Panton,  p119 Leslie and Company had withdrawn from the Cherokee trade.⁠47 In October, 1796, Panton had sent his junior partner, John Forbes, from Mobile to Knoxville to liquidate the firm's Cherokee business and to arrange for collecting the debts due — which amounted to about $3,000; apparently his efforts received the co‑operation of the factory officials.⁠48

At the Tuskegee conference the Cherokees protested against the activities of Zachariah Cox, expressed their apprehension over the Creek-Chickasaw war, and voiced their bewilderment over the "Blount conspiracy." The moribund project of establishing a settlement at Muscle Shoals had been revived as a result of a second sale by Georgia of her western lands in January, 1795, to four land companies, one of which was the Tennessee Company, headed by the unsavory Cox.⁠49 As a result of the Cherokee protests, reinforced by Choctaw and Chickasaw expostulations, Hawkins gave Cox such a decided warning that it undoubtedly contributed to his abandonment of the project, thus preserving the Muscle Shoals region as a bone of contention among Creeks, Cherokees, and Chickasaws for another quarter-century. As a method of settling the Creek-Chickasaw war, which was still rumbling along, Hawkins, after persuading the Creek council to adopt resolutions for peace, arranged to have a conference of the four tribes in Cherokee territory in August under the supervision of Silas Dinsmoor, Shaw's successor as Cherokee agent. The Chickasaws had appealed to Hawkins for aid, which Hawkins  p120 refused. On June 14, 1797, he dismissed James Robertson as Chickasaw and Choctaw agent for the given reason that Robertson was unable to reside among the Indians. In the following August he placed them under the Choctaw agent, Samuel Mitchell, whom he appointed at that time. With the Treaty of San Lorenzo the Choctaws, because of their position, assumed more importance in the eyes of the American government and the Chickasaw relatively less. The Chickasaws had other reasons for worry for, although Panton had not removed his store from Chickasaw Bluffs when the Spaniards abandoned their fort there in the spring of 1777, it was scantily stocked and the Chickasaws were still forced to get most of their supplies from Mobile. The $3,000 in annuity goods which Piomingo had gleaned from the United States on the occasion of his visit to Philadelphia in 1794, however gratifying as a mark of friendship, so increased in value in the course of the long journey to Nashville that there was little to be distributed. Private traders, lacking in altruism, charged even higher prices than did either the American government or Panton, Leslie and Company.⁠50

The tentacles of Blount's conspiracy were reaching out in the spring of 1797 to ensnare not only the Cherokees but all the Southern Indians. When Chisholm, Blount's emissary to the Creeks and Chickasaws in 1795, returned to the Cherokee country after the failure of his ostensible mission, he bore a petition signed by a number of British traders among the Indians asking that they be made citizens of the United States. If the petition was not granted, the traders had plans for arousing the Indians to an attack on the Spanish Floridas, and, after their conquest, for setting up a new government there under British protection. In the fall of 1796, Chisholm presented the petition at Philadelphia, to which place he, as interpreter, had accompanied a group of sight-seeing Indians, including John Watts and James Carey of the Cherokees, Malcolm McGee and George Colbert of the Chickasaws, and John Pitchlynn of the Choctaws. After a cold reception by the government, Chisholm had approached the British ambassador without receiving any encouragement and, after a conference  p121 with Blount (then a senator from Tennessee), had sailed to England to solicit British aid. His plans, originated by himself, Blount, or the traders, called for a simultaneous attack on New Orleans by the Choctaws and on Pensacola by the Creeks and Cherokees. In his absence Blount attempted through Carey certain overtures to the Cherokee chiefs. But Carey proved unable to keep the matter secret, with the result that on July 8, 1797, he was haled before a justice and acrimoniously questioned by Hawkins, Byers (the factory manager), Dinsmoor, and Henley (agent of the War Department). With his revelations the fantastic project evaporated. It is impossible to say how many chiefs had been solicited or how deeply they were involved.⁠51

