USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 33
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As to the country south of the new government, there was a conflict of claims between the United States and Georgia. The federal government insisted that it was acquired from Great Britain by the treaty of 1782, the mother country having yiekled thereby the title which she assumed under the procla- mation of 1763 in making it a part of west Florida. When she thus took it from that region and allowed it to the United States, it was her purpose, if Lord Lansdowne's confession is to be believed, to make discord thereby between the young Repub- lic and the house of Bourbon. Whether intending or not, she succeeded in that purpose. Georgia contended for prior rights to this debatable region under her charter, and she was now holding it, as the county of Bourbon, bounded on the south by the international line of 31°, and on the north by the Yazoo River. Georgia's pretension of acquiring the Indian title within this territory was adjudged to be illegal, since the right of preemption was reserved to the United States under the Federal Constitution which Georgia had accepted. She had refused to guarantee the title, however, to large tracts of lands in the Yazoo country, which she had granted, in the first in-
377
GEORGIA.
T
£
N
E S
S
E
E
WolfR
RIVER
Chickasaw
NA
eurossee
A
MISSISIP PI
W. Ebri
E.FOR
R
Georgia
C
hes R.
swacuba
Onkfusker R
S
Big Black R
ACHO
Vainisimari I'ye Walkers Shouls
I
Cales Cr.
Natcher
Coraparry
U
Pearl
Pas
Amite
Dog R.
Escambia
R.
E
S
Mobile
A
Ch
New Orlean
L
Massacre I.
A Correct MAP of the
Mapye
Candlouis I.
GEORGIA
20 20 20 10 50
$ 90
WESTERN TERRITORY.
Scale of Miles
oppt
[From Jedediah Morse's American Gazetteer, Boston, 1797.]
stance, to a company formed in Charleston, and known as the South Carolina Company, and later to other companies known as the Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia companies. These grants had been made in December, 1789, that to the South Carolina Company embracing ten million acres, that to the Vir- ginia Company eleven million four hundred thousand acres, and that to the Tennessee Company four million acres. She threw the burden of protecting the settlers upon the companies, and this opened complications with Spain, further affecting the question of the navigation of the Mississippi.
Minst R.
Middle R.
lacob
Danhin I.
Chunkal
HarmonischittaR
Yas200
Arches R.
I
Tepnostpo ft
378
UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
Of the territory thus handed over to another military direc- tion, the Choctaws and Chickasaws laid claim to parts of it, and throughout the whole of it, Spain professed that she had jurisdiction.
One Dr. James O Fallon, a man about forty-five, and an adventurer, was made agent of the South Carolina Company. lle wrote on May 24, 1790, from Lexington to Miró, stating that he was prepared to treat for making this debatable country a province of Spain, and hinting that if their negotiations sue- ceeded, other western communities were prepared to take simi- lar steps. He said that within eighteen months he should have at his beek some ten thousand men, capable of bearing arms, and that in June he would visit New Orleans for a conference.
Miró could not fail to see Wilkinson's hand in all this, and O'Fallon had indeed been in conference with that so far disap- pointed treason-monger, who had been watching the movement, as affording a new field for his intrigues. As early as Janu- ary, 1790, he had tried to ingratiate himself with O'Fallon and his associates, pleading his ability to induce the Spanish authorities to quiet. the adverse interests of the Choctaws. In June, 1790, writing from Frankfort, Wilkinson notified Miró that O'Fallon's plans were in the Spanish interests, though the man himself was somewhat vain and flighty. "I am, never- theless," wrote Wilkinson, " inclined to put faith in him."
O'Fallon's scheme was to organize a force in Kentucky, and, floating with it down the Mississippi, to take possession of the country, with George Rogers Clark, as rumor went, in military command. It was given out that the federal authorities favored the undertaking, and would adopt the military establishment. Wilkinson and Sevier, with a body of disappointed Franklin men, were expected to follow and make the settlement.
In this state of affairs, Miro wrote to Madrid (August 10), describing the land of the South Carolina Company as extend- ing from eighteen miles above Natchez to thirty miles above the Yazoo, all of which, as he represented, was within the Spanish jurisdiction. He doubted the policy of harboring on Spanish territory a separate community with its own military organization. It does not appear that he was aware that the company, in order to secure settlers, had given out a purpose to make in due time an American State of their colony, and it
379
LAND COMPANIES.
may well be doubted if the projectors had any such real inten- tion. Miró, who was never quite sure of Spain's maintaining herself on the Mississippi, had enough suspicion of the com- pany's avowed aim to fear that it would become an aggressive enemy, unless Spain should in some way obtain control. Wil- kinson, with that devilish leer which he knew how to employ upon occasions, had intimated that the best way to secure this control was to make the Choctaws so harass the settlements that the colonists would turn to Miro for protection. In the same letter the governor informed the minister at Madrid that he had already taken steps to act on Wilkinson's advice.
