heres last nights writings from my continuing work on the Belles of the Creek Nation McIntosh part 2 Although a mixed blood who lived a life rife with privilege and power, wealth and prestige, McIntosh’s journey across the stage of history reflected the difficult position he was in personally, constantly having to navigate the treacherous waters of political intrigue and societal expectation. Born in 1778, he lived during a time of fantastic transition among the Creeks, a time when the Creek Nation was reaching the height of its power and would begin a slow spiral of land loss, military defeats, and increased violence and death from all sides, a situation which would ultimately end in a complete loss of the lands held dear for hundreds of years and a journey westwards to an unknown fate a thousand miles away. As a member of the prominent wind clan and a leader of Koweta tribal town of the lower Creeks, he was fully invested in his community as a tribal member, which scholars Theda Perdue and James Taylor Carson have both shown through their works, that though controversial as a leader, he was indeed fully Creek in his identity. Though he was a Creek leader and a warrior of unquestioned courage as the son of a Tory Euro-American father, he was involved in depth in the capitalist economy emerging among the Creeks, and especially prominent among the mixed blood elites. McIntosh’s life and death reflected the realities of the clash of civilizations unfolding with increased Creek-American interactions, which with the passage of years and increasing pressures from a restless American population became more violent and distrustful with each passing year. Each day of his life McIntosh had to balance the two opposing sides of his identity. As a successful and prominent chief, Creek expectations that McIntosh would share the benefits of his wealth with tribesmen were not disappointed, as several of his kinsmen and tribal town people were benefited. His redistribution of cattle, money, food, and trade goods to others was the responsibility of a man and a warrior, much less a leading chief, in the Creek society of McIntosh’s day, a responsibility which until near the end of his life, he delivered on. What was not beneficial or normative was the concentration of wealth and unbridled political power that went along with it, influence and means which were not norms in traditional Creek society, and almost never concentrated in the hands of a single individual as it became with McIntosh in the fairly communal lifestyle of the Creeks. Being the son of a Wind Clan Creek woman and a white father, McIntosh grew up with two conflicting standards of identity and culture constantly pulling on him. In the traditional ways of the Muscogee Creek, an Indian youths father played only a small role in the upbringing and teaching of them, with the mother’s brothers (who were of the same clan) being the primary shapers of a youth identity. With McIntosh and his brother, this was not the case, as his British father played a significant role in influencing his son’s life. McIntosh’s father taught him English, exposed him to interactions with other whites and instructed him in the capitalist economic values which were a large part of the elder McIntosh’s business among the Creeks. The elder McIntosh was very involved in the lives of his young sons and sought to help them “rise above” the life that traditional Creeks sought as in balance with others and nature. The Wind clan uncles of McIntosh were men who took their clan responsibilities seriously and the elder McIntosh went too far when he tried to have his young sons sent away to be educated in Scotland, an action which was protested, and ultimately foiled by, the wind clan uncles. His mother’s brothers were set that their charge would not be taken away from their people, and their views on the matter would’ve carried much weight with fellow Creeks, though the elder McIntosh indeed tried to take his sons with him upon leaving for Scotland, with the promise that he would return them after schooling was complete, something not unknown among the mixed blood sons of other elite families. The story says that McIntosh’s father went against the wishes of his wife and her clan and left with his sons to await transit aboard ship to Scotland. While they were waiting to board the ship, the boy’s maternal uncles came and took them while their father was otherwise engaged. The tale states that the men of the Wind Clan had acted swiftly to reclaim their charge when the elder McIntosh had “joined the other passengers in the lounge area. Later in the evening when the Captain had returned to the stateroom, the boys were missing…Nothing could be done now for the ship was at sea and the Captain was taking the trip alone.” Though the actions of the Wind Clan men are seemingly underhanded and selfish from a modern perspective, they were doing what would be expected from them under Creek law. This close scrape for the young Creek McIntosh and his brother with a differing future than that of most other Creeks would not be his last, but despite this he and his brother would remain upon the lands of their people for the rest of their lives. Twice in his life, the Creek law clearly reached out to firmly grasp McIntosh and shape his fate; on the day that his Wind Clan uncles returned their charge to the Creek Nation and his responsibilities as a Wind Clan member, and on the day of his death when the Law Menders bullets, some