The failure of Hawkins to visit the Chickasaws in 1797 indicated, possibly, his disapproval of their current conduct; his abstention from Choctaw affairs was no doubt due to a prudent decision to avoid conflict with the Spaniards, who in the summer of 1797 had not yet retired from their posts in the Choctaw country. In October, thoroughly tired by his physical and spiritual exertions among the demanding Cherokees, he went once more to Cusseta, where he intended to reside in order to give his personal attention to the Creeks. The only matter of moment that seemed to require his intervention was the Creek-Chickasaw war, which was lumbering on despite all the efforts to stop it. On October 27 he met the Lower Towns chiefs at Coweta, where Tussekiah Mico reported on his peace mission to the Chickasaw king. The peace arranged by the intertribal conference in August had lasted only until the Upper Creek towns had an opportunity to attack, and it was unlikely that the Chickasaws would fail to retaliate. The Lower Creek council sent Mucklassee Mico to the Chickasaws in an effort to forestall further hostilities by confirming the peace. The Chickasaw war was an Upper Creek matter and so could be viewed by the Lower Towns with considerable detachment. But when Hawkins began to hint at a cession of Creek lands east of  p122 the Ocmulgee, all the Creek objectivity abruptly disappeared, and their refusal was so blunt that the principal temporary agent abandoned the project. After employing his leisure time in replenishing the organization of his department, Hawkins on December 6 set out for Fort Wilkinson, whence he went on in January to run the New York treaty line.⁠52

The ability of the Cherokees to withstand pressure proved less than that of the Creeks. As a result of a memorial from the infant and self-assertive state of Tennessee, President Adams appointed commissioners to secure from the Cherokees such a land cession as would restore their lands to trespassers dispossessed by the Holston treaty, and would amplify the then attenuated figure of white holding in the state. In justified anticipation of opposition, the commissioners were given several alternative demands they might present, the last being to get whatever they could. This last proved to be the only practicable procedure. The Cherokees, indeed, when they reluctantly met the commissioners at Tellico Blockhouse in June, refused to make any cession at all. But at an adjourned meeting in September, they relented to the extent of ceding a tract west of the Clinch and two others east of the Tennessee. The official records do not reveal the methods by which this change of heart was brought about.⁠53

---

The Author's Notes:

1 Hamer, "The British in Canada," loc. cit. The "white" man may have been a Canadian or one of the Cherokees from the Scioto band.

2 John Watts said (Indian Affairs, I, 447) that the Shawnees were accompanied to the Creeks by Glass, Turkey, Dick Justice, Hovalta, Charley, Water Hunter, Breath, Drunkard, Doublehead, Person Stricker, Spider, Chuluch, and an interpreter.

3 McGillivray, writing to Carondelet, January 15, 1793, said the Shawnees were expected in the spring (Caughey, McGillivray, 351‑53). Their reception by the Creeks is described by Thomas Carey to Blount, March 20, 1793 (Indian Affairs, I, 435‑36).

4 Hamer, "British in Canada," loc. cit. Welbank when the Shawnees arrived, was at the mouth of the Ochlocknee building warehouses for the supplies expected from Nassau.

5 At the conference with the Creeks in November, 1792, Seagrove had arranged with a number of Indian and half-bloods to keep him informed about Creek events. Among these were James Holmes, Timothy Barnard, Jack Kinnaird, the Cornells, Little Prince of Broken Arrow, and the White Lieutenant of Okfuskee. Seagrove's correspondence with these about the Shawnees is given in Indian Affairs, I, 375ff.

6 Welbank, who was present at the Lower Creek meeting, distrusted the Shawnee statement about British aid and asked the chiefs to defer action until he could go to Sandusky to verify it. It is evident from Hamer, "British in Canada," loc. cit., that no responsible British official had made any such promise.

7 Cusseta, a traditional "white" (peace) town was openly for peace with the Americans. The chief hostile towns were Coweta, Broken Arrow, Ossitchie, and Euchee. The two hostile towns among the Upper Creeks were Coolome and Tallassie, where the Tame King, Opothle Mico, was still incensed over his imprisonment at Shoulderbone.

8 Indian Affairs, I, 437, Carey to Blount, March 19, 1793. In February, 1793, Blount had appointed John McKee as deputy agent and was employing him on tribal boundaries (Ibid., I, 435).

9 Ibid., I, 357 Little Turkey et al. to Blount, May 23, 1793; Hamer, "British in Canada," loc. cit., Little Turkey to McKee, May 20, 1793. Little Turkey was undecided whether to declare for war or peace and wrote to Panton for advice, saying that he had formerly relied on McGillivray for counsel (Corbitt, "Papers Relating to the Georgia-Florida Frontier," loc. cit., Vol. XXIII, 388).