The lands of the Virginia Company lay north of those of the South Carolina Company, being a stretch of a hundred and twenty miles along the river and running to 34° 40' north lati- tude, and so comprising what he calls a part of the hunting- ground of the Chickasaws, a tribe in the main friendly to the whites, but not always controlling their young bueks. Still farther north were the lands of the Tennessee Company. All the companies' territories extended one hundred and twenty miles back from the river. To the lands of the latter com- pany, Miró acknowledged the Spanish claim to be less certain.
In one way these new developments gave Miró some hope. He felt that Wilkinson, who had so far talked much and done little, might now find a better field for his intrigue. The gov- ernor complained of the small gain which Morgan had made farther up the river, and charged him with preferring rather to enjoy his ease in New Jersey than to endure the hardships of the new colony. He thought further that the trade which Wilkinson had been suffered to develop between Kentucky and New Orleans had worked to embarrass the rival scheme at New Madrid.
Miró told the minister that if O'Fallon's proposition was refused, the alternative for Spain was to push in settlers in such numbers as to hold the region, and he adds that if the Americans oppose, he will use the Indians as Wilkinson had suggested.
There were other chances which Miró was glad to recognize, for the Creek half-breed, McGillivray, who we shall see had just been invited to New York, had written to the governor in
380
UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
May, 1790, that though he was indeed going thither to conclude a peace with the Americans, he had no intention of deserting his Spanish friends, and was even prepared in due time to assist the Spaniards in attacking the South Carolina intruders. Miró took courage from this as he wrote to McGillivray in August, 1790.
But the movement of O'Fallon was not to come to any such conelusion, for a finishing blow had been dealt in New York just at the time when McGillivray was amusing Knox and his fellow negotiators. In August, 1790, Washington, who was kept informed of the military preparations in Kentucky, issued a proclamation, signifying his intention to suppress by force any hostile movement against the Spanish. So it was that, in the spring of 1791, the project was abandoned. On March 22, Jefferson had instructed George Nicholas to arrest O'Fallon. By this time Hamilton's scheme of finance had so carried up the national and state scrip that it could be used to better advan- tage than in buying Yazoo lands, and there were no securi- ties for the adventurers to work with; and furthermore the national government was preparing to protect the Indians against state machinations in the disposal of the Indians' lands. So the companies and O'Fallon vanished from sight. In the following August, the agent of the South Carolina Com- pany, who had been placed at Walnut Hill, abandoned his post, and hostilities on the Mississippi were averted.
, It is now time to look after MeGillivray and his treaty. The Spanish traders in Mobile, since the English surrendered the Indian traffic in 1782, had never been able to keep it up to the prosperous condition in which they received it; but such as it was they found the readiest channel for it in ascending the Mobile and Alabama rivers, - sluggish streams that offered no great obstacles. By an upper affluent, the Tombigbee, they reached a village of the Chickasaws near its source, and thence, by a three-mile portage through a region ceded for trading- posts by the treaty of Hopewell, they could get into the basin - of the Tennessee. Thither passed trader and warrior with equal ease. Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Cherokee, coming
NOTE. - The opposite map, showing the country between Mobile and Pensacola and the Ten- nessee River, is a section of Samuel Lewis's Map of the United States, 1795.
Tennafsee R.
Duck
Cumberland
Nº C. 3
Cro
Water R
Chalanuga C
0
Shoals
Rocky R.
Creeks crofsing
Hatte
Sally Coe
R.Tuscaloosa
Pataga Nachce R.
A Nachce
Coosee
- Turkey's T.
1
op
Tuckab
Oakchey's s
R
Oakfiskee
Oakfinskee
White R.
vAlbam Big Tallafsee
Tullafsee King
Coosade A
Chickasaha
-
Hue R
Cane Br:
Dog R.
R
Minet
Mobil
L
R Santa Rosa
Perdido
Fawacola
Escambe R. or R. Jordon
Middle R.for Governers R.
Chatah pochee R
Hunting R .
-
1 Coola R
1
Aubama or Koosa R.
