William McIntosh

William McIntosh (1775 – April 30, 1825),^[1] also known as Taskanugi Hatke (White Warrior), was one of the most prominent chiefs of the Creek Nation between the turn of the nineteenth century and the time of Creek removal to Indian Territory. He was a leader of the Lower Towns, the Creek who were adapting European-American ways and tools to incorporate into their culture. He became a planter who owned slaves and also had a ferry business.

Earlier American historians attributed McIntosh's achievements and influence to his mixed race Scots/European ancestry. Since the late 20th century, some revisionist historians have contended that his power stemmed more from his Creek upbringing, particularly his mother's prominent Wind Clan in the Creek matrilineal system, and to other aspects of Creek culture.^[2]

Because McIntosh led a group that negotiated and signed a treaty in 1825 to cede much of remaining Creek lands to the United States in violation of Creek law, for the first time the Council ordered that a Creek be executed for crimes against the Nation.^[3] It sentenced him and other signatories to death. McIntosh was executed by Menewa and a large force of Law Menders in late April 1825; two other signatories were executed and one was shot but escaped. Menewa signed a treaty in 1826 that was similar, but that the Council had agreed to and that provided more benefits to the Creek.

McIntosh's descendants removed with the Creek people to Indian Territory. His two sons served as Confederate officers during the American Civil War. Three of his daughters: Rebecca, Delilah and Catherine, moved to East Texas with their husbands, developing plantations there. Rebecca McIntosh Hawkins Hagerty married again after her first husband died young, and by 1860 was the wealthiest woman in Texas, owning three plantations with a total of 12,800 acres, and 120 slaves.^[4][5]

Early life and education

Taskanugi Hatke (White Warrior) was born in the Lower Town of Coweta in present-day Georgia to Senoya (also spelled Senoia and Senoy^[1]), a member of the Wind Clan, which was prominent in the Creek Nation. As the Creek had a matrilineal kinship system, through which property and hereditary positions were passed, his mother's status determined that of White Warrior. The boy was also named after his father, the Scots-American Captain William McIntosh, who was connected to a prominent Savannah, Georgia family. Captain McIntosh, a Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War, had worked with the Creek to recruit them as military allies to the British.^[6] The senior McIntosh's mother was Jennet (or Janet in some sources) McGillivray, believed to have been a sister of the Scot Lachlan McGillivray, a wealthy fur trader and planter in Georgia. They were of the Clan MacGillivray Chiefs Lineage). After the Revolutionary War, Captain McIntosh moved from the frontier to Savannah to settle. There he married a paternal cousin, Barbara McIntosh.^[7]

White Warrior gained his status and place among the Creek from his mother's clan. Benjamin Hawkins, first appointed as United States Indian agent in the Southeast and then as Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the territory south of the Ohio River, lived among the Creek and Choctaw, and knew them well. He commented in letters to President Thomas Jefferson that Creek women were matriarchs and had control of children "when connected with a white man."^[8] Hawkins further observed that even wealthy traders were nearly as "inattentive" to their mixed-race children as "the Indians". What he did not understand about the Creek culture was that the children had a closer relationship with their mother's eldest brother than with their biological father, because of the importance of the clan structure.^[2][8]

The son McIntosh was considered a skilled orator and politician; he became a wealthy planter and slaveholder; and he was influential in both Creek and European-American society.^[6] One of his cousins was George Troup, who became governor of Georgia when McIntosh was a prominent chief. Whites sometimes mistakenly assumed that McIntosh had centralized authority over the Creek, but he was still among numerous chiefs and the central power became the Creek National Council, especially after it adopted the Code of 1818.

For generations, Creek chiefs had approved their daughters' marriages to fur traders in order to strengthen their alliances and trading power with the wealthy Europeans.^[2] Through both his mother and father, McIntosh was related to numerous other influential Creek chiefs, several of whom were of mixed race. They were descendants of strategic marriages between high-status Creek women and the mostly Scots fur traders in the area.^[8] The most prominent were Alexander McGillivray (1750-1793), the son of Sehoy, a Wind Clan mother, and Lachlan McGillivray; and William Weatherford (better known in history as Red Eagle or Lamochatta) (c.1780-1824), also born to the Wind Clan.

