USA > Georgia > Miscellanies of Georgia, historical, biographical, descriptive, etc > Part 2
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For from the very outset of his administration, Washing-
*American State Papers-Indian Affairs, Vol. 1st, 616.
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ton, from his lofty stand point at the head of the Goverment, and with his large, well-poised, well-braced mind, long versed in great, perilous and perplexed affairs, surveyed the whole field, and kept it clearly beneath his eye. He saw in all their magnitude and complication, the difficulties of the case with which he had to deal, and set abont overcoming them with characteristic wisdom, justice and statesmanship. He found the negotiations in which the defunct Government, of the Confederation had been engaged with Spain in an ex- ceedingly unpromising state, nor were the prospects in that quarter much bettered during the first years of his own governance. For Spain was at that period still one of the proudest, most powerful and self-sufficient monarchies of the world, and had evidently made up her mind to yield nothing and exact everything in this dispute with a new- born, poor and feeble country. And certainly she was not far wrong in supposing the United States were at that time in no condition for taking strong measures against her, and she feared not to impinge upon the very confines of inso. lence in some of her diplomatic passages with us.
Seeing, therefore, no near or flattering prospect of getting rid of the Indian war and its numerous attendant ills by sapping the Spanish foundation on which it mainly stood, Washington proceeded very soon to address himself in the most direct and effectual manner to the Indians themselves. Hle determined to try what could be done to dissolve their Spanish ties and bring them under an American Protecto- rate. To this end he resorted to the best and most hopeful means. Early in 1790 he dispatched from New York, then the Federal capital, a distinguished and singularly suitable man, well known to him, Col. Marinus Willet, upon a con- fidential mission into the Creek nation, accredited to McGil- livray. Colonel Willet's instructions were to prevail on McGillivray and the other great Chiefs to send a delegation, headed by McGillivray himself, to New York to confer and' treat with Washington, face to face. The mission was snc- cessful, and Col. Willet returned to New York accompanied
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by McGillivray and his head men, representing the more hostile element of the nation. It was undoubtedly the most important and imposing Indian embassy that ever visited our Government, and they were received and treated every where along the route and in New York with extraordinary distinction and attention. They remained a good while in that city. Many conferences and talks were held, and the result was the treaty of New York, concluded on the 7th of August, 1790, negotiated by Gen. Knox, Secretary at War, under the immediate eye and direction of Washington. By its stipulations the Creeks accepted fully the protection of the United States to the exclusion of Spain and all other powers, and bound themselves not to enter into any treaty or compact with any of the States or any individuals or for- eign country. They also agreed to abide by the Altamaha and Oconee as their dividing line, following the latter stream along its westernmost branch to its source. Our Govern- ment, on its part, restored to them the Tallassec country, and also guaranteed the same and all their remaining lands to them forever against all the world. A treaty more cardinal, consequential, and even revolutionary in its character, could hardly be imagined. Upon it as upon a hinge, the Creek nation swung around completely and at once into those natural relations with the United States which its in- terests dictated, but which had been passionately rejected at the close of the Revolutionary war for a Spanish alliance and subjugation. It was undoubtedly in gross conflict with the treaty of Pensacola, and it could not but have the effect of creating an early crisis of the most decisive kind between Spain and the United States, whilst it certainly involved the Creeks themselves in a position not a little embarrassing be- tween those two powers.
