“Introduction” in “Laws of the Creek Nation”
Introduction
On January 7, 1825, Chilly McIntosh, son of the half-Scot Creek chief, General William McIntosh, wrote out for his cousin, Governor George M. Troup,1 a copy of the laws of the Creek Nation. This was the second known attempt of the Creeks to collect their laws, an earlier version being committed to writing by General William McIntosh and other Creek leaders in 1818.2 It seems that prior to 1818 all laws made in National Council were either kept by memory or in an unorganized manner in writing. After 1818 they were recorded as made or revised, and the original cumulative manuscript was in Chilly’s care by virtue of his position as Clerk of the Creek National Council. At least he had been Clerk of Council until a few days previously when at Broken Arrow3 he was “broke” for incompetence shortly before his father was “broke” as Speaker and fled for his life.
There had been stormy doings at Broken Arrow. The Creek National Council assembled there in December, 1824, as ordered by the United States commissioners, Duncan G. Campbell and David Meriwether, both Georgians with numerous local political affiliations. Their reason for calling the assembly was no secret. They had been duly commissioned to treat with the obvious purpose of securing for the State of Georgia the last of the Creek lands within the chartered limits of Georgia lying west of the Flint River.
A year previously the same two men had failed to gain from the Cherokees a cession of their lands, and negotiations had been continued in Washington between the Cherokee delegation, the Georgia delegation, and the Federal Government with no success whatsoever. Furthermore, the Creek chiefs back home had been kept quietly but fully informed from Washington by the Cherokee chief John Ross of the proceedings, by letters and by copies of all pertinent documents.
Frustrated in their Cherokee attempts, the Commissioners shifted their attack to the Creeks, from which quarter they had had some encouragement. When the delegations arrived at Broken Arrow on the first of December the atmosphere was ominous, explosive. In the intermittent December drizzle group after group of Indians arrived. Again and again extra rations were requested by the Commissioners until at length it was estimated that between six and ten thousand pairs of eyes were watching all that took place. They were apprehensive, distrustful eyes and they were all on William McIntosh.
The Indians’ suspicion was not without foundation of fact. While it may be that McIntosh advocated a removal West partly because he realized the inevitability of white encroachment, it is equally true that avarice was his own particular one of the seven deadly sins. Although there can be no criticism of his conduct before 1817, the arrival of David Bridie Mitchell as Agent in that year altered things. Qualities which were hidden in McIntosh the brilliant warrior emerged in McIntosh the trader and tavern keeper, who at the same time was one of the five great chiefs in the Nation. Mitchell, whose motives in accepting the position as Agent were highly questionable,4 soon found in McIntosh a willing pupil and able partner.
About the Agency, McIntosh was given a free hand in most matters, and in the distribution of the annuities there seem to have been numerous irregularities highly profitable both to Mitchell and McIntosh.5 In fact, one suspects strongly that it was Mitchell who taught McIntosh his price. What stood worst against McIntosh at Broken Arrow, however, was his conduct among the Cherokees during November of the preceding year.
McIntosh’s complicity in the Creek cession of 1821 (he had been heavily bribed by the Georgians)6 was not known to his people. Had it been he would probably have been executed at that time.7 But what was known was his attempt to bribe the Cherokee chiefs to sell their lands the previous November (1823). The same Campbell and Meriwether had been treating with the Cherokees. McIntosh, present at the Council by virtue of his position as an honorary Cherokee chief,8 approached John Ross and others with money, from an unknown source, and foolishly put his bribery attempt in writing. He was ignominiously exposed in open Council, broken as a Cherokee chief, and deported in complete disgrace. The original of the bribery letter, which still exists in the National Archives, was sent by Ross to Big Warrior along with a covering letter signed by Ross and a number of the most prominent Cherokees explaining the “painful and unpleasant” proceedings and concluding, “therefore, we advise you as brothers, to keep a strict watch over his conduct, or, if you do not, he will ruin your nation.”9
During the fall of 1824, before the meeting at Broken Arrow, far from taking measures to allay the apprehensions of the Creeks, the Commissioners only acted to aggravate them. Agents were sent into the Nation, notably William W. Williamson (Campbell’s nephew) and Joel Bailey (McIntosh’s business partner and tavern keeper at Indian Springs). These Agents systematically attempted to bribe every one of the older Indian countrymen who had the greatest influence with the natives to use all their influence to promote the treaty. Notable among these were Nimrod Doyell (Hawkins’ old assistant) and William Hambly, the Nation’s chief interpreter.10
Such an approach could not possibly have been more inept in a country where space seemed only to magnify each whisper into a shout. Bailey forgot himself so far as to try both bribery and threats simultaneously, even on Little Prince, but the old man confronted him stonily with such a contemptuous and ominous silence that, on the good advice of his interpreter, Bailey retreated forthwith.11
During the summer of 1824 an old and very strong law was re-proclaimed: Anyone, “however great he might be, even Big Warrior, Little Prince, or McIntosh,”12 should he sell another foot of land to the Georgians would be put to death. This law was first made when the Chiefs met their new Agent, Mitchell, on the west bank of the Ocmulgee in July, 1817. At that time they consented to a small cession of land (consummated 22 January 1818) but simultaneously enacted the above law. It was said later that McIntosh himself proposed it.