10 Welbank remained in the north until the fall of 1793, when he returned to the Cherokees. There in March, 1794, he was robbed, and suspecting (erroneously) that the robber was a Creek, he set out for the Creek country. He was killed (by mistake) at Eufaula. McDonald secured his papers and sent them to Alexander McKee.

11 Indian Affairs, I, 429‑30, Knox to Blount, May 14, 1793. Wayne's supply consisted of 500 guns, 2,000 lbs. of powder, 4,000 flints, one Armorer with tools, 4,000 lbs. of lead, 1,500 bu. of corn, 50 lbs. of vermilion, 100 bu. of salt, and 100 gal. of whiskey.

12 Ibid., I, 408, Mad Dog et al. to President Washington, July 2, 1793.

13 In 1792 the Spaniards, over the opposition of McGillivray and Panton, had authorized Turnbull to build a store on the Yazoo. He had been an American trader from Nashville, was influential among the Indians, and was undoubtedly of considerable help in checkmating Piomingo.

14 The work of Ugula Yacabe and the Colberts in opposing Piomingo is described in detail in Miss Prov. Ar., Spanish Dominion, V, 131ff. one of the Colberts also bore the title of Piomingo (Mountain Leader) and the two Piomingos are often confused, as in F. W. Hodge, Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, B. A. E. Bulletin No. 30.

15 Miss. Prov. Ar., Spanish Dominion, V, 51.

16 Caughey, McGillivray, 357‑59, Milfort to Carondelet, May 26, 1795; Indian Affairs, I, 387‑88, Seagrove to Knox, May 24, 1793.

17 Indian Affairs, I, 395‑96, Weatherford to Seagrove, June 11, 1793; ibid., I, 465, Robertson to Smith, July 20, 1793. August 17, 1793, Robertson wrote Smith (acting governor of the Territory) that the Creeks had lately sent delegates to the Chickasaws with an invitation to come to Tuckabatchee and confirm the peace (ibid., I, 466‑67).

18 Ibid., I, 395‑96, Weatherford to Seagrove, June 11, 1793; Miss. Prov. Ar., Spanish Dominion, V, 44, Olivier to Carondelet, June 4, 1793.

19 Miss. Prov. Ar., Spanish Dominion, V, 64‑65, Carondelet to Gayoso, August 19, 1793. In saying this, Franchimastabe was apparently making an oblique reference to Choctaw misfortunes at Hopewell.

20 Ibid., V, 55.

21 The text of this treaty made at Boutucca is given in Serrano y Sanz, op. cit., 90.

22 Ibid., 91‑92.

23 Indian Affairs, I, 378, 393, 411, Seagrove to Knox, April 19, July 6, and October 9. The first of these episodes was the plundering of the Seagrove store at Traders' Hill; the second was the murder of David Cornell, June 20, while on an embassy to Seagrove; and the third was the calling out of the Georgia militia by Governor Telfair in September for an invasion of the Creek country.

24 Ibid., I, 366.

25 Ibid., I, 485, 487. Seagrove was escorted home by Mad Dog, the Hallowing King of Coweta, and forty assorted chiefs and warriors. Seagrove took six of the chiefs with him to Augusta to visit the Governor, while the others hunted on the frontier. It was the hunters that the Georgians attacked.

26 The details of these alternating depredations are to be found in Brown, op. cit., 384‑405.

27 Indian Affairs, I, 475, McKee to Blount, December 5, 1793.

28 McDonald was appointed on the advice of Panton, who wrote Carondelet that the Americans had offered McDonald $1,000 a year to act as their commissary (Corbitt, "Papers Relating to the Georgia-Florida Frontier, loc. cit., Vol. XXIII, 78‑79, Panton to Carondelet September 7, 1791; ibid., Vol. XXIII, 383, idem to idem, October 15, 1793). Blount wrote Knox in May, 1794, that he had just received a letter from McDonald, written a year earlier, asking to be employed by the Americans (Indian Affairs, I, 531). McDonald wrote Alexander McKee, April 10, 1794, that he had received his appointment from the Spaniards but had not accepted it (Hamer, "British in Canada," loc. cit.). He did accept it and continued to draw his salary until 1798.