Both McIntosh and Weatherford became well established as Creek chiefs and wealthy planters, but Weatherford was aligned with the traditionalist Red Sticks of the Upper Towns in the period of the Creek Wars. He and McIntosh, who was with the Lower Towns, were opposed to each other during the conflict.

Marriage and children

McIntosh married a Creek woman named Susanna Coe, and they had several children, including their eldest son Chillicothe, born ca. 1800, called "Chilly' (also spelled Chillie).^[9][10] They also had a daughter Jane (ca. 1807-1868).^[5]

McIntosh took a second wife, Susannah Ree, a full-blood Creek. She has also been described as Susannah Rowe, daughter of a Cherokee father and called Peggy.^[4] Rebecca McIntosh (1815-1888) was one of her daughters. Others were Delilah and Catherine.^[5] William McIntosh and Susannah's son Daniel Newnan McIntosh, known as D.N., was born in 1822. These descendants all removed with the Creek to Indian Territory in the 1830s. Chilly and D.N. McIntosh both served as officers with the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.^[11]

As a successful Creek man, McIntosh reportedly had a third wife, who lived on a plantation 50 miles away.^[12] She was Eliza Hawkins, a daughter of Stephen Hawkins.^[12]

Career

McIntosh was a leader in adopting certain elements of European-American culture; he was interested in introducing US education among the Creek, adopted the use of chattel slavery on his plantations, and played a role in centralizing the Creek National Council over the years.

He used his influence to improve a Creek trail connecting the Upper and Lower Towns, that ran from Talladega, Alabama to the Chattahoochee River. He owned two plantations, Lockchau Talofau ("Acorn Bluff") in present-day Carroll County, and Indian Springs, in present-day Butts County.^[13] His plantation of Acorn Bluff was at the eastern terminus of the McIntosh Road, where the chief developed a ferry operation across the Ocmulgee River. He owned numerous black slaves to cultivate cotton as a commodity crop on his plantations. He also built a resort hotel at Indian Springs, hoping to attract more travelers along the improved road. Parts of this route are still referred to as the McIntosh Road, or the McIntosh Trail. It passes through several northern counties in Alabama and Georgia.^[14]

The Creek Nation struggled with internal tensions after the American Revolutionary War and during the War of 1812, when both Britain and the United States tried to engage them as allies. The Lower Towns, which comprised the majority of the population, were adapting some elements of European culture and lived more closely in relation to European Americans on the Georgia frontier. Many educated their children in English; some prominent Creek sent their sons to eastern universities for their education; and some adopted Christianity; as well as forms of European dress and houses - to show they were equally "civilized". They expanded their farms and some of the elite purchased chattel African slaves to work their plantations, as recommended by the British and Americans.^[15]

Role in Creek War

Internal Creek tensions resulted in the Creek War (1813-1814), when tensions between the Lower Creek and the traditional Red Sticks of the Upper Towns erupted into open conflict. McIntosh and other Lower Creek allied with United States forces against the Red Sticks after 1813, during the War of 1812. The Red Sticks were allied with the British, as both wanted to limit American expansion in the Southeast. McIntosh fought in support of General Andrew Jackson and state militias in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, marking the defeat in 1814 of the Red Sticks and the end of the Creek War.^[16] He was made a brigadier general.^[17]

The Creek were forced to cede lands to the United States in the early 1800s. Maps mark the strips that were ceded over the years. McIntosh played a role in negotiations and cessions of 1805, 1814 (21 million acres after the Creek War), 1818 and 1821.^[18] For his role in completing the cession in 1821, US agents awarded McIntosh 1,000 acres of land at Indian Springs and 640 acres on the Ocmulgee River.^[13]

After the wars, European-American settlers were increasingly migrating to the interior of the Southeast from the coastal areas and encroached on the territories of the Creek and other Southeastern tribes. Cultivation of short-staple cotton, which did well in these areas, was made profitable by Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, which mechanized processing of the cotton. Lands were developed in the piedmont areas for large cotton plantations, stimulating a demand for African-American slaves that resulted in the forcible migration of more than one million slaves to the Deep South in the domestic trade.

First Seminole War

Remnants of Creek, other American Indian tribes, and fugitive slaves had migrated to Spanish Florida during the late 18th century, when they formed a new tribe, known as the Seminole. Georgia slaves escaped and took refuge in Spanish-held Florida, where the Spanish Crown offered them freedom and land. After the Revolutionary War, Britain took over the Florida territory in an exchange with Spain.

