In due course, McGillivray arrived in New York, where he was treated
with great consideration. He had long private conferences with
Washington and other officials of the government, and was finally
induced to make a treaty which was satisfactory to the United States,
and would have been satisfactory to Georgia if it had been carried out,
but in fact the terms of it were never fulfilled. While in New York,
McGillivray made a secret treaty with Washington, a fact that was not
discovered for many years. It provided, that after two years from date
(August, 1790) the commerce of the Creek nation should be carried on
through the ports of the United States, and in the mean time through
the present channels; that a number of chiefs of the Creeks and of the
Seminole nation should be paid one hundred dollars a year each, and
be furnished with handsome medals; that the United States should feed,
clothe, and educate Creek youth at the North, not exceeding five at one
time; and that Alexander McGillivray should be constituted agent of the
United States, with the rank of brigadier general, and the pay of twelve
hundred dollars a year. In 1792, McGillivray was a British colonel, an
American brigadier general, an agent of the United States, and an
agent of Spain. This extraordinary man died in Pensacola on the 17th of
February, having been seized with a fatal illness while returning from
one of his plantations on Little River in Putnam or Baldwin.
Another famous Creek was General William Mcintosh, a half-breed. His
father was Captain William Mcintosh, and his mother was an Indian
of unmixed blood. He was not so brilliant a man intellectually as
McGillivray; but he had a native force of character, and an inborn sense
of justice, that McGillivray seems to have been a stranger to. History
tells us little enough of Mcintosh, but that little is all to his
credit. Almost from the days of Oglethorpe, there were two parties in
the Creek nation, and the issue on which they divided was the
treatment that should be accorded to the whites. The party division was
geographical as well as political. The Upper Creeks, living upon the
Alabama, Coosa, and Tallapoosa rivers, were not present at the Coweta
town when James Oglethorpe treated with the Lower Creeks in August,
1730. At that time they were under the influence of the French, and
afterwards they sought the protection of the Spaniards. They refused to
recognize any of the treaties made by the Lower Creeks with the English,
and the great body of them remained to the end the bitter enemies of
the Georgians. On the other hand, the majority of the Lower Creeks
were friendly with the English from the days of Oglethorpe; and that
friendship continued, with but few interruptions, down to the days of
Governor Troup.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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