It was a compact, however, on the whole not less wise and well considered than highly important, and having been concluded and solemnly perfected by the signatures of Gen. Knox and twenty-four great Chiefs, and the attestation of the Indian National Interpreter and several of our own most
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distinguished men, the work of the Creek delegation was done; and now, loaded with presents and assurances of friendship, they were ready with their train of attendants to depart for their far distant Southern hunting grounds. But their long and diversified ambassadorial tour from the heart of their own country over land to New York through so many States, towns and cities was destined to be strikingly contrasted by the character of the homeward journey that was in store for them, by the monotonous, though deeply im- pressive sea voyage arranged for them by Washington over ten parallels of latitude from New York to St. Mary's,-a mode of returning they were led to prefer by certain politic ideas as well as by somewhat of curiosity. For they wished for some ocular knowledge of that mighty occan to which McGillivray had been long attracting their thoughts by say- ing they ought to have a free trading outlet to it at the mouth of the St. Mary's,-and especially were they desirous of seeing and knowing for themselves that oft commended harbor and outlet. Hence, mainly their disposition to go home by water, for little cared they for the considerations of mere greater ease and expedition that were held out to them. Old Neptune, well pleased, grew serene at beholding them, and greeted with smiles that beamed over the ocean his strange new visitants-nature's erect, still unsubdued sons and stoic lords of the woods. And well might he look gra- ciously on the novel and interesting array they presented to his view. For never before or since, in all his reign, has it been given him, nor may he hope it will ever be given him again, to lift his storm-quelling Trident aloft over his liquid realm in propitious behalf of such another cargo of travel- ers on its billowy bosom as these stern, turbaned, plaided, buskined heroes and kings of the new world's yet unviolated wilds, their hearts full of homage to himself, and their aspect filling with wonderment his Tritons and Nereides and all his other subject "blue haired" deities of the deep.
Arrived at St. Mary's they quitted without regret the noble sea ship, which it was certain nevertheless they
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would always remember with admiring love and honor, and, transferred to smaller craft, wended their way slowly up the tortuous river to the famous old frontier Indian trading post of Colraine. And now they soon stood once more on that beloved ancestral soil which they had just recovered back to their nation, large, level- lying Tallassee, a land of pine trees and the cypress, dismal emblem of death, though itself so impervious to decay; of the hardy perennial wire-grass, nutritious to cattle and deer ; of ever-green oaks, and the also ever-green stately magnolia, glorious in the middle and high upper air, its aspiring branches and lofty top resplendent with grand, shining, aromatic white flowers; a land, too, abounding in game of the forest and fish and wild fowl ; swarming with the honey bee likewise with its generous stores of melliflu- ous wealth wonderously elaborated from millions of wood- land leaves and blossoms ; and scarcely less alive with wolves, wild cats, bears and tigers ;* washed along its Northern border by the broad, poctic Altama, t swamp-
*"Tigers" was the name formerly given to panthers in this part of Georgia, and is still their name in East Florida.
t "Altama" is Goldsmith's poetic contraction for the Altamaha, formed by the confluence of the Oconee and Ocmulgee. See his beautiful poem of "The De- serted Village" written more than an hundred years ago, at a time when the emigration of the virtuous poor from Great Britain to the young colony of Georgia was at its height. The tide of emigration had been setting, when the poem was written, very strongly to the lower banks of the Altamaha, and among the emigrants there were not a few who ultimately rose to fortune and founded families and left names which are a pride and honor to the State. Here are the fine lines-which our great river, and its scenery and reputation- called forth in a strain graphic and powerful, though in some respects exag- gerated and erroneous :
"Ah, no ! To distant climes, a dreary scene, Where half the convex world intrudes between.
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe. Far different there from all that charmed before, The various terrors of that horrid shore :
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, And fiercely shed intolerable day : Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling ;
Those pois'nous fields with rank Insurance crown'd,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around ; Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
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engloomed river, lonely and austere, recoiling from the sea, reluctant and sad to be so far estranged alike in space, in scenery, and in name from all its sweet highland springs; whilst on the other, its southern side, the Immaculate Vir- gin Mother's sacred stream laved it with unfailing waters, ever distilling from the vast and secret Okeefeenokee .*
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake ;
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men more murd'rous still than they ;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies.
Mingling the ravag'd landscape with the skies. Far different these from every former scene, The cooling brook, the grassy vested green,
The breezy covert of the warbling grove,
That only shelter'd thefts of harmless love."