After the War of 1812, the British withdrew and turned over Fort Gadsden, on the lower Apalachicola River, to blacks in the area. It was occupied by about 300 black men, women, and children, 20 renegade Choctaw, and a few Seminole warriors, led by a black named Garcon. Georgia slaveholders called it the "Negro Fort," and worried that the independence of the blacks would encourage their own slaves to escape or rebel. McIntosh fought with the United States in the First Seminole War and helped capture Fort Gadsden. When the Americans shot a heated cannonball into the fort, it struck the magazine and set off a huge explosion. Most of the people within the fort died immediately.

Formation of Creek centralized government

McIntosh was involved with chiefs from the Upper and Lower Towns (then primarily located in Alabama and Georgia, respectively) through the Creek National Council in developing a centralized government that borrowed from Anglo-American traditions. They formulated laws in the Code of 1818, which protected communal tribal property and established a police force known as the Law Defenders.^[3] In an effort to protect their remaining lands, the National Council, including McIntosh, had passed legislation in 1824 making it a capital crime to alienate communal land.^[12]

Annuities and African importation case of 1820

Like other prominent chiefs, McIntosh worked closely with Benjamin Hawkins, the US Indian Supervisor in the Southeast for two decades until 1816. Hawkins was instrumental in gaining Creek cessions of land through that period, but he also supported McIntosh's efforts to bring European-American education to the territory by welcoming missionaries who set up schools.

After President James Monroe came to office, in November 1817 his administration appointed David Brydie Mitchell as US Indian agent to the Creek. Mitchell had formerly been the governor of Georgia (1809-1813) (1815-1817), as well as holding other posts in the state.^[19] After the Creek War, the people suffered from the disruption. The US provided food and supplies as part of the annuities for the land cessions, especially the 21 million acres the Creek gave up following the war. Mitchell and McIntosh were suspected of controlling some of the distribution of food and annuities for their own benefit in this period, increasing McIntosh's power among the Creek.^[13]

In addition, Mitchell was implicated in the African importation case, in which illegal African slaves were held at the Creek agency on their sovereign land, for sale in the Mississippi Territory. This was tried in Admiralty Court as Miguel de Castro v. Ninety-five African Negros (1819-1820) because it was in violation of the US law, effective 1808, to end the international African slave trade.^[19]

The privateer "Commodore" Aury had taken the Africans as a prize from a Spanish ship bound for Havana, Cuba, where Spain continued slavery. He transported them to Amelia Island off Florida. William Bowen bought 110 slaves for $25,000 and had them taken to the Indian agency in the Creek Nation in two batches: in December 1817 and January 1818.^[19] Mitchell appeared to be primarily responsible for keeping the Africans at the Creek agency, which was considered outside US territory as it was within the Creek Nation. This was prior to the expected sale of the slaves in the Mississippi Territory, then including Alabama. Too many people learned about the presence of the Africans, and Mitchell was prosecuted over the issue.^[19]

With the change in administrations, President James Madison replaced Mitchell in 1821 with John Crowell, who had previously served as a US Congressman from Alabama. That year, the Creek agreed to another land cession in order to raise money for needed food and supplies, as conditions were still difficult for them.^[13]

Treaty of Indian Springs, 1825

exhibit at Indian Springs State Park Museum

Under pressure from the United States and the state of Georgia, McIntosh and some Creek chiefs had ceded land in 1821. The National Creek Council at that time considered execution of McIntosh for this breach of the Law to protect the communal lands but did not proceed.^[3] Under pressure from Southeast states, whose white populations were greedy for more land, the United States continued to try to persuade or force the Creek and other Southeast tribes to cede the remainder of their lands in exchange for payments and land west of the Mississippi River, in what was called Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma and Arkansas.)