This law was repeated again with dire mentions of “gun and rope” at Pole Cat Springs, and a copy of the “talk” was published in a Montgomery, Alabama, paper in early November, 1824. A copy of this paper was handed to the Commissioners at the Flint River on their way to Broken Arrow. Consequently they were fully aware, as was McIntosh, of the dangerous position in which he was being placed.
Negotiations did not actually begin at Broken Arrow until December the fourth. After the Commissioners presented their credentials in the council square, McIntosh, with characteristic boldness, made the first move. The Cherokees, he said, had accused him of offering land to the whites. The charge was false and made solely to discredit him in the eyes of his own people. He then turned to Campbell and asked him to state to the Council whether or not his statement was true. “Col. Campbell then rose, and stated it [the charge] to be false, and gave his honor to the Council, for the truth of the assertion.”13 This interesting performance, a sad reflection on the integrity of both actors,14 was partially convincing. It and McIntosh’s vigorous and eloquent talk against any cession of land15 resulted in a rather reluctant decision of the Chiefs to make McIntosh Speaker for the Nation in these talks.
The Indian position was firmly against cession. As days of drizzling rain passed by, suspicions and tensions mounted. Strict laws were made in Council against any secret talks with the Commissioners. On the third day Josiah Gray, a half-breed chief, was caught in secret conference with the Commissioners and ordered by Little Prince “to take the track back home,” and, if he did not obey within four hours “they would think further about.”16
On the other hand, the Commissioners were also distrustful. The Agent John Crowell was kept under close watch. In fact Campbell roomed with him. The chief interpreter, Hambly, was kept under similar close scrutiny because the Commissioners had good reason to think that neither he nor Crowell had his whole heart squarely behind the treaty. Crowell certainly did not. He was in that rare and enviable position in Georgia politics where his stand not only served his self interests but was also patently the proper and just position. The Commissioners watched Crowell and Hambly. The Indians watched McIntosh—and were not long in catching him.
The Commissioners must have been under the delusion that they were invisible. At any rate, they behaved with such naivete in an explosive situation that some such conclusion seems justified. Chilly ran a tavern near Broken Arrow. McIntosh, of course, stayed there. It soon became apparent that Campbell was making frequent trips to the tavern. Campbell’s nephew, William W. Williamson, was also staying at the tavern and his chief business seems to have been arranging clandestine meetings between McIntosh and the Commissioners. They would meet at night at an appointed place where “the Commissioners, with McIntosh seated between them on a log, would give him his cue what to say in Council the next day; and often remained there till near break of day in the morning.”17 Naturally they were observed and the visits were reported in Council. On December the thirteenth, McIntosh was broken as Speaker.
McIntosh was furious at this disgrace. That night he had a tense conversation with Nimrod Doyell in Doyell’s quarters. He vowed that he would sell the lands despite the Chiefs. Doyell said that much distress would result. “McIntosh replied he did not care; that three thousand dollars in the pockets of his friends, would take them any where. McIntosh also asked witness if he had any powder, and upon being answered in the affirmative, he said: Well, keep your gun in order and when you hear a fuss, come to my house.”18
About the same time that night McIntosh’s daughter, who was staying as a student in the house of the Reverend Isaac Smith, burst into the house exclaiming that a party of warriors was on the way to kill her father. But no “fuss” developed. McIntosh slipped from a window and made his escape into the night.
McIntosh retreated to the upper ferry at Coweta, where he had adherents. The Commissioners, completely abandoning decorum, left the Council sitting at Broken Arrow and galloped off after him. They found McIntosh, and though he was willing to sign a treaty by himself, the Commissioners’ instructions expressly forbade such a unilateral transaction. Their only recourse was to fume, plan for a future meeting at a place farther from the heart of the Nation, and hope for obtaining altered instructions from Washington.
