William "Tustunnuggee Hutkee" McIntosh, Creek Warrior Chief

William McIntosh (ca. 1775–1825) led part of the pro-American Creek forces against the Red Sticks

William McIntosh was a controversial chief of the Lower Creeks in early-nineteenth-century Georgia. His general support of the United States and its efforts to obtain cessions of Creek territory alienated him from many Creeks who opposed white encroachment on Indian land. He supported General Andrew Jackson in the Creek War of 1813-14, also known as the Red Stick War and part of the larger War of 1812 conflict (1812-15), and in the First Seminole War (1817-18). His participation in the drafting and signing of the Treaty of Indian Springs of 1825 led to his execution by a contingent of Upper Creeks led by Chief Menawa.

William McIntosh Jr., also known as Tustunnuggee Hutkee ("White Warrior"), was born around 1778 in the Lower Creek town of Coweta to Captain William McIntosh, a Scotsman of Savannah, and Senoya, a Creek woman of the Wind Clan. He was raised among the Creeks, but he spent enough time in Savannah to become fluent in English and to be able to move comfortably within both Indian and white societies.

McIntosh was related by blood or marriage to several prominent Georgians. Governor George Troup was a first cousin, and Governor David B. Mitchell was the father-in-law of one of McIntosh's daughters. McIntosh married three women: Susannah Coe, a Creek; Peggy, a Cherokee; and Eliza Grierson, of mixed Creek and American heritage. Several of his children married into prominent Georgia families. These marriages helped to solidify McIntosh's political alliances and his loyalty to the United States.

McIntosh was among those who supported the plans of U.S. Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins to "civilize" the Creeks. Slaveowning, livestock herding, cotton cultivation, and personal ownership of property were examples of changes to traditional Creek ways of life that McIntosh promoted. He himself owned two plantations, Lockchau Talofau ("Acorn Bluff") in present-day Carroll County, and Indian Springs, in present-day Butts County. Both are maintained today as historic sites. While McIntosh's support of civilization efforts earned him the respect of U.S. officials, more traditional Creeks regarded him with distrust.

McIntosh's support of the United States in the Creek War of 1813-14 earned him the contempt of many Creeks. He led a contingent of Lower Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend against the Red Sticks, who were primarily Upper Creeks opposed to white expansion into Creek territory. In the wake of that war, the Creeks suffered famine and deprivation for several years. During that time McIntosh allied himself with Indian agent David B. Mitchell, Hawkins's successor, to coordinate the distribution of food and supplies from the U.S. government to the Creeks. This alliance assured McIntosh's control over resources and his continued influence among the Creeks.

In 1821 John Crowell replaced Mitchell as Indian agent. Crowell severed McIntosh's access to resources, weakening McIntosh's influence among the Creeks, who were compelled to sell some of their land to pay debts and to acquire food and supplies. However, for his role in the first Treaty of Indian Springs, in 1821, McIntosh received 1,000 acres of land at Indian Springs and another 640 acres on the Ocmulgee River.

After that treaty, Governor George Troup was determined to enforce the Compact of 1802 that called for the extinguishment of all Indian titles to land in Georgia. Despite the fervent opposition of many Upper Creeks, and with Troup's assurances of protection, Chief McIntosh, together with a small contingent of mostly Lower Creek chiefs, negotiated the second Treaty of Indian Springs, in 1825. This treaty provided for the cession of virtually all Creek land remaining in the state of Georgia in exchange for a payment of $200,000. A controversial article in the treaty provided additional payment to McIntosh for the lands granted to him in the 1821 treaty. On February 12, 1825, only six chiefs, including McIntosh, signed the document. McIntosh's motives have since been debated. His supporters suggest that he acted pragmatically, believing that the Georgians' relentless demand for Creek land made its loss inevitable. His detractors suggest that he acted to spite his enemies, flouting Creek law and profiting personally.