Pasca
1
Occachappo R.
Mufcle
shout
Nickajack
A Crow Town
RunningWE
Cuofsa
.
Estanallee
High Fistan atlee
A High Tôm
River
Tombigbee R. or Mobile
A Sipsy R.
Tombigbec R
Abacoochee R.
382
UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
from different directions, had often combined here for fatal forays along the Tennessee and Cumberland settlements, or had scattered in scalping parties to appear and disappear in a night. The most restless of the savages were the Chicka- maugas, a small and independent band of Cherokees, youthful bucks themselves, and likely to be joined at times by the roving youngsters of the other tribes. They had caused Colonel Mar- tin, in his efforts to keep the frontiers quiet, more anxiety than any of the other tribes, and he had, under varying fortunes, advanced upon them and retired time and again. Of late, Knox, the secretary of war, had kept the local forces as much on the defensive as could be done, in the hopes that the provo- cations to war would cease. It was the hostility of this ruthless band, after Sevier had lost his hold upon the abortive Franklin commonwealth, which had induced the settlers south of the Holston and French Broad rivers to unite for protection, despite any appeal for forbearance.
It is not easy to reach any satisfactory estimate of the num- bers at this time of these southern tribes. There were, perhaps, two thousand five hundred warriors among the Cherokees, and they came in closer contact with the Americans than any others, and had of late been talking of migrating beyond the Missis- sippi. They had easily learned the timely art, when the whites pushed them too hard, of sending complaints to the authorities. " We are drove as it were into the sea," they said on one occa- sion. "We have hardly land sufficient to stand upon. We are neither fish nor birds. We cannot live in the water, nor in the air!" They were fond of making treaties, and not very faithful in the observance of them.
The Creeks were more numerous, and spent their varying rage more readily upon the Georgians, who, with the Span- iards in Florida, were their nearest neighbors on the east and south. The Choctaws were supposed to be much more nu- merons than the nearer tribes, but their remoteness generally prevented more than small parties of vagrant warriors joining the other tribes. The Chickasaws were as a rule the most tract- able of all. They were a handsome race, and rode a fine breed of horses.
NOTE. - The opposite map of the Creek country, and the home of McGillivray, is from a map of Georgia in Carey's American .Itlas, Philadelphia, 1795.
River
cade.
Midate Foi
or High
Turkey's Town Kaitte ourkey,
S.F. or J.
Shea !!
Kuchavatice
Matchu's
A
Oakchers
or
River
Šoakfuska
Tallapodse
VIRY
of
the
CR
Matura
XAbacoochee
Falls
MIGTMay's T.
Big. Tallafsee
Cifscetas
iowetas a
Coosades
Clay Cofsha
Broken arrow
IAN'S
Ylichatas
Lower Creeks
nt R.
SEMMINOT
Redst
per
Creeks
Bu :zards
River
Tallafsce King
Sipsey's
Alabama Ty
Dakfuskec MUSKOGEES
70 feet perpendicular
. Alabama
NATION
of
Chukang
Barnards
Coosel .
384
UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
The year 1790 had opened with some warnings of a new com- bination among the southern Indians. One William Augustus Bowles, a young English vagabond, who had been in the Eng- lish army during the Revolution, had for some years espoused the English, Spanish, or American interests indifferently, and had played fast and loose with savage and civilized life by turns. He now compacted portions of the Creeks and Chero- kees, and induced them to send him and some of their tribes- men to England, bearing an address to the British king. The party managed to reach the Bahamas, where Lord Dunmore furnished them a passage to Halifax, and in July, 1790, they were at Quebec. Here Dorchester tried to detain them, but they insisted on going to London, where they presented the ad- dress, and promised to put their tribes under British protection, and asked for arms and other help. Meanwhile, among the fac- tions of those tribes, where an active rival of Bowles was more powerful, an effort had been made during 1789 to unite them in a league against the whites. This plot, in August, 1789, had come to the knowledge of Colonel Arthur Campbell, and he had communicated the news to Washington.
