Some time during the Jacobite disturbances, one Lachlan MacGillivray emigrated from Inverness to the Southern States, where he became a prosperous Indian trader, and, perhaps in the way of business, married a “princess” of the great Creek Confederacy. Alexander, the son of this mésalliance, was well educated and brought up to trade, but early in life betook himself to his mother’s people, among whom his attainments as well as his birth gave him influence. Rank, by Indian law, as by “Lycian custom,” being inherited on the spindle side, before he was thirty he had been recognised as chief of the Creeks, and for many years played a leading part in their fitful politics. Little is known of his rule beyond the main facts, our clearest accounts of him being derived from a rare book written by another young adventurer, the Frenchman Leclerc Milfort, whose story, in plain English, seems not to be always trusted. According to himself, Milfort, having also wandered among the Creeks, was chosen by them as their war chief, an office separate from the civil headship of an Indian tribe. Then the Scotsman and the Frenchman appear to have governed the Creeks for years, making a congenial disposition of power, the one the head, the other the hand, of a powerful though somewhat unstable body politic. MacGillivray had no stomach for fighting, was even a coward, if Milfort is to be believed; but he was crafty, resourceful, and of a clear Caledonian eye to the main chance. Milfort found him living in a good house, with herds of cattle and dozens of negro slaves. Another source of profit he had in a secret partnership with a firm of brother Scots at Pensacola, to which he directed the trade of the Creek nation, jealously intrigued for by their British and Spanish neighbours. The Revolutionary War had nearly caused a rupture between these Creek consuls. MacGillivray’s sympathies were with the British; Milfort had no scruple in fighting against the Americans, but when French troops came to take part in the struggle, he was disposed to side with his compatriots. His colleague, however, persuaded him to remain neutral; and by this Scotsman’s influence, the Creeks seem to have been kept from throwing into the scale the weight of their war parties. The canny chief entered into a maze of tricky negotiations with the various bordering Powers, pretending to each to be in its special interest, receiving bribes from all, throughout, as far as his dealings can be traced, “true to one party, and that is himself.”