The river's name pronounced in the usual manner with a light accent on the first syllable and a full, strong one on the last, thus Awl-ta-ma-hau, sounds very like an Indian word ; and yet quite surely it is not of Indian, bat of Span- ish parentage. It is an interesting fact, reflecting light on the first exploration of the State, and clearing up a part of its history otherwise obsenre, that so many of the Atlantic rivers of Georgia have the Spanish stamp on their names,-as the St. Mary's, the Great and Little St. Illa, the Altamaha, and fast, and if possible, plainest of all, the Savannah. For no one can ascend that stream from the sea, or stand on the edge of the bluff, which the city occupies, or on the top of its ancient Exchange, (which may fire, and war, and tempest, and the tooth of time, and the felon hand of improvement long spare,) and over- look the vast expanse of flat lands that spread out on both sides of the river, forming in winter a dark, in summer a green, in autumn a saffron contrast to its bright, intersecting waters, without knowing at once that from these plains, these savannas, the river got its name, derived from the Spanish language and the Spanish word sabanna,-and that it was baptized with the christian, though not saintly name it bears, by Spanish discoverers just as certainly as the great grassy planes in South America owed their name of Savannas to the same na- tional source. The case of the Altamaha is equally free from doubt, though not so self-evident on the first glance. It comes from the old, now disused Spanish word Altamia, pronounced Altamceah, signifying a deep earthen plate or dish of whatever form ; a name naturally enough suggested by the charac- ter and aspect, deep, broad, still, of the lower end of the river, probably the only part the Spaniards had seen when they christened it, and which doubtless looked to them much like a hugh, longitudinal dish kept brimful rather by stag- nation of its waters and impulse from the sea than by large, evertlowing sup- plies from an unknown interior.
* The Okeefeenokee far outsizes all the swamps of the world. Even that great Serbonian Bog, celebrated by Milton,
"Betwixt Damiata and Mount Cassius old Where armies whole have sunk !""
was small in comparison. In old times when Morse's earlier editions were still authority in the Geography of the United States, three hundred miles was
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The stalwart, taciturn Chiefs rejoiced to traverse anew, with noiseless footfall, the great woody expanse, now profaned and denaturalized by railroads, then only threaded by the tiny, interminable Indian trail, for which no tree had to be felled or earth removed; and they exulted to know it again as their country's unquestioned domain, reclaimed from the Gal- phinton cession and grasp of Georgia by that treaty of New York which their talks had demanded and their hands had signed.
But just as was their exultation and important as was the the territory they had regained, their wild countrymen were far from being satisfied. They had gotten back very much, it was true, but not much more than one-half, in supposed value at least, of what they had eagerly insisted upon and expected. Nor were the Georgians better content. Nothing indeed could more strikingly show how difficult and malig- nant the state of things was, and how stubborn were the obstacles which Spanish interference with the Indians and the bitter temper of Georgia towards them threw in the way, than the fact that the combined names of Washington and McGillivray, corroborated by the strong necessities of the case and the plainest dictates of policy, availed not to render the treaty acceptable to either side. The Georgians, although they had gotten by it the whole of the so much coveted Oconee country, recalcitrated because it retroceded to the Indians the above named Tallassee country between the Altamaha and St. Mary's, and also because of its per- petual guarantee to them of all their remaining uncedled territory. And although the Indians had gotten this guar-
the supposed circumference of the Okeefenokee. Modern scepticism has les. sened it one-half, I believe; but it is mere guess work. Its impenetrable recesses defy the compass and chain, and its outer boundary if not immeasurable, has at least never been measured. The St. Mary's is not the only river it feeds. It is also the birth place of the Suwanee, a river flowing into the Gulf, the present name of which is a corruption of the Spanish San Juan, AInglice, St. John. The St. Johns of the English and of this day was the St. Matheo of the Spaniards. - Bancroft's Hist. U. S., Vol. 1, p. 61. It may well enhance our sense of the grandeur of the Okeefeenokee that it should be the matrix of two such rivers as the St. Mary's and the Suwanee.
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antee, of which they were so desirous, and had also gotten back the Tallassee country on which they laid so much stress as an indispensable winter hunting ground, and likewise on account of its convenience to the sea, by the short navigation of the St. Mary's, yet they were ill-humored because they did not also get back the rich gore of land in the fork of the Oconee and Apalachee. Indeed, McGillivray acquiesced most reluctantly in this feature of omission in the treaty, and gave fair notice at the time of the dissatisfaction it would cause in his nation. Under all these circumstances the treaty led not to an entire restoration of peace, to not much more indeed than a feverish lull of the war. Depredations and occasional outbreaks of hostility continued to occur and to impart an uneasy ill-natured threatening aspect to our Creek Indian affairs.