fired by men of his own clan, would fulfill the requirements of the law and hold him accountable for his actions. Much like another Creek of a similar background, the war chief William Weatherford, McIntosh would participate fully in his tribal town and clan responsibilities and would ultimately pay the greatest of prices for his beliefs regarding these. As an advocate of policies which would lead the Creeks into a closer relationship with the United States and assimilation to its values, McIntosh and other chiefs who found themselves between the steadily increasing presence of Americans on their lands and the calls by more conservative leaders for military actions against the newcomers. Though both McIntosh and Weatherford were sons of white fathers and Creek mothers, their allegiances could not have been more different. McIntosh was called “a steady friend of the United States and of civilization”, by the U.S. Secretary of War James Barbour. Though this movement for acquiring the trappings of “civilization” among the Creeks never caught on with the majority of Creeks, leaders such as McIntosh and others are known to have influenced factions among the lower Creeks who did; factions whose descendants are still recognizable among the politics of the Creeks today, east and west of the Mississippi. The notions of capitalism, individual land holdings, Christianity, and slave based agriculture and other ideas and practices new to the Creeks were spread among and by the mixed blood elites and found footing particularly among the lower Creeks, whose progressive outlook would continue down to our own time in some ways . In his time, many American officials viewed McIntosh as like them and he used this to expand his business interests and ties politically. As well he took a similar tack among the Indians, as strategically he cultivated the clan ties among the Wind people, one of the leadership clans among the Muskogee speaking Creeks, to his advantage. The United States government’s choice of singling “cooperative” leaders out for monetary rewards and positions of authority during treaty making negotiations, with him as a “lead” Chief in many cases would work for McIntosh for much of his political career. In the end it would be his undoing though, and his ultimate choices to act beyond his capacity as sanctioned by the laws of the Creek people would be a pattern repeated among many other tribes over the next century. The United States policy of “setting up” chiefs would be repeated multiple times across the continent as the wave of American expansion moved westward. Countless times leaders chosen by the American authorities for their pliability would be led to sign agreements not sanctioned by their people. Few though would be held ultimately responsible for their decisions as fully as McIntosh was. It was not solely the Americans who were at the root of the situation though, as it was their understanding of McIntosh as “one of their own” which facilitated their interactions with him in many ways, an identity which he did little to refute, indeed, a representation which he himself cultivated in his dealing with the white authorities, state and federal. His participation on the American side during the War of 1812, engaging in political opposition and eventually to armed conflict with Creek traditionalists known as “Redsticks” was not the first of his actions which clearly communicated to all his American values and allegiances. During the Treaty of Washington in 1805 McIntosh would facilitate the transfer of the lands between the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers to the Americans, as well as make access for a road from Mobile Alabama to the Ocmulgee valley possible, a route which he would use to expand his growing fortune and power. During the War of 1812 General Jackson would comment on McIntosh’s valor in battle stating “Major M’Intosh the Cowetan who joined my army with part of his tribe, greatly distinguished himself. ” McIntosh’s choice to ally himself with the Americans would cause much resentment among the majority of the Creek people, who did not live the southern planter lifestyle and materialistic, capitalist, non-traditional values which McIntosh and other mixed blood elites throughout the southern tribes did. On many occasions afterwards McIntosh would barely fend off attempts by his adversaries to unseat him, and his alienation from chiefs from other towns, especially outside of his alliance of a few lower towns who were pro-American and supplied by United States interests would grow with time. The friendship that McIntosh would have with United States Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins would lead to much personal benefit for him and until Hawkins death in 1816, they would work together on many projects to implement American policies slated to assimilate the Indians, with McIntosh a primary beneficiary of these activities. His role as a distributor of goods and monies relating to negotiations and annuities would increase his power among his faction, and his personal wealth as well as tribal power base would grow steadily. When McIntosh’s in-law David Mitchell became the Indian agent to the Creek Nation after Hawkins death, the control that McIntosh had over the flow of goods and funds became even more pronounced. McIntosh and members of his “party” received over $80,000 in goods in 1817 and 1818 Decision after decision and choice after choice, McIntosh showed his