29 Indian Affairs, I, 487, deposition of William Jones.

30 The Doublehead mission is described in Brown, op. cit., 399‑400, 418‑30.

31 Several hundred Cherokees and Creeks went north to fight against Wayne, while several companies of Chickasaws and a few Choctaws joined him. Piomingo led a company of sixty as far as Nashville, where he left them, and with Colbert and other chiefs went to Philadelphia. On July 11 he was received by the President. Mucklisha, one of the chiefs, was given a captain's commission, and the tribe promised an annuity of $3,000 (Haywood, op. cit., 414ff.; H. B. Cushman, History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Indians, 424ff.); He also secured from Washington a written guarantee of Chickasaw boundaries as Piomingo described them. As the Chickasaws and Choctaws were returning home after the battle of Fallen Timbers, they were assaulted by some white people in Cincinnati, September 8 and 9, and some of the Indians were badly hurt with clubs and stones. Secretary Sargent ordered out the militia to guard the Indian camp, and a Cincinnati grand jury indicted two of the assailants, one of whom escaped and the other was tried and acquitted (C. E. Carter, Territorial Papers of the United States, III, 421, 422‑23, 423‑24, 426‑27).

32 Indian Affairs, I, 632‑35, Reports of Ore, Robertson, and Blount; Miss. Prov. Ar., Spanish Dominion, V, 431, McDonald to Carondelet, September 20, 1794.

33 American Historical Magazine, Vol. IV, 82‑94 (correspondence of James Robertson; Indian Affairs, I, 536‑38.

34 Corbitt, "Papers Relating to the Georgia-Florida Frontier," loc. cit., Vol. XXIII, 382, Panton to Carondelet, August 18, 1793.

35 Ibid., vol. XXIV, 150‑53. Governor Folch recommended the loan to the home government, but no action was taken, probably because of the Treaty of San Lorenzo.

36 Indian Affairs, I, 583‑84. Tellico Blockhouse was in present Tennessee on the Tellico tributary of the French Broad. Colerain was in Georgia on the St. Marys River about thirty miles up the river.

37 Miss. Prov. Ar., Spanish Dominion, V, 473, Gayoso to Carondelet, October, 1794.

38 Samuel C. Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee in the Land of the Chickasaws, 53‑55. Panton's store here was under the direction of John Forbes, with Kenneth Ferguson as clerk.

39 The Georgia legislature had passed an act for settling the lands south of the Altamaha and had asked the United States to secure the lands by treaty. Washington, after consulting the Senate, named the commissioners and invited Georgia to have agents in attendance to guard the interests of the state. The Georgia agents were James Hendrick, James Jackson, and James Sims. They brought with them on their ship a quantity of goods with which to pay for the land they hoped to secure.

40 A detailed account of the negotiations at Colerain and the text of the treaty is given in Indian Affairs, I, 586‑618. The Georgia agents protested against the treatment they received. Georgia protested against the treaty, and Washington declared it "un­success­ful." There were about four hundred Creeks in attendance at Colerain.

41 Edward Price, the factor at Colerain, did not arrive at his post until January 6, 1796, and found on arrival that the factory goods had been much damaged in the sea transit to Colerain (Department of the Interior, Indian Office Records [hereafter cited as I. O. R.], Retired Classified Files, Price to Frances, January 11, 1796).

42 By Panton's contract he had the option of remaining in business or of closing it in case of a war between Spain and Great Britain. At Spanish request he had continued in business after the Treaty of San Lorenzo, and was now given permission to remain. Seagrove began granting licenses in February, 1796, and granted eight during the year; Price granted nineteen in the next two years (I. O. R., Retired Classified Files, Register of Licenses, February 27, 1797). The factory goods were removed from Colerain to the new post at Fort Wilkinson in the spring of 1797 (I. O. R., Indian Trade Letter Book, Fort Colerain and Hawkins, 1795‑1812). Price, who was evidently not of a conciliatory disposition, was continually involved in quarrels with the army officers at Fort Wilkinson until his death in February, 1799.

43 Haywood, The Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee, 447‑63; Benjamin Hawkins, Letters of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796‑1806, Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, IX, 448, 449, 451, Thomas to Seagrove, November 11, 1795, December 5, 1795, and February 19, 1796; F. J. Turner, "Documents on the Blount Conspiracy, 1795‑97," American Historical Review, Vol. X, 574‑606, statement of J. C. Chisholm to Rufus King; P. M. Hamer, ed., "Letters of William Blount," East Tennessee Historical Society Publications, Vol. IV, 122‑33; Ayers Collection No. 292, Foster to Haynes, October 25, 1795, and No. 626, Pickering to Henley, July 22 and August 26, 1795; Cherokee Indians, Talks and Treaties, pt. II, 441, Franche to Mathews, July 28, 1795; ibid., pt. II, 458, Cornell to Seagrove, November 28, 1795.

