(1775-1825)
Coweta Creek political leader, diplomat, military leader, and trader
Alexander McGillivray's death in 1793 created a diplomatic void in the Creek Confederacy. Eighteen-year-old William McIntosh, Jr., a distant relative of McGillivray's, dreamed about becoming the tribe's next diplomat. McIntosh realized his desire for prominence when his kinsmen selected him a micco (chief) of Coweta in 1800. After the Creek Civil War (1813-14), McIntosh became the central diplomatic figure in the Creek Confederacy, sparking controversy among his people as he consented to land cessions to Georgia in the treaties of 1814, 1818, 1821, and 1825. He died in 1825.
William McIntosh, Jr., was born in 1775, in Wetumpka, Georgia (now Alabama). His mixed-blood lineage gave him access to two cultures. His grandfather, John McIntosh, emigrated from Scotland in 1736. John moved his family to the Georgia frontier on the Tombigbee River. John's son, William, grew up at McIntosh Bluffs on the Georgia frontier. During the American Revolution, William McIntosh achieved the rank of captain in the British army. Captain McIntosh married Senoia, a Coweta Creek. Four years after William McIntosh, Jr., was born, his father had another son, Roley McIntosh, by a second Creek wife.
Senoia raised William in Coweta, located south of Wetumpka on the west bank of the Chattahoochee River. Coweta was one of the oldest and largest towns in the Creek Confederacy. Senoia gained control of William's upbringing when her brothers thwarted Captain McIntosh's attempt to send his son to school in Scotland: they seized the boy after he had boarded a ship bound for Scotland. Captain McIntosh resigned himself to accepting Creek customs and left his son to the care of the boy's Indian uncles. The trader returned to the coast, where he married a distant cousin, Barbara McIntosh.
William taught himself to read and write English, while his mother's family taught him Creek ways. McIntosh's knowledge of both cultures led him to advocate acculturation as a strategy for Creek survival. For example, McIntosh codified Creek laws so Creeks and whites could live under a common legal system.
McIntosh had three wives and twelve children. His first wife, Eliza Grierson, a mixed-blood Creek, gave birth to Chilly McIntosh, William's oldest child, in about 1800. Susannah Roe, his second wife, was Creek, and Peggy, his third, was Cherokee. Susannah and Peggy lived together with their nine children at Lockchau Talofau, McIntosh's home on the west bank of the Chattahoochee River. Eliza and her three children lived fifty miles west on the Tallapossa River, on another plantation owned by McIntosh.
McIntosh was tall and authoritative—characteristics that, combined with his military successes, earned him the Creek name Tustunnuggee Hutke (White Warrior). The Creek Confederacy included two large geographic groupings of towns, identified as Lower Towns and Upper Towns. McIntosh's influence and popularity in Coweta and other Lower Towns coincided with his prosperity and pro-American views.
At the time of his death in 1825, McIntosh had grown wealthy. He had begun making money in 1793, when he sold beef to the American army. Later he owned a trading post, where he sold dry goods to his kinsmen in exchange for their government annuities. He also built an inn at Indian Springs and managed a ferry. His businesses allowed him to maintain two separate plantations. The twenty-five thousand dollars allotted to him in the ill-fated Treaty of Indian Springs was a restitution for his holdings.
McIntosh became widely known among Creeks and Georgians during the War of 1812, when discord erupted into civil war. Urged by Tecumseh to oppose American expansion, the Creek leader Menawa of Hillabee had led Upper Towns to ally themselves with the British in order to purge the Creek Confederacy of American influences. Lower Towns, led by McIntosh, sided with the Americans. Allying themselves with General Andrew Jackson, the Lower Towns aided Jackson in the battle of Autossee and the pivotal Battle of Horseshoe Bend, which crushed Menawa's forces. General Jackson rewarded McIntosh's loyalty with a promotion to brigadier general. Even though deep enmity existed between McIntosh and surviving Upper Towns, he was esteemed among the Lower Creeks because he led them to join the winning side.
But controversy swirled around McIntosh as he repeatedly ceded Lower Creek territory to Georgia. His actions followed a pattern of accommodation by Creek leaders to a rapidly expanding population of settlers; by 1814 Creek leaders had signed sixteen treaties to relieve the Creek Confederacy from the pressure of a burgeoning Georgia frontier. McIntosh reluctantly made land cessions by signing treaties in 1814, 1818, and 1821. Finally realizing that Georgia's hunger for land would not be satiated until it had acquired all remaining Creek territory, the Creek Confederacy enacted a law that made additional cessions by individuals a capital offense.
McIntosh believed that Georgia would inevitably get all Creek territory, so he decided to sell the remaining lands in Georgia, as well as a large tract of land in Alabama, and move his people west. Though the Upper Creeks warned McIntosh at the signing that this cession would cost him his life, the micco and fifty other Creeks signed the Treaty of Indian Springs on February 12, 1825. Soon afterward, the Creek Confederacy met in council and sanctioned McIntosh's execution. His nemesis, Menawa, led a force of 170 warriors to McIntosh's home. They executed him in the early morning hours of May 31, along with two other signers of the treaty.
McIntosh's historical importance is not clear-cut. Historians often portray him as either hero and patriot or villain and traitor. Saddled with the task of making difficult decisions in the face of an overpowering expansion of white settlers, McIntosh acted in the interests of his family and his town.
Congress nullified the Treaty of Indian Springs because the signers did not represent the Creek Confederacy. Ironically, Upper Creek leaders later signed a less favorable treaty and began to move west. After this defeat, Menawa and other opponents of McIntosh held him in higher esteem.
Twenty-three hundred Creeks from Coweta and other Lower Towns who had followed McIntosh began emigrating in 1828. Chilly McIntosh made repeated trips as he guided his father's people to their new land. William's half-brother, Roley, became chief of the Lower Towns in 1828—a position he held for thirty-one years, serving as first chief of the Muskogee Nation after Creek removal in 1832.
Descendants of William McIntosh continued influencing tribal affairs. After building a home in Fame, Indian Territory, his youngest son, Daniel Newnan McIntosh, formed the First Creek Regiment to fight for the South during the Civil War. Losing their land, the McIntoshes resettled in Checotah after the Civil War. His grandson, Albert Galatin McIntosh (Cheesie), practiced law in Indian Territory and represented the tribe at the Sequoyah Convention and the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. His great-grandson, Waldo Emerson McIntosh (Tustennuggee Micco), served as principal chief of the Creek Nation, 1961-1971. His great-great-grandson, Chinnubbie McIntosh (Hacoce), served on the Creek Council and as district judge until constitutional changes limited his participation.
See also
Creek (Muskogee);
McGillivray, Alexander.
George Chapman, Chief William McIntosh: A Man of Two Worlds (Atlanta: Cherokee Publishing Company, 1988); Michael D. Green, The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982).
Kenneth W. McIntosh
Muskogee
University of Tulsa