orientation away from the communal values, non-materialistic lifeway’s, and harmony and balance of the Nene Hvtke, the Creek world which was foundational to the law codes that governed Creek society. Throughout McIntosh’s life he continue to live his dual identity; his American values exemplified through his ambitious and expansive business interests, even as he continued in his clan and village responsibilities and distributed some of his wealth among his Kowetv people as was expected of a warrior and town chief. Materially his wealth grew through the years, exemplified with him establishing two plantations, a toll road and ferry, and large business ventures on several fronts. A visitor to McIntosh’s home in 1797 commented that his habitation was a “poor sorry place, little better than an Indian hut”, but by 1820 McIntosh would host countless visitors in his two story plantation house, estimated to be worth $1,500 dollars. Upon his death, the United States government estimated his properties to be valued at over $10,000 . The lifestyle and accomplishments of mixed bloods such as McIntosh strengthened the views of many Americans that Indians could and eventually would be subsumed and absorbed into the American population. President Thomas Jefferson said “The ultimate point of rest and happiness…is to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend together, to intermix, and become one people”. In individuals such as McIntosh and others of the mixed blood elite this was a reality already in full swing years before the removal, though the vast majority of the Creek people still lived the communal village life of their ancestors. Like many mixed bloods mentioned in the historic record, McIntosh’s perplexing identity would be the object of interest and comment for the many Europeans and Americans that would cross his path during his years of operating business in several ventures along the “government road”. A visitor to the Creek Nation in 1819, Ebenezer H. Cummins commented on the uniqueness of McIntosh, as well as revealing attitudes of the time which reveal the ideas of the “disappearing Redman”, a view which would linger into our own time. “In the very neighborhood of the country of which we have been treating, is a rising family of the name of M’Intosh, commonly called half breeds, possessed of many of the higher virtues, and particularly distinguished of military achievements.” Cummins goes on to inform us of the genealogical ties established among the white Southerners and the Creek (and Cherokee) mixed blood elites, “A son of the late governor of Georgia, General David B. Mitchell, recently married Miss M’Intosh, an accomplished girl…though descended of an Indian mother.” The assumed ultimate fate of the Creek people to assimilation and eventual extinction is stated in his next comment of his travels observation. “The truth is, after the missionary system, and the system of taming by the arts, shall have failed in the benevolent purpose of rescuing the savage from heathenism and extinction, amalgamation will have preserved the precious streams of Indian blood, coursing through the veins of many generous loyal citizens. ” His statements hint at the view of many Americans who viewed the way of life and beliefs of the Native people as inferior to the “civilized” ways, and with the proper changes in culture they could be accepted by whites as equals. The best efforts by the many among the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and other tribes who tried to adapt to white cultural life ways were not rewarded as they thought, a harsh reality revealed by the long walk to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi in years to come. The policies which the American authorities were advocating and sought to implement in any way possible were at the forefront of the Indian agent Hawkins agenda, and the policies administered by his successor Mitchell. The Americans support of the activities of Indian countrymen and the mixed blood elite families they established would accelerate already existing differences among various Creek factions, leading to conflict and bloodshed before and after the removal, grudges and resentments that would last for generations to come, resurfacing a generation later in the clash between Creek factions which occurred in the American Civil War, and indeed even can be found in the Crazy Snake “Rebellion” of a century ago. The legacy of McIntosh and his party would be so strong; it would resound in the politics of the Creeks for the next two centuries. McIntosh did not establish his vast network of business and political connections overnight or easily though. He used strategic marriages to several wives to cement ties which would be important to his endeavors. The tradition of polygamy was not new among the Creeks but it was uncommon for any one man to have the number of wives that McIntosh did. The McIntosh Scotsman who sired Chief McIntosh had married two Creek women and had children with both, as well as marrying a Scottish-American woman with whom he sired a family as well, with whom the Creek McIntosh was acquainted. He was cousin to Georgia Governor George M. Troup and half-brother to Georgia legislator William R. McIntosh as well as the collector for the Treasury Department at Savannah John McIntosh. McIntosh also created for himself through his marriages and relationships many ties throughout Indian Country, a custom which he also arranged for the benefit of