Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2013 "Let Us Try to Make Each Other Happy, and Not Wretched": the Creek-Georgian Frontier, 1776-1796 Kevin Kokomoor Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES “LET US TRY TO MAKE EACH OTHER HAPPY, AND NOT WRETCHED:” THE CREEK-GEORGIAN FRONTIER, 1776-1796 By KEVIN KOKOMOOR A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2013 Kevin Kokomoor defended this dissertation on October 4, 2013. The members of the supervisory committee were: Andrew K. Frank Professor Directing Dissertation Dennis Moore University Representative Robinson Herrera Committee Member Edward Grey Committee Member Frederick Davis Committee Member The Graduate School has verifies and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii I dedicate this to my mom and dad. Thanks for everything! iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract v INTRODUCTION 1 1. “ALL THE RED PEOPLE WERE NOW THE KING’S PEOPLE:” CREEKS CHOOSE SIDES, 1776-1782 25 2. “BURNING & DESTROYING ALL BEFORE THEM” THE CREEK REVOLUTIONARY WAR EFFORT 77 3. “CONQUERORS OF THE OLD & MASTERS OF THE NEW WORLD:” GEORGIAN TREATIES AND CREEK RESPONSES, 1783-1786 108 4. “THE STATE OF GEORGIA NOW LAYS AT OUR MERCY:” THE OCONEE WAR, 1786-1789 144 5. “A DEBAUCHED AND MERCENARY MAN, AND EXTREMELY TIMID:” THE RISE AND FALL OF ALEXANDER MCGILLIVRAY, 1789-1793 175 6. LIKE “MAD PEOPLE…RUNNING CRAZY:” CREEK COUNTRY IN CRISIS, 1792-1793 213 7. THE VIOLENCE OF THE CREEK-GEORGIAN FRONTIER 246 8. “THE SATISFACTION YOU NOW DEMAND SHALL BE GRANTED:” ATTEMPTING ACCOMMODATION, 1793-1795 293 9. “THE CONTEST IS BETWEEN THIS GOVERNMENT AND ITS CITIZENS:” NEW YORK VERSUS AUGUSTA, 1789-1796 333 CONCLUSION 371 APPENDIX 380 A. ABBREVIATIONS 380 BIBLIOGRAPHY 384 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 401 iv ABSTRACT “Let us try to make each other happy” tracks a Creek-Georgia frontier as it emerged in the American Revolution and lasted to the turn of the nineteenth century. There multiple groups of Creeks, Americans, and Europeans grappled with ideas of sovereignty and the right of self- determination. The Creek-Georgian frontier, however, embraces conceptualizations of frontiers as places where misunderstanding bred distrust, fear, localized violence, and eventually, racial hatred, challenging older definitions of frontiers as places of accommodation or mutual understanding. Multiple groups faced each other, and what they created was a place of terrible brutality where extremism, not compromise, was the natural way of things. “Let us try to make each other happy” blends a New Indian History approach with recent interpretations of frontiers as areas of empire and nation-building. It also carefully outlines how Creek decisions ordered Georgian lives on the backcountry, and embraces the importance of community-level identity in the study of Early American history. Ultimately, I utilize Creek, Georgian, and European threads to weave a twenty-year narrative of misunderstanding and violence that, as I argue, had tremendous bearing on the development of the southeast. v INTRODUCTION By 1776, when Creeks first began burning down settler Georgians’ plantations, they represented one of the strongest Native groups in the Southeast. Dozens of Creek communities stretched across present day Alabama and Georgia and into the Florida panhandle. Altogether, there were from 15,000 to 22,000 Creeks in these communities by the early 1770s.1 Particularly large ones, like Cusseta or Okfuskee, were densely populated. They included a number of small outlying settlements and sprawling agricultural fields. Most of them could be found dotted up and down two of the southeast’s largest river systems, which drained western Georgia and eastern Alabama and flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. Furthest to the east was the Flint- Chattahoochee-Apalachicola system, which reaches the Gulf of Mexico between present day Pensacola and Tallahassee. To the west was the Coosa-Tallapoosa-Alabama system, which drains into Mobile Bay. Coweta and Cusseta were the most significant communities along the Flint- Chattahoochee system. They were the largest of the many talwas, or independent political and ceremonial towns, which supported many more talofas, or smaller dependent villages, that stretched along the river system. These constituted the heart of what contemporaries and historians alike considered the “Lower Towns,” or the “Lower Creeks.” Further to the northwest, a larger collection of talwas and talofas radiated around the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, or just to the north. Tuckabatchee was the largest town in this region and it 1 Peter Wood, “The Changing Population of the Colonial South, An Overview by Race and Region, 1685-1790,” in Gregory A. Waselkov, Peter H. Wood, and Tom Hatley, eds., Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006 [1989]), 81-87; Katherine E. Holland Braund, Deerskins & Duffels: The Creek Indian Trade with Anglo-America, 1685-1815 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 8-9. 