Washington, than whom no man ever understood better the art of temporizing wisely or knew better when the pre- cise moment to strike and for decisive action had come, was in no hurry by precipitating things, to endanger the chances which he saw brightening for the propitious settlement of the whole trouble, Spanish and Indian, at one time and by one blow. For now the French Revolution had broken out, and Spain and most of the powers of Europe began soon to be drawn within its vortex or to tremble on its verge, aghast at its fierce gyrations and direful portents. Meantime, Washington kept alive his negotiations and grew more posi- tive and urgent as the clouds thickened around Spain in Europe. Yet he was free from hot haste. For he saw that the mighty chapter of accidents which God alone peruses and overrules was now in rapid evolution and likely to throw forth opportunities felicitous for his country in this and other important matters. So he persisted in biding his time and nursing the negotiation, notwithstanding the impatient pressure upon him from Georgia for greater energy and celerity in his measures. At length the European distresses and perils of Spain reached a crisis so urgent and menacing as made her feel it madness to enhance her other ills by our
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enmity, and convinced her how utterly hopeless it was to con- tinue to press longer her vast territorial pretensions against us, under the very shadow of our gigantic and now thrifty and rapidly growing young Republic. In the midst of this crisis, well knowing as she did, that the claim of the United States was one that could by no possibility ever be surren- dered whilst men and muskets remained to us, she made a merit of the necessity which it was useless for her longer to resist, and in October, 1795, entered into the treaty of San Lorenzo, ceding to us all her claims on this side of the Mis- sissippi to the north of the 31st parallel and west of the Chattahoochee. At the same time confirming the old boun- dary from the confluence of that river with the Flint east- wardly to the mouth of the St. Mary's, thus surrendering, on account of the distresses of her own situation, what she never would have yielded up to a sense of our rights; a loss little memorable, however, by the side of the stupendous sacrifice she was soon afterwards forced to make of her im- mense and splendid Province of Louisiana to the boundless ambition and rapacity of France.
With this cession by Spain of her cherished claim to all the Indian Territory that had been in contest between her- self and the United States, went her pretensions to a pro- tectorate and sovereignty over the Indians themselves which were founded solely on that claim. The Indians were there- fore now left to themselves and to us without any chance of foreign aid or exposure to foreign interference or instigation for the future. Every consequence desirable on our side followed now easily and almost of course. The root of mis- chief had been exterminated. Friendly tempers and dispo- sitions on the part of the Indians towards us had only to be duly courted and cultivated on our part in order to insure their rapid development and growth. Soon the fruit of a permanent Indian peace was fully in our reach, inviting our grasp, and ready to drop into our hands as the natural sequel of the happy Spanish adjustment that had taken place. It had required nearly the whole length of Washington's
3
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Administration from its first year to its last to bring things to this point,-to manage and successfully settle this its great Southern Spanish-Indian trouble. But he finally brought it to an auspicious termination. By the treaty of Colraine, concluded as we have seen in the summer of 1796, the last year of the last term of his Presidency, the bound- aries stipulated at New York were recognized and reaffirmed, and the seal was put to a longed-for and lasting peace, and our horizon cleared at length of every boding Indian cloud. For both Georgians and Indians had by this time become educated and reconciled to those boundaries and were never again disposed to quarrel about them ; a temper of mind in a large degree induced by Washington's immense weight of character with both sides, and by their natural feeling of sub- mission to the grandeur of the power, which he represented and wielded. All which however might have failed of such early and full effect on the Indians, but for the disheartening fact which stared them in the face, that the territory to the east of the Oconee and its prongs for which they had been contending, was already hopelessly lost to them, having become, during the contention, filled up and occupied by a population more than able and intensely determined to hold and defend it against them forever.
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ALEXANDER M'GILLIVRAY.
CHAPTER III.
ALEXANDER McGILLIVRAY.
Thus long have I, yielding to a just love and partiality for the section of Georgia in which I was born and in which the bones of my forefathers repose, lingered and dwelt on the troublous and important interval of time which elapsed from its first acquisition and settlement down to its final pacification. And, moreover, it is a portion of the history of the State well worthy, on its own account, to be recalled and remembered, for it records a great step,-a striking epoch in her progress and development. But it is impossi- ble not to be conscious that the scenes and events of that period have had their full day on the world's stage and in men's minds, and now not only have they passed off from both, but there is no longer a generation living whose blood could be made to tingle at their recital. And yet to me, long accustomed to cherish dearly the memories and tradi- tions of my native soil, it has often seemed that in this pro- tracted, fitful, frontier war for the lordship of the Oconee lands, there was much in regard both to the actors and the things enacted on which the mind might dwell not unre- warded, and which Georgians at least ought not willingly to let go down to oblivion.