his children. Chief McIntosh married Susannah Coe (Creek), Peggy (Cherokee), and Elizabeth Hawkins (herself the mixed blood daughter of a Creek woman and an Indian Countrymen) as well as purportedly having children with other women as well. Through the ties he established across tribal town lines and among other tribes, McIntosh more than any other Creek leader, exemplified the concentration of resources and political power which were a hallmark of the mixed blood elites, and contrary to the traditional communal values of the Nene-Hvtke, the traditional Creek values of harmony and reciprocity. Many Americans viewed the “Indian” marriages as lacking the same legitimacy as the “Christian’” marriages by assimilated mixed bloods among each other or even to whites. The Native women, such as Susannah Coe and Peggy, women who were a part of these “convenience” or “casual marriages” in the eyes of some of the white visitors to McIntosh’s residence, were hardly regarded by many of them as worthy even of comment. Though these relationships were fully accepted by Native law, they were often dismissed in “proper society”. McIntosh’s marriage to Elizabeth was held in higher regard due to her father’s prominence on the political landscape of the time, the American Stephen Hawkins was commented upon by many of those who stayed at McIntosh’s Inn. The ambition which McIntosh showed throughout his life was not only restricted to his life and marriages, but was present in the marital arrangement he facilitated for some of his children . They like he married well connected individuals. One of his daughters married Thomas Spalding a trader among the Indians. Another of his daughters married the federal interpreter to the Creeks Samuel Hawkins, while a third married the son of Georgia’s Governor David B. Mitchell. The extensive ties created by the McIntosh family would continue to expand for generations to come, with the McIntosh family name becoming well established amongst leadership circles until this very day. A son, named Chilly McIntosh would himself become a well-known and influential leader as well. Though mixed blood Indian leaders such as McIntosh, Weatherford, Josiah Francis, Osceola, or McQueen would loom large over the narrative of the history of the experience of the Indians of the Southeast, the forces which motivated their choices and actions were complex and often misunderstood by the Americans of the time. Thomas Woodward, himself of mixed blood origins, commented regarding this, “General Jackson said to Weatherford that he was astonished at a man of his good sense, and almost a white man, to take sides with an ignorant set of savages, and being led astray by men who professed to be prophets and gifted with a supernatural influence.” Many Americans failed to grasp the expansive embrace of the Creek culture in its complexity, or the strength and breadth that the clan based culture of Creek Nation afforded to even the mixed bloods among them. This lack of insight to the motivating influences among the mixed bloods among the Indians is easily displayed in the observations of Thomas Hart Benton, Senator and Chairmen of the Committee on Indian Affairs, who said “some of the southern tribes…though still called Indians,” were no longer meeting his expectations of such because, “their primitive and equal government had lost its form, and had become an oligarchy, governed chiefly by a few white men, called half-breeds, because there was a tincture of Indian blood in their veins.” The choices made at the Crossroads of history by many mixed bloods was driven by many complex influences and with the paucity of records regarding the lesser known lives of the majority of mixed bloods not of such celebrated stock as McIntosh, Weatherford, and the like, we can be assured that many stories of family struggles and challenges overcome or lost to time and represented only by the remembrances of grandparents concerning the tenacity and courage of their grandparents in the wake of the removal holocaust have at least some grounds. In the south as well as in Oklahoma today many families have rich oral history stories of the measures that ancestors went to in attempts to bridge the widening gap that resulted from the intensifying pressures exerted on all the Indian tribes to remove west, assimilate, or be pushed into the “colored” identity. With the explosion of violence that swept the Indian lands in the years before removal it can be of little surprise the incidents of the mixed bloods and their families who were on friendly terms with neighbors in many cases fleeing to American homes and settlements for refuge as the hostilities between Creek traditional people and Americans increased. One observer penned that “The whites who have been resident among them and who are acquainted with their habits and character, are sending their families from the Nation.” Unlike some of the mixed blood families of lesser power and investment, McIntosh and his relatives would stay in their villages during the hostilities. Others, mainly the hundreds of Creek women who were married to or more often cohabitating with what we will delicately term ‘frontier whites’ and lived among the Americans would sever ties to their home villages for good and make their way into the tales of family folklore that across the south attest to an “Indian great-great grandma” that seemingly every family claims . The journey of McIntosh, like that of several prominent mixed bloods over