His father, Lachlan McGillivray, had run away from his home in Scotland when a lad of sixteen, and reached Charleston about forty years before the outbreak of the Revolution. Penniless and friendless, he engaged to drive pack-horses, laden with goods, to the Indian settlements on the Chattahoochee. His only compensation for the trip was a large jackknife, which proved the germ of a subsequent fortune. Nothing was more highly prized at that time, than a good jackknife. Lachlan McGillivray exchanged his knife for a number of deer skins, which commanded an exorbitant price in the markets of Charleston. Investment followed investment, which resulted in increasing dividends to the Scotch lad, so that by the time he was fully grown, he owned two plantations on the Savannah River, both of which were stocked with negro slaves. He later came to possess large commercial interests, both in Savannah and Augusta, and having married the half-breed Indian girl, in Alabama, he owned large interests in this state. He had, besides Alexander, three other children. One of these married a French officer, Le Clerc Milfort, who became a brigadier-general in the army of Napoleon, while another became the wife of Benjamin Durant, a wealthy Huguenot merchant, the ancestor of the present Durants in Mobile and Baldwin counties, while another still, married James Bailey, a half-breed, who was subsequently a conspicuous defender of Fort Mims. These names are suggestive of fountain sources of history. This brief introduction prepares us to enter on the remarkable career of Alexander McGillivray. THE INDIAN "EMPEROR" Among the other traits of Alexander McGillivray was that of an insufferable vanity. The Indians came to recognize him as their chief, but this he indignantly put aside and named himself "the emperor." Designing the career of his son to be that of a merchant, Lachlan McGillivray had afforded him every possible educational advantage that the most advanced schools could give, but the young man chafed under the restrictions of commercial life and left his father's home, which was now in Georgia, and returned to Wetumpka, the scene of his birth and childhood, and allied himself with the Indians of that region. Most opportune was the time to young McGillivray, for the Creeks had become involved in a serious disturbance with the whites of Georgia, and were in search of a competent leader who could cope with the situation.