44 The office of superintendent lapsed June 1, 1796, when the Territory South of the River Ohio, the governor of which was ex officio superintendent, became the state of Tennessee. Foreseeing this, the Secretary of State on May 9, 1796, had advised the President of his right to appoint a new superintendent (Carter, op. cit., IV, 42). Washington, however, named Hawkins as "principal temporary agent". Seagrove was released of his agency at this time and set up a store at Colerain to supply traders (on credit) with the goods they could not obtain from the factory.

45 Hawkins' good will toward Panton is shown by a letter he wrote him from Coweta, February 2, 1797, tendering his help if Panton's business should become affected by the war between Great Britain and Spain (Letters of Benjamin Hawkins, 69) Panton in reply said he had no hope of competing with the factory system, but was continuing his trade out of consideration for the Indians (McClung Collection, Panton to Hawkins, February 28, 1797).

The account of Hawkins' activities during 1797 is taken from his Letters unless other reference is cited.

46 For the juggling of language in the Hopewell treaty and a description of the Cherokee line, see Royce, The Cherokee Nation, 153‑55. Royce, Indian Land Cessions, pt. II, plate CCXL, shows the line as run at this time, and its later construction. Hawkins was able to run the Holston treaty line only fifty miles, being unable to penetrate the mountains. It was later finished by Pickens as shown in Royce, Indian Land Cessions, plate CLXI.

47 The Cherokee factory had not been able to open for trade until January, 1796, since which time it had done a considerable business. The operations of this factory are recorded in I. O. R., Cherokee Factory, 1795‑1812. There were licensed traders among the Cherokees in 1795; unlicensed traders had been in evidence at all times and continued to be. Governor Sevier of Tennessee strongly opposed the factory and did what he could to hamper it (Donald L. McMurry, "The Indian Policy of the Federal Government and the Economic Development of the Southwest, 1789‑1802," Tennessee Historical Magazine, Vol. I, 36).

48 Corbitt, "Papers Relating to the Georgia-Florida Frontier," loc. cit., XXIV, 266‑67, Forbes to Carondelet July 22, 1796. While in Knoxville, Forbes also conferred with John McKee, who had the title of "Agent Resident at Tellico Blockhouse."

49 Haskins, "Yazoo Land Companies," loc. cit.; S. G. McLendon, History of the Public Domain of Georgia, chaps. III, VIII, and XI; I. J. Cox, ed., "Documents relating to Zachariah Cox," Quarterly Publication of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, Vol. VIII, 31‑114.

50 Ayer Collection, No. 926, Pickering to Henley, May 11, 1795.

51 Turner, "Documents on the Blount Conspiracy," loc. cit.; American State Papers, Foreign Relations, II, 20‑27, 66, 78; Annals of Congress, 5 Cong., 2 sess., 2383; Kate White, "John Chisholm, a Soldier of Fortune," East Tennessee Historical Society Publications, Vol. I, 60; Isabel Thompson, "The Blount Conspiracy," ibid., II, 3‑21.

52 During his spring visit to the Creeks Hawkins had appointed Timothy Barnard, James Burgess, and Alex Cornell as deputy agents among the Creeks; and Richard Thomas as clerk to the chiefs. In the fall he appointed Sackford Maclin as assistant agent.

53 Indian Affairs, I, 631, 638‑41; Royce, The Cherokee Nation, 174‑81. Adams first appointed Fisher Ames, Bushrod Washington, and Alfred Moore as commissioners. Neither Ames nor Washington accepted, and in March, 1798, George Walton and John Steele declined and Thomas Butler was appointed. Governor Sevier named Robertson, Lachlan McIntosh, and James Stuart to attend and look after the interests of Tennessee. Stuart resigned and was replaced by James White. Robertson did not attend.

---

Thayer's Note:

a A fuller, slightly different, and on balance clearer account of this method of calendar keeping is given by Grant Foreman in The Five Civilized Tribes, p201.

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