time such as Weatherford, Osceola, and others would end in violence as civilizations clashed in warfare and struggle. At the Treaty of Indian Springs, decisions regarding who McIntosh saw himself as reached their essence. His orchestration of exclusive land cessions for himself, including over a thousand acres at his residence at Indian Springs and six hundred and forty acres around his plantation on the Ocmulgee, were extensive. Along with these cessions he also arranged to receive and presumably distribute to his supporters, half of the four hundred thousand dollars the Creek Nation was to receive for its lands being relinquished. Additionally the Americans agreed to pay McIntosh forty thousand dollars for his participation and facilitation of earlier land cessions . The tide turned for McIntosh with his in-law Benjamin Mitchell was replaced by John Crowell, who was unsympathetic to McIntosh and Mitchell’s arrangements. Samuel Hawkins, who was executed two days after McIntosh, would state that Crowell was using his position to line his own pockets and develop his own power within the politics of the American-Creek arrangement, an accusation which doubtlessly could be said of most and was in all likelihood true for many. With the appointment of Crowell, a new system was afoot, and the winds of fortune were changing. After decades of unbridled ambition and influence among the Creeks on behalf of the Americans, McIntosh would find that he was between a rock and a hard place with few options available to supply his need for goods and cash, important to maintain his position and ensure support for his policies. Animosity between Crowell and McIntosh would continue and grow with time. McIntosh would find himself cut off from the flow of cash and goods which had been his for years and which he had built his network of tribal allies and political connections on. This desperate situation would be a major influence in part on his decision to sign the Treaty of Indian Springs in 1825, and would be the opening sought by his many enemies among the conservative Creek factions to lawfully bring his power as well as life, to a violent yet lawful end. The historic record shows the limited extent of the power that McIntosh, as active and political as he was, wielded in the Creek Nation. Members of only eight out of the fifty six Creek tribal towns signed the Treaty of Indian Springs, almost none of whom were leaders, and all of who had received goods and cash from McIntosh in the years directly preceding the treaty. The blow to his faction among the Creeks that this treaty exacerbated would reduce its sway in the council for years to come. The power wielded after McIntosh’s death by his son Chilly would include only the close alliance of Kowetv, Broken Arrow, Talladega, and Hillabee . The illegitimacy of the Treaty of Indian Springs of 1825 was apparent to many. Even McIntosh’s adversary John Crowell, the United States Indian Agent who had opposed him on many things said, “With the exception of McIntosh, and perhaps two others, the signatures to this treaty are either chiefs of low grade, or not chiefs at all. ” This situation was corroborated in the statements of the Little Prince, who had worked with, as well as against, McIntosh through the years. “We are Creeks. We have a great many Chiefs and headmen, but be they ever so great they must abide by the laws. We have guns and ropes and if and if any of our people break these laws those guns and ropes are to be their end. The laws are not made for any particular person but for all. ” Though McIntosh may his end at the barrel of the guns of the Law Menders, he did so as an outlaw and violator of the values that the Creek people, his own nation, held as sacred. As controversial as McIntosh and his decisions were, they were both rooted in the Creek culture. Though he was racially a mixed blood and viewed by many Americans who knew him as “one of their own”, the identity of William McIntosh as a Creek should not be doubted any more than that of Josiah Francis, William Weatherford, or other actors on the scene of the Creek Nation in those days. In many cases they were men who “lived by the feud”, individuals whose motivations and actions flowed from the decisions and loyalties they made in their lives to a swiftly changing social reality. All mixed bloods would find themselves having to make difficult choices during the years leading up to the removal. On the frontier of the Creek and American worlds, survival and security would be negotiated on an individual, family, and tribal town basis. Military strategies, marriages, and political alliances would determine the fate of several dozen large mixed blood families. In the case of William McIntosh, many of his children including his son Chilly would venture to Indian Territory and start a new life, much like Doyle’s children Amanda, Muscogee, and Jackson would. Others such as McIntosh’s daughter Kate, would remain behind, much like Doyle’s daughters Nancy and Sarah, and like them her descendants would settle in southern Georgia, eastern Alabama, and the Florida panhandle. Some of McIntosh’s descendants in the area of Cairo, Georgia would form the “Lower Muskogee Creek” Tribe a century and a half after his death, others would petition the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the “Principal Creek Nation”.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:17:35 +0000
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