1 was, along with the many surrounding communities, regarded as an “Upper Town,” being among the “Upper Creeks.”2 Thousands of people, facing disease and warfare in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, coalesced to create these communities and people would come to refer to them as Creeks. Yet referring to Creeks as if the multitude of villages in the region were one and the same belies the tremendous diversity that existed in the southeast, and particularly within Creek country. Many different dialects of several languages were spoken, and specific communities even had unique creation or migration legends.3 These differences reflected the chaotic milieu that became the southeast after contact. A permanent European presence in the region spread waves of disease and warfare that dissolved the Mississippian chiefdoms which had, for centuries, dominated the landscape. From the chaos of their destruction emerged several large, loosely connected groups who were, more or less, all refugees. The social, political, and ceremonial structures that these people created reflected an incredible inclusivity—one that was necessary to bring together such large populations of disparate peoples.4 Creeks, along with Cherokees to their north and Choctaws to their west, came into being in this way. To the east of Creek country laid thousands of square miles of hunting grounds. Hunters fanned out into them during the fall and winter months in search of white tailed deer. 2 Michael D. Green, The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 11-12; Braund, Deerskins & Duffels, 6-7. 3 Green, Politics of Indian Removal, 14; J. Leitch Wright. Creeks & Seminoles: The Destruction and Regeneration of the Muscogulge People (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 6-14 4 Stephen A. Kowalewski, “Coalescent Societies,” in Thomas J. Pluckhahn and Robbie Ethridge, eds., Light on the Path: The Anthropology and History of the Southeastern Indians (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 116-120. The transformation of the Creeks in particular can be seen in John E. Worth, “Spanish Missions and the Persistence of Chiefly Power,” in Robbie Ethridge and Charles Hudson, eds., The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 1540-1760 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002), 39-64 2 With any luck, they would return home laden with skins which they would then trade for goods and tools, either with the British to the east or the Spanish to the south. These lands were marked naturally by several large river systems that drained central to eastern Georgia, and they flowed into the Atlantic. Furthest to the northeast was the Savannah River, which served as the eastern boundary of Georgia and the western boundary of South Carolina. Moving southwest, next was the Ogeechee River; a bit further, the Oconee and Ocmulgee Rivers formed the Altamaha. Smaller Rivers, including the Big and Little Satilla, were further south. The St. Mary’s River marks the present day boundary between Georgia and Florida, followed by the St. John’s River further south still, passing through present day Jacksonville. The lands between these rivers were what constituted the physical Creek-Georgia frontier. On the other side of the more metaphorical Creek-Georgian frontier, on the other hand, resided a growing and expanding population of Europeans. When Creeks began burning these settlers’ homes down during the Revolution, they were Georgians, who represented citizens of the smallest and most sparsely settled of all the British colonies. As one historian suggested, while the colony may have grown considerably since its founding in 1733 “some things remained the same: the population was generally poor but landholding, frontier conditions prevailed, and civil government, while functional, lacked the financial resources to sustain itself independently.” Run by Trustees until 1752, the original colony was an experiment in philanthropy. While pleasant in theory, the province’s ban on slavery and subsequent lack of large land holders ensured that in practice Georgia languished, and it was constantly