On February 12, 1825, McIntosh and eight other chiefs signed the Treaty of Indian Springs.^[3] These chiefs included Samuel and Benjamin Hawkins, mixed-race Creek sons of Stephen Hawkins, who was also of mixed race. The brothers had both been educated at Princeton. Samuel had married McIntosh's daughter Jane, and Benjamin would later marry his daughter Rebecca.^[5]

The treaty ceded all the remaining Creek land in Georgia (the Upper and Lower Towns) to the United States in exchange for $200,000 and annuities. The fifth article of the treaty stipulated that McIntosh receive payment for lands he was previously granted in 1821. Historians continue to argue over whether McIntosh ceded the land for personal gain, or because he believed removal was inevitable, and he was trying to achieve some security for the Creek Nation. Historians such as Michael Green believed that McIntosh was selling away the tribe's birthright and future; he described the treaty as

"Fraudulent by the standards of any society, concluded in violation of the expressed orders of both interested governments, riddled with bribery, chicanery and deceit, the treaty illegally acquired for Georgia and Alabama, through the offices of the United States, an enormous amount of land."^[3]

As soon as the Creek National Council learned of this, they protested to Washington, but the Senate had already ratified the treaty. Initially Washington officials tried to carry it out. Governor George Troup of Georgia, a cousin of McIntosh, had promised him protection but put pressure on him to survey lands ahead of time, as Georgia wanted to prepare for a land lottery. Under the treaty the Creek had until late 1826 to leave the ceded territory.^[3]

Death

Under its Code of 1818, the National Council had established a police force, known as Law Menders. The Council ruled that the signatories of the 1825 treaty had to be executed for ceding the communal land, which was defined as a capital crime. This was the first known occasion when the Council ordered execution of men for a crime against the centralized Nation. The Council assigned chief Menawa, of a ceded township in the Upper Towns, to carry out the sentence.^[3]

On April 30, 1825, the Red Stick leader Menawa, with a large force of 120-150 Law Menders (the recently organized Creek police force) from towns in the ceded territory, attacked the McIntosh plantation, lighting bonfires around the buildings.^[20] Then they set McIntosh's house on fire.^[3] McIntosh, wounded by gunfire, was pulled from the burning house by several attackers, then one of the men stabbed him in the heart. Other Creeks shot him more than fifty times.^[21] Chillie McIntosh, the chief's oldest son, had also been sentenced to die, but he escaped by diving through a window.^[22] Etommee Tustunnuggee, another Creek chief who signed the 1825 treaty, was killed during the raid.^[20] Later that day, the Law Menders found the Hawkins brothers, who were also signatories; they hanged Samuel and shot Benjamin, but he escaped.^[3] The Creek had "adopted certain Anglo-American legal concepts, ...welded them to their own concepts of political independence and used them to serve decidedly Creek purposes."^[3]

William McIntosh's wives asked for a suit of clothes for his burial, but the assassins insisted on throwing the naked corpse into an unmarked grave.^[23] His burial site and part of his plantation have been preserved as the McIntosh Reserve in Carroll County, Georgia. According to Meserve, the grave is near Whitesburg.^[12]

Members of the National Council, including Menawa, went to Washington to protest the 1825 treaty. The US government rejected the 1825 treaty as fraudulent, and negotiated the 1826 Treaty of Washington, which allowed the Creek to keep about 3 million acres (12,000 km²) in Alabama.^[24] In this new treaty, the Creek received an immediate payment of $217,660 and a perpetual annuities of $20,000. The state of Georgia ignored the new treaty and worked to evict the Creek from their lands before official removal started in the 1830s.

Legacy

After William's death, his half-brother Roley McIntosh advanced to serve as chief of the Lower Creeks until 1859, moving with them to Indian Territory in the 1830s. His first wife had died and the widower married Susannah, the widow McIntosh.^[11][12]

Led by his son Chilly, McIntosh's family and other Creek moved to Indian Territory in 1828, where they settled at the forks of the Arkansas, Verdigris and Grand (Neosho) rivers, setting up the Western Creek Nation.^[4] His two sons Chillicothe and D.N. McIntosh both served as Confederate officers in the Civil War.^[11] D. N. McIntosh was commissioned as a colonel. He founded the 1st Creek Mounted Volunteers (later known as the First Creek Cavalry Regiment, C.S.A.); Chilly founded the 2nd Creek Mounted Volunteers (later known as the Second Creek Cavalry Regiment, CSA).^[25] Both brothers later became Baptist ministers in the Indian Territory. Eight McIntosh men served with the Confederate Army during the war.

