DECEMBER 13:

December 13, 1831:  Eneah Micco, Principal Chief of the Creek lower towns, writes to Creek agent John Crowell, today. 1500 whites are living in Creek territory.  The Creeks fear they will be forced from their lands.
 
 
 

BACKGROUND:
 

From http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1999-2000/Oliver.htm
 

The prominence of certain Scotch traders that had come to Pensacola in the mid-1700s brought about the domination of Creek trade into the Creek War. These traders frequently married in with the local towns of the Lower Creeks who traded more often in Pensacola than other towns. The Panton, Leslie and Company of traders were the most powerful land speculators in that era. Based in Pensacola in 1785 and accustomed to the bartering and gift giving of the Indian trade, the company grew steadily under William Panton, without much other competition. Even when Florida was given back to Spain, Panton held onto his posts, including the Fort San Marcos de Apalachee. This firm came to dominate the trade of the Southeastern Indians after other firms left due to hostilities with the Indians and Spanish and English. One of the prominent Scotch traders at the time was a man by the name of McGillivray, who married a woman of the prominent Wind Clan. Their son, Alexander McGillivray, is considered an anomaly among the Creeks. While he was the son of prominent European man, he was also the son of a prominent Muskogee woman, thus giving him a power base in each culture. McGillivray's education and white background and land base gave him the clout to negotiate in white circles. As white encroachment became more and more aggressive, the Muskogees found themselves on the defensive. At the American Revolution, similar factions within the Nation divided Creek loyalty along white bloodlines and thus, no official position was taken. McGillivray led a pro-British faction, while the Tallassee King and the Fat King were in support of the Americans. At the opening of the war, the Virginian army charged into North Carolina and crushed the Cherokee Nation. The Georgians made similar threats on the Creeks. These factors contributed to the factionalism, which now weakened the Creeks. The National Council could not come to a consensus. 18

The emergence of the United States posed perhaps the most immediate threat to Creek autonomy. Thomas Jefferson's vision of westward expansion depended on a road between the port of New Orleans and the Eastern seaboard. The new mail road was proposed in 1805 and opened in 1811. It was to connect New Orleans with Athens, Georgia and thus Washington, D.C., slicing 726 miles off of the Natchez Trace route. In order for the road to be cut, the Creek Nation, which stood in the middle, from the Ocmulgee River to Mobile, had to be appeased, or moved.

In response to American aggression, McGillivray moved to centralize authority in the Nation so as to transform the Creek confederation into a powerful nation that would be able to dictate its own destiny. McGillivray's support came from the Upper Towns but he was undermined by the Lower Towns who had closer contact with Augusta and Charleston. The thought of central power was counter to the traditions of the Muskogee worldview and the thought of a single, central authority caused turmoil within the Nation. Meanwhile, the Georgians continued to squat farther and farther west. The Tallassee King and the Fat King made separate treaties with the Georgians, without the National Council consensus. Supported by Spanish gunpowder, the Creeks repelled the invading Georgians in 1786. The Spanish became frightened by the Creek power and withdrew their powder. By 1790, most of Georgia was under the control of the United States. In the Treaty of New York in 1790, McGillivray ceded the remainder of the territory to the U.S. and received titles in the U.S. Army. The remaining Creek towns outside of the U.S. were in the Florida and the Upper Creek towns. McGillivray died in 1793 at Pensacola.

During the same year, the U.S. suggested that it might want to put not for profit stores in the Backcountry. Because of the Treaty of San Lorenzo, the U.S. had assumed responsibility of the lands and Indians east of the Mississippi River, excluding Florida. William Panton, of Panton, Leslie and Co., decided that he would not be able to incur the losses that this new competition would bring. Exacerbating this situation was General William Augustus Bowles. In 1792, General Bowles, the Seminole raider, attacked St. Marks and Panton lost $14000 in goods and supplies. In 1796, Panton decided to begin to collect on the debts of the Creeks. The stranglehold that Panton could hold on the Creek Nation through trade is evident later, when he is given Apalachicola as retribution in 1800 after Bowles attacks St. Marks, again.

When Panton began to collect the Indian debts, it marked a change in the trade system that had traditionally been used in the Creek Nation. Until this time, trade had been based on barter and gift giving. The new system the Panton and his younger partner, John Forbes began to use was exacting and compounded interest. The concept of interest enraged the Creeks, whose leaders and prominent figures had been allowed numerous purchases on credit. Forbes went to Nashville to collect from the Cherokee. John McKee, the Cherokee Indian agent, sent under the authority of the U. S. War Department traveled to Pensacola. McKee assured Panton of U.S. support to enforce a new policy which allows the Creeks to pay off their debts through land sales. In return, Panton was required to keep the Muskogee quiet during the transfer of Louisiana.19