Particularly has it struck me that connected with this war there was a signal circumstance, which rendered it excep- tional and ennobled it among Indian wars. The proud fact, I mean, that it was the theatre on which was conspicuously displayed one of those infrequent, extraordinary characters that history loves to contemplate, and which, however they may specially belong to some one people, sect or class, during
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ALEXANDER M'GILLIVRAY.
their active, living career, become the large and general property of mankind when dead.
Such a character was Alex. McGillivray, by all odds the foremost man of Indian blood and raising that Anglo-Amer- ica has ever seen ; one who was universally allowed and felt in his day to be the very soul of the Creek nation, which was almost absolutely swayed by his genius and will. And be it remembered, that it was not a petty, confined tribe that was thus swayed by him, and swayed, too, in a manner and with an ability which struck enlightened civilized observers with admiration, but a wide extended Indian commonwealth, exulting in thousands of fearless warriors and an hundred organized towns, all under their respective Chiefs,* over- spreading a region far greater than all Georgia now is. McGillivray was Supreme Chief of the whole, freely eleva- ted to that height by his fierce countrymen because of his superior qualities and merits, aided also by some consider- able advantages of family and connection. He made him- self effectively felt all the while throughout his wild do- mains and the surrounding parts. His entire country lay within the chartered bounds of Georgia and Florida, and the absorbing study and struggle of his life, after our Revo- lutionary war, was how to save it from the territorial greed of Georgia,-a danger from which he early augured that ruin to his nation, which long after his death was so fully realized. Peace or war with us he clearly saw was alike perilous to his country, and he would gladly have kept her away as well from our caresses as from our hostilities, for they both always equally menaced her integrity, looking as they invariably did, to still other treaties and other surren- ders of land. Fully sensible of the difficulty and peril of his country's situation, he glanced keenly around in every direction for extrication and support. There is no doubt that he had formed and was seeking to accomplish the scheme of an intimate and permanent confederation of the
*American State Papers. Indian Affairs, Vol. 1st, p. 15; Gen. Knox's Report of July 6th, 1789.
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ALEXANDER M'GILLIVRAY.
four great Southern tribes, the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws and Chickasaws, of which he would undoubtedly have be- come the head alike in fact and in form. He turned his at- tention also to Florida and Spain, and became an apt diplo- matist and negotiator with the Spanish authorities in Pen- sacola, Mobile and New Orleans, and our own national ar- chives abound in proof how well he acquitted himself in all his transactions and correspondence with our public fuction- aries and commissioners .*
Col. Seagrove, United States Agent among the Creeks, and other minor national officials, as well as the Georgians gen- erally of that day, used oddly enough to inveigh against him for what they called his duplicity. The charge, it must be admitted, was not purely fictitious, though certainly not very reasonable or just in the quarter from whence it came. What right have the strong to cast such a reproach on the weak, whom they are seeking to oppress and dispossess by sheer means of greater force ? And yet it is the standing reproach, which in all ages, the vis major, superior, over- bearing power has been wont to hurl at the feeble, whenever they have happened to be troublesomely successful in em- ploying what is stigmatized as artifice and cunning for their defense and safety. Undoubtedly in the circumstances, in which McGillivray saw himself placed, threatened by Georgia and the United Stateson the one hand, treacherously embraced and instigated by Spain on the other, both powers an entire overmatch for his own country, he must needs have aban- doned that country's cause to ruin or resorted to somewhat of duplicity for her sake, that is to say, he was compelled to play adroitly between the two dreaded powers. In such a situation duplicity changed its nature and became, as prac- tised by him, a high, patriotic virtue, the only one, indeed, which he could make count for much against two such hol- low friends and real rival enemies as he had too much reason to fear they both were. Accordingly he deserves no censure from us or from anybody, because, incensed and alarmed at
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