Rebecca McIntosh married Benjamin Hawkins in the Western Creek Nation in 1831.^[4] Benjamin knew Sam Houston, and in 1833 he and Rebecca moved to Marion County, Texas on the territory's eastern border, where they developed the Refuge plantation.^[5] Their son William died young, and they had two daughters, Louisa and Anna. Benjamin Hawkins died in 1836 in Texas, killed near Nagodoches.^[5]

By the 1840s, Rebecca's sisters Delilah McIntosh, who married William Drew, and Catherine Hettie McIntosh, who married James D. Willison, were settled in Texas with their husbands and families on part of the Hawkins property.^[5] Delilah and William Drew's 2400-acre plantation, called Falonah, was near the Refuge.

The widow Rebecca McIntosh Hawkins married Spire M. Hagerty, who held land and slaves on his Phoenix plantation in Harrison County, Texas. He died in December 1849 in Montgomery County, Alabama. By 1860, Rebecca Hagerty was the richest woman in Texas at the age of 45. She was the only woman who in 1860 owned more than 100 slaves, and likely the only Native American in Texas to do so. She owned three plantations: the third was in Cass County, and the total properties amounted to 12,800 acres.^[4] In 1860, her "personal wealth was reported to have been $85,000 and her real estate valued at $35,000. She was the wealthiest person in Marion County, where her plantation Refuge was located. Most of her personal wealth was attributed to the value of the one hundred and two people she held in bondage."^[4]

• The McIntosh Reserve Park was established in Whitesburg, Georgia.
• In 1921, McIntosh's grave was marked by a boulder with a bronze tablet placed by the William McIntosh Chapter, DAR in October 1921. The inscription states:

"To the Memory and Honor of General William McIntosh

The Distinguished and Patriotic Son of Georgia whose devotion was heroic, whose friendship unselfish and whose service was valiant. Who negotiated the treaty with the Creek Indians which gave the state all lands lying west of the Flint River. Who sacrificed his life for his patriotism.

Erected by William McIntosh Chapter D. A. R. Jackson, Georgia, 1921."^[12]

• In the early 21st century, the McIntosh Trail was being proposed as a state scenic byway in several counties of northern Georgia in a project by the McIntosh Trail Historic Preservation Society. The chief had improved this trail to connect the Upper and Lower Towns, and bring commerce to the area, including to his hotel at Indian Springs and the ferry at the terminus.^[14] By 2011 the Trail had received preliminary approval for its alignment, with the Three Rivers Commission due to review its corridor plan.^[26]

References in other media

• William Gilmore Simms, wrote a poem about William McIntosh, "The Broken Arrow," published in The Book of My Lady: A Melange. By a Bachelor Knight (Philadelphia, 1833).
• Betty Collins Jones, Clouds across the Moon (1991), romance novel.
• Billie Jane McIntosh, a 3x great-granddaughter of McIntosh, wrote Ah-ko-kee, American Sovereign (2002), a novel featuring McIntosh's daughter Jane McIntosh Hawkins; this is not a history.
• Billie Jane McIntosh also wrote a biographical novel about Jane's brother in From Georgia Tragedy To Oklahoma Frontier: A Biography of Scots Creek Indian Chief Chilly McIntosh (2008)
• B.J. McIntosh wrote a screenplay about William McIntosh in 2014. Matt Collins is marketing the work through his company, Brit Nicholas Entertainment.^[27]

Notes

References

• Green, Michael D. The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1982
• Griffith, Jr., Benjamin W. McIntosh and Weatherford, Creek Indian Leaders, Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1988, text online  – via Questia (subscription required)
• « McIntosh, William, Jr. » in Hoxie, Frederick E. Encyclopedia of North American Indians Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996. ISBN 978-0-585-07764-2
• Theda Perdue, Mixed Blood Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South (Google eBook), University of Georgia Press, 2003
• Carole E. Scott, "Chief William McIntosh", Rootsweb ©, adapted with permission of the author.
• "Captain William McIntosh", Floripedia

Further reading

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

External links

• "William McIntosh", Encyclopedia of American Indians; (registration required)
• "William McIntosh", Encyclopedia of Alabama
• "McIntosh grave/marker"
•  "McIntosh, William". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. 
• William McIntosh at Find a Grave
• McIntosh House historical marker
• McIntosh Gate historical marker