Whatever his motivations were, McIntosh's participation in the 1825 Treaty of Indian Springs cost him his life. According to a Creek law that McIntosh himself had supported, a sentence of execution awaited any Creek leader who ceded land to the United States without the full assent of the entire Creek Nation. Just before dawn on April 30, 1825, Upper Creek chief Menawa, accompanied by 200 Creek warriors, attacked McIntosh at Lockchau Talofau to carry out the sentence. They set fire to his home, and shot and stabbed to death McIntosh and the elderly Coweta chief Etomme Tustunnuggee.

Creek Leader. Born near Tuetumplai in present day Alabama, the son of Captain William McIntosh, and Senoia Henneha of the Wind Clan of the Lower Creeks. McIntosh became a Micco or chief spokesman of the Lower Creek. He fought with American forces under the command of Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. During the Red Stick War of 1813 - 1814, he helped defeat the nationalistic Upper Creeks. McIntosh also fought for the United States in the First Seminole War. For his services at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and elsewhere, he was commissioned a Brigadier General in the United States Army. McIntosh built a plantation for himself on the Chattahoochee River in Carroll County, Georgia. In 1823, McIntosh's first cousin, George Troup was elected governor of Georgia. Troup felt strongly that eastern Indians should be moved to the Western Territory. On February 12, 1825, Troup and McIntosh and eight other chiefs, signed the Treaty of Indian Springs ceding the Creek lands East of the Chattahoochee River to Georgia. Despite Governor Troup's promise to protect his cousin, McIntosh was traced to his home in Carroll County by angry Upper Creeks where he killed, his slaves run off, his crops burned, and his cattle slaughtered. After his death, one of his wives was interviewed by the ‘Cherokee Advocate' saying; "It was by Government my husband lost his life. My husband wished to please the Government. The Indians kill him; between two fires my husband dies. "* Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Nov 28 2018, 7:07:52 UTC

Earlier American historians attributed McIntosh's achievements and influence to his mixed race Scots/European ancestry. Since the late 20th century, some revisionist historians have contended that his power stemmed more from his Creek upbringing, particularly his mother's prominent Wind Clan in the Creek matrilineal system, and to other aspects of Creek culture.[2]

Because McIntosh led a group that negotiated and signed a treaty in 1825 to cede much of remaining Creek lands to the United States in violation of Creek law, for the first time the Creek National Council ordered that a Creek be executed for crimes against the Nation.[3] It sentenced him and other signatories to death. McIntosh was executed by Menewa and a large force of Law Menders in late April 1825; two other signatories were executed and one was shot but escaped. Menewa signed a treaty in 1826 that was similar, but that the Council had agreed to it and that provided more benefits to the Creek.

McIntosh's descendants were removed with the other Creek people to Indian Territory. His two sons served as Confederate officers during the American Civil War. His daughters, Rebecca and Delilah, moved to East Texas with their husbands, developing plantations there. Rebecca McIntosh Hawkins Hagerty married again after her first husband died young, and by 1860 was the wealthiest woman in Texas, owning three plantations with a total of 12,800 acres, and 120 slaves.

Early life and education

Taskanugi Hatke (White Warrior) was born in the Lower Town of Coweta in present-day Georgia to Senoya (also spelled Senoia and Senoy[1]), a member of the Wind Clan, which was prominent in the Creek Nation. As the Creek had a matrilineal kinship system, through which property and hereditary positions were passed, his mother's status determined that of White Warrior. The boy was also named after his father, the Scots-American Captain William McIntosh, who was connected to a prominent Savannah, Georgia family. Captain McIntosh, a Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War, had worked with the Creek to recruit them as military allies to the British. The senior McIntosh's mother was Margaret "Mary" McGillivray, believed to have been a sister of the Scot Lachlan McGillivray, a wealthy fur trader and planter in Georgia. They were of the Clan MacGillivray Chiefs Lineage). After the Revolutionary War, Captain McIntosh moved from the frontier to Savannah to settle. There he married a paternal cousin, Barbara McIntosh.

White Warrior gained his status and place among the Creek from his mother's clan. Benjamin Hawkins, first appointed as United States Indian agent in the Southeast and then as Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the territory south of the Ohio River, lived among the Creek and Choctaw, and knew them well. He commented in letters to President Thomas Jefferson that Creek women were matriarchs and had control of children "when connected with a white man." Hawkins further observed that even wealthy traders were nearly as "inattentive" to their mixed-race children as "the Indians". What he did not understand about the Creek culture was that the children had a closer relationship with their mother's eldest brother than with their biological father, because of the importance of the clan structure.