This other leader, whom we have already mentioned as the son of a Scotch trader by a Creek woman, whose father had been French, had already made the name of Alexander McGil- livray notorious along the border, for, during the Revolutionary War, he had, like Bowles, been active in the royal interest. Ilis losses by confiscation in that contest had spurred him with 'a revenge which of late years had been well known to the bor- derers. He was a man of an active intelleet, and not lacking in educational training. In physical bearing he was a noticeable figure : spare of limb, but lofty in stature, while under a beet- ling brow he moved with great alertness a pair of large and lustrous eyes. He had an Indian's wary artfulness, a French- man's grace of demeanor, and something of the Scotchman's eanniness and love of trade. He was under binding obligations to the Spaniards, and as we have seen in his communication with Miro, he did not mean to forget them, while he was ready to settle with their rivals, hoping in each case to serve his own interests. As a go-between in the Indian trade he had his price. and the London house of Strahan & Co., acting in Pensa- cola, found him convenient in negotiating for trading permits
385
MCGILLIVRAY.
with the Spanish officials, who were said to receive more than £12,000 a year from that commercial house. It is hardly to be denied that McGillivray got a good store from both of the bar- gainers. He had before this sought to make the Georgians buy at a good price an immunity from the raids of his people, and on their refusal he had taught them that his price was much less than the cost of war.
In this pass, Georgia, whose frontiers faced the Creeks all along the Altamaha and Oconee, had appealed to the general government for aid, at a time when rumors multiplied in New York that Spain was inciting the Creeks, and the English the Shawnees, to make a general war.
Knox saw in a Creek war a pretty certain forerunner of one with Spain, and having some intimations of McGillivray's greed, importuned Washington to invite that leader to come to the seat of government. At the same time he prepared for a failure by dispatching troops to the Georgia frontiers. The messenger of peace was Colonel Willet. The invitation was accepted, and in June McGillivray and twenty-eight of the principal men of the Creeks, marching through the New York streets under an escort of Tammany sachems, were conducted to General Knox's house, where McGillivray was lodged.
As in all Indian negotiations, the interchange of views went on slowly, amid untoward rumors. Mirò, with his usual suspi- cion, which was not wholly removed by McGillivray's parting letter, was thought to have sent an agent after the Creeks to spy out their acts in New York and prevent action hostile to Spain by a free distribution of gifts. It was at the same time believed that an Iroquois agent had cautioned McGillivray of the risks he was taking, and had tried to lead him to an alliance with the northern tribes.
But. no allurements could turn the greedy ambassador from his purpose after the government had disclosed to him their generous intentions. In consideration of the Creeks' recognition of the United States as their guardians, and acknowledging the protection " of no other nation whatsoever," the American negotiators confirmed to the Creek chieftain and his friends the sole privilege of trade with that tribe, and agreed to make good with $100,000 that leader's losses in the Revolutionary War. The government ceded back to the Creeks certain territo-
386
UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
ries which had made the Oconee the line of the whites, and which Georgia had paid for. This act later aroused the indignation of Patrick Henry, who had invested in some of these same lands, and who, as he professed, had hoped to find a refuge there from the despotism which he sometimes believed was to transplant the republicanism of his country.
The authorities further created McGillivray a brigadier-gen- eral in the American army, with a yearly stipend of $1,200. So, in good humor, that chieftain doffed his new uniform and signed the treaty. It mattered little to him that, at the same moment, he held both from the Spanish and English govern- ments other commissions. Washington, as he said, had greatly honored him in giving him some books and his own epaulets, which he took with him on his home journey by sea, landing at St. Mary's in Georgia.
While in New York, McGillivray wrote to Lord Dorehester : " In the present treaty I have been obliged to give up some- thing in order to secure the rest, and guarding at the same time against what might shake my treaty with Spain." Such double-faced professions, however, did not succeed. The treaty with Spain had, for a large faction of the Creeks, been im- periled too greatly ; and the United States had bargained with a deceiver. The hostilities at the south saw little abatement, and Spain continued to have an ally in the irate Creeks.
But these Indian affairs suffered an eclipse in the sudden apparition of war along the Mississippi, and the McGillivray treaty was doubtless hastened by it, for the United States was at onee brought face to face with a serious problem, in the solu- tion of which she needed a free hand. It is necessary to go back a little and see how the Mississippi question seemed has- tening to a conclusion at the time the Spanish complication with England turned the federal government from an aggressive to a waiting mood.
Gardoqui. on returning to Spain in 1789, had given there the impression that the navigation of the Mississippi had ceased to be a burning question on the American seaboard. He gave as a reason for this apathy that the drain upon the coast popula- tion, through the opening of the river, would cause a setting back of the prosperity of the older States. There was also a
387
CHARACTER OF THE WEST.
prevalence of fear that the free river passage to the sea of tobacco, now becoming an important staple in Kentucky, would bring a powerful competitor into the market for the product of Virginia and Maryland, whose soil was already becoming exhausted.