At the time of Panton's death, Forbes took control of the company, renaming it Forbes and Co. Spain allowed Forbes to use the same "land for debt" policy in Florida. The trade that had allowed the Muskogees to rise to prominence among the eastern tribes now choked their vitality. As opposed to the barter trade that the Leslie, Panton and Co. had focused on, Forbes and Co. ushered in the transition to cotton trade in Pensacola and Mobile. With the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the ability to grow cotton in the Mississippi territory became more viable. In 1798, the U.S. began a policy of active acquisition of the Mississippi territory through tribal alliances, making peace between the settlers and Indians, teaching farming, and then acquiring farmlands. There were not enough settlers at that time, however, to move into Mississippi and make a state. The Indians were to be assimilated. Benjamin Hawkins was made the Creek Indian agent in 1796 and used his influence in the Lower Creeks to try and remove their tribal culture and implement husbandry.20   In the acquisition of territories, the U.S. would also establish trading posts so as to regulate Indian trade. The trading posts were established primarily along the Federal Road, which had been enacted in 1806. Hawkins, along with Forbes, had the task of keeping Creek frustration in check to allow for safe passage along the road from Georgia to New Orleans. In the cession of the lands for the Federal road, Forbes hoped that the Creeks would be able to pay their debts off. 21

The growth of the cotton industry spelled the death of the deerskin trade.22 The land that had been used to hunt on now became part of the cotton farms and useless for hunting on the scale necessary to pay back debts, thus the Creeks continued to go further and further into debt, selling more and more land, as in the Treaty of Ft. Wilkinson in 1802. In order to hold onto their land, the Lower Creeks began to assimilate to white cultures and take up fanning of cotton and animal husbandry as dictated by Hawkins, relying on white tools such as the plow. The Upper Creeks, refusing to bend, became hostile to the U.S. An embargo imposed by the Federal government in 1809 drove the price of cotton down and only large plantations could survive the downturn.

The Creek War marks the end of the Creek confederacy. The Creeks, especially the Upper Creeks became hostile. Many Creeks had become seasonal laborers and itinerant peddlers. Rumors of British aggression and the spiritual revivalists' uprising under Tecumseh spurned on the Upper Creeks, whose deep resentments of the Americans and Hawkins was ready to brew over. Tecumseh's followers were called the Red Sticks by whites. After the Red Sticks had attacked a group of Tennessee settlers, Hawkins ordered their execution. In retaliation, the Red Sticks planned an uprising. But, in transporting gunpowder from Pensacola to the Tallapoosa in July 1813, the Red Sticks were raided by settlers. On August 30, 1813, the Red Sticks overran Ft. Mims, killing 250 men, women and children living there. This attack sparks the invasion of the Creek interior by four armies of militiamen and the Lower Creeks. Despite this attack, the Upper Creek towns evaded these armies for ten months. In the course of these ten months, the Upper Creeks followed a scorched earth policy, eventually starving themselves. Starving and displaced and terribly outnumbered, the remainder of the Muskogees were cornered into the Battle of Horseshoe Bend at the hands of Andrew Jackson. The Battle of Horseshoe Bend ended on August 9, 1814 with the Treaty of Ft. Jackson.

The events leading up to the end of Creek autonomy at the end of the Creek War in 1814 and introduction of the Federal Road in 1811 are deep seated in the past. These two events are chronologically, flashes of tender when seen in the light of the history of European-Creek trade. This trade, beginning with the Spanish in the sixteenth century, centered on the barter system trading goods for pelts and military alliances. Later, under the French and English, the pelt trade, along with the introduction of the gun created a colonial economy dependent on the trade of gunpowder and munitions for pelts and slaves. The growing dependence of the powerful Creek confederacy on European goods undermined their autonomy, as their reliance on European gunpowder was necessary to defend them from European encroachment. The attempt of Alexander McGillivray to unite the Creeks into a centralized force at the end of the eighteenth century was counter to the traditional government and world view of the Creeks, or Muskogees. The attempt to form this government and thus, wield Creek power more effectively, fell through because of internal factionalism. This internal factionalism had always existed but now divided the autonomy of the Creek Nation. Although the Creek War was considered on of the bloodiest Indian wars in American history, its outcome was forgone. The way of life that the Upper Creeks strove to hold onto was destroyed by the onslaught of European trade. Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun best articulated the end of Creek autonomy, in 1818:

"They have, in a great measure, ceased to be an object of terror, and have become that of commiseration ... The time seems to have arrived when our policy towards them should undergo an important change ... Our views of their interest, and not their own, ought to govern them."23
 

 Notes
   18  Green, p 32.
   19 Cottcrill, Robert S. "A Chapter of Panton, Leslie, and Co.." The
Journal of Southern History. Vol. 10, no.3 (Aug, 1944). p275-292.
   20 Hawkins, Benjamin. "Letter to James McHenry." Letters. January 6, 1797.
   21 Brown and Southerland. The Federal Road. 1989.
   22 Usner, Jr., Daniel H. "The American Indian on the Cotton Frontier." AeJournal of American History. September, 1985. Vol. 72, no. 2, p. 297-317.
   23 Green, p 32.