The son McIntosh was considered a skilled orator and politician; he became a wealthy planter and slaveholder; and he was influential in both Creek and European-American society.[6] One of his cousins was George Troup, who became governor of Georgia when McIntosh was a prominent chief. Whites sometimes mistakenly assumed that McIntosh had centralized authority over the Creek, but he was still among numerous chiefs and the central power became the Creek National Council, especially after it adopted the Code of 1818.

For generations, Creek chiefs had approved their daughters' marriages to fur traders in order to strengthen their alliances and trading power with the wealthy Europeans.[2] Through both his mother and father, McIntosh was related to numerous other influential Creek chiefs, most of whom were métis, of Creek mothers and white fathers, who were valued as husbands.[8] The most prominent were Alexander McGillivray (1750-1793), the son of Sehoy, a Wind Clan mother, and Lachlan McGillivray; and William Weatherford (better known in history as Red Eagle or Lamochatta) (c.1780-1824), also born to the Wind Clan.

Both McIntosh and Weatherford became well established as Creek chiefs and wealthy planters, but Weatherford was aligned with the traditionalist Red Sticks of the Upper Towns in the period of the Creek Wars. He and McIntosh, who was with the Lower Towns, were opposed to each other during the conflict.

Marriage and children

Chief McIntosh's first wife was Eliza Grierson. Eliza's parents were Robert Grierson, a Scottish trader, and a Creek woman named Sinnugee (a member of the Spanalgee Family). Married in 1800, McIntosh & Eliza's marriage produced three children. Their first-born was a son, named Chillicothe "Chilly" McIntosh (1804-1895) born near Coewta, Georgia. The couple also had two daughters, Jane McIntosh (ca. 1807-1868) and Catherine "Kate" McIntosh (1809-1849).

In 1811, McIntosh took a second wife, Susannah "Susan" Rowe, a full-blood Muskogee Creek. Rebecca McIntosh (1815-1888) was one of her daughters and another was Delilah.[5] William McIntosh and Susannah's son Daniel Newnan McIntosh, known as D.N., was born in 1822. As a highly successful soldier and businessman, McIntosh's elevated social/tribal status allowed him to take a third wife, a half-Creek/half-Cherokee woman named Peggy. Peggy would bear McIntosh three additional children, who were all still young at the time of McIntosh's death. Peggy reportedly lived on another property owned by her husband some 50 miles away and was not present when McIntosh died.

Following his untimely death in 1825, all of McIntosh's children, except for daughter Kate, would eventually move out west in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Kate married a full-blooded Creek named William Cousins (1800-1876), the grandson of George Cousins (Chief of the Eufauli Tribe of Creek Indians), in Cusseta, Georgia in 1825. The young couple was following family westward to Oklahoma when a broken wagon wheel unexpectedly delayed their travels near Laurel Hill, Florida. The couple found their new surroundings very much to their liking and decided to stay, settling in modern-day Walton County, Florida. Once the rest of the McIntosh Family was settled in Oklahoma, Chilly and his younger half-brother D.N. McIntosh would both serve as officers with the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War with Chilly rising to the rank of Colonel. Source and additional information: Wikipedia

• Jane
• Chilly
• Kate

Children of Susannah:

• Delilah
• Daniel
• Rebecca

Children of Peggy

• Hettie
• Sarah
• Louis

References

• Frank, A. (2002). The Rise and Fall of William McIntosh: Authority and Identity on the Early American Frontier. The Georgia Historical Quarterly, 86(1), 18-48. Retrieved August 14, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/40584639
• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Dec 1 2018, 0:28:40 UTC
• https://wc.rootsweb.com/trees/177244/I684/chiefwilliam-mcintosh/ind...
• William McIntosh 30 Apr 1825 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8764/william-mcintosh
• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jun 7 2020, 13:24:51 UTC