With these views accepted, there could but be in Spain an imperfect comprehension of the real attitude of the western country, and there was doubtless in some parts of the American east hardly better information. Nor was there an adequate conception of revived Spanish efforts to stop the Kentucky boats on the river. Miro at New Orleans could hardly have failed to observe the growing prosperity of the Americans about Natchez. Brissot had said, with French enthusiasm, that "the French and Spaniards settled at the Natchez have not for a century cultivated a single acre, while the Americans furnish the greater part of the provisions for New Orleans." We have seen how the attempts of the South Carolina Company to ex- tend this activity above Natchez had excited the governor's apprehensions.
The fact was that the Declaration of Independence had failed to make quite the same sort of self-centred Americans west of the mountains as had been created on their eastern slope. The western life was breeding a more dauntless and aggressive race, which rejoiced rather in obstacles, and placed upon a higher plane than human law the rights which they felt belonged to them by nature. They were not a little impatient to have their right to an open navigation of the Mississippi based upon treaty obligations, as acquired from France by England in 1763, and transmitted to the Republic from the mother country in 1782. They looked by preference to the inalienable rights of their position on the upper waters of the Great River, as carry- ing an incontestable claim to a free passage to the ocean. What Thomas Walcott, journeying on the Ohio in 1790, heard in a debating club in Marietta gave an unmistakable indication of the prevailing temper. There was, as he says, a diversity of sentiment as to the treatment of Spanish arrogance, while all were of one mind in the certainty, within a few years, of the river being opened " by strength or force, if not by right or treaty."
By 1790, the danger which had been felt, of accomplishing
388
UNCERTAINTIES IN THE SOUTHWEST.
this result by some paet of the western leaders with Spain, had practically vanished before the rising power of the constitu- tional Republic, which had marshaled men in new ranks, mak- ing bold those who had been timid, and conservative those who had been aggressive. It was this change that had caused Wil- kinson to tremble for his power. When he saw Washington putting in office at the west the known enemies of Spain, he had grasped the hand of O'Fallon almost in despair. Conceiv- ing that Congress suspected him, he had written to Miro : " My situation is extremely painful, since, abhorring duplicity, I must dissemble." Miró, on his part, was aware that all Wil- kinson's abettors, save Sebastian, had fallen away from him. The latter was by this time reduced to begging a gratuity from the Spanish governor, who seemed by no means sure that the time had not come for pensioning each of the confederate trai- tors, in order that he might use one as a spy upon the other.
In this condition of things the intriguers could well be left to spoil their own game, and the federal government were freer far than the confederation had been to deal with the pretenses of Spain, both as to the river and as to the territory which she coveted to the east of it. From the time when she was con- niving with France to deprive the United States, by the Treaty of Independence, of a large part of the western country, Spain had indeed abated something from the claims which would have given her all west of a line drawn from the St. Mary's River to the Muscle Shoals, and down the Tennessee and Ohio to the Mississippi. Later, she had sought to accomplish her purpose by the conspiracies of Wilkinson. While these were pending with diminishing chances of success, Spain had been prac- ticing all that vexatious hesitancy which has always charac- terized her diplomacy. The time had come for this to cease, as Jefferson thought, and in August, 1790, he instructed Car- michael, then the American representative in Madrid, to bring matters to a crisis, urged thereto, doubtless, as we shall see, by the precarious relations which had arisen between Spain and England. Jefferson's instructions were to assume the right of navigating the Mississippi, and to raise a question only about a port of deposit near its mouth. At the same time, he advised Short, in Paris, to persuade Montmarin, the Spanish ambas- sador in that capital, to further the American suit. In the
389
THE NORTHWEST COAST.
heads which Jefferson drew up for Carmichael's guidance (August 22), he says that more than half the American terri- tory is in the Mississippi basin, where two hundred thousand people, of whom forty thousand can bear arms, are impatient of Spanish delays. If we cannot by argument force Spain to a conclusion, he adds, we must either lose this western people, who will seek other alliances, or we must, as we shall, wrest what we want from her. If Spain will only give us New Orleans and Florida, he adds further, she should see that we are in a position to help her protect what lies beyond the Mis- sissippi. This was a direct bid for a Spanish alliance in the sudden complications which had arisen upon the action of a few Spanish ships on the Pacific coast, and, in September, false rumors prevailed in New York that Spain had made the concession.
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