The thwarted Commissioners straggled back to Broken Arrow breathing threats and recriminations. The disappointed Campbell did not even return to the Council, but Meriwether did. Doyell testified that “in the verbal talks of the Commissioners, they threatened the council that, if they did not comply with their demands, the Georgia people would extend their laws over the nation.”19
The meeting broke up with the Indians not budging an inch from their position and the frustrated and furious Commissioners attempting to fix the blame for their failure first on Crowell, who had maintained an attitude of “strict neutrality,” and then on the sub-agent, Walker, who was a son-in-law of Big Warrior, and who had written the Tuckabatchee and Pole Cat Springs declarations. Most of the Cherokee correspondence was rounded up (notably missing were McIntosh’s bribery letter and the letter of the Cherokee chief that accompanied it), and the Commissioners repaired to Milledgeville. Campbell almost immediately set out for Washington.
McIntosh, Chilly, and a handful of the “friendly chiefs” found the Nation currently too warm for them and also headed for Milledgeville. Here McIntosh proposed that he and his party should go to Washington themselves, but Troup prevented them, insisting that Campbell would obtain the desired concessions from the government.
The subject of “the law” and McIntosh’s danger were discussed at length. McIntosh’s position with his white friends and his near kinsman, Governor Troup, was that the talks at Tuckabatchee and Pole Cat Springs were not laws at all, and he feared no trial under them. However, he said “. . . there are some who would be glad for a pretext to have me murdered; many of the Upper Town chiefs are hostile to me, and many are still living who I helped to chastise, and whose relations I had to kill, in the late war, as enemies of the whites. . . .”20 This statement was only about half true. There was no doubt in the minds of Little Prince, Big Warrior, and Opothlo Yohole as to the validity of the law. They were the leaders in the decision to execute McIntosh, and all three were leaders of the friendly Indian faction in the Creek War.
Chilly had brought along with him to Milledgeville many of the public papers of the National Council, including the official list of laws. William Lott later remarked, after testifying to the existence of the death law, “There are many penal laws in the nation that are not in writing. The few written laws that there are, witness has understood Chilly has run away with.”21
Apparently, at the meeting in Milledgeville of those Indians and Georgians who were interested in the sale of Indian lands, the death law was prominent in discussion. Governor Troup must have requested from Chilly a copy of the laws, and that copy is the one being considered here. It is in Chilly’s handwriting and signed by him. At the end of the document is the inscription, “It is understood that these are the laws at present in force in the Creek Nation and that none other are of any authority.” This inscription, though unsigned, is in the handwriting of Governor Troup.22
McIntosh’s end is all too well known. The following month (February) a palpably fraudulent treaty was concluded at Indian Springs between the Commissioners and a small group of Indians, most of whom were unqualified to act for the Nations. It was one of the first documents to cross the desk of the newly-elected and politically-harassed John Quincy Adams. In spite of a letter written by the Agent Crowell, accompanying the treaty warning that it was invalid, it was signed and ratified. As a direct result, there was a turbulent meeting of the Creek Council at Broken Arrow in late April and an execution party was secretly named. In the early hours of May 1st, the party surrounded McIntosh’s home and put fire to it, permitting the escape of women, children, and whites. McIntosh defended himself valiantly, but at last presented himself in the doorway. He fell in a hail of bullets, was dragged into the yard, and there in the glare of his burning home was knifed to death. “He died by his own mouth,” was the way the Indians put it.
Although the list of laws was frequently referred to by Governor Troup and the Commissioners as they inveighed against the “illegality” of McIntosh’s “murder,” the document was never produced. This fact is remarkable since literally hundreds of documents, many trivial, bearing on the Indian Springs treaty, McIntosh’s death, and the culpability of the Agent Crowell appeared in all manner of newspapers and were eventually gathered and printed in a single body in the voluminous (846 pages of small print) House Report No. 98.
The reason for the non-appearance of the document is evident. Although the famous “Death Law” was not on the list, another, “Law 33th,” was in itself an adequate instrument to accomplish McIntosh’s execution. Law 33 stated: “And be it farther enacted if any person or persons should tell such lies as should brought to disturpence of the Nation the punish shall be death.” The “Death Law” of 1817 itself was sufficiently specific and well understood so that the Creek Council never even bothered to point to this weaker law.
Despite Troup’s unsigned subscription that he understood these to be all the laws in force in the Creek Nation and “that none other are of any authority” it is perfectly obvious that this document was no attempt to unify and systematize Creek law. One has the impression that these laws were made in Council, one by one, haphazardly, as individual situations arose. They are laws made in a changing culture, calculated to deal with problems beyond the scope of ancient Creek custom, problems arising out of contact with the white man-cattle raising, slave owning, the use of United States currency, systematic agriculture, trading, and the presence of a stream of passing settlers on the way across the Nation to the Alabama and Mississippi territories. Then there were problems of inheritance which derived out of all these factors.
Significantly some of these laws are dated 1817, the year after the death of Agent Benjamin Hawkins. It is very likely that this is the year in which the law list was initiated. Hawkins had been devoted to his redskin charges and had done much to preserve them as a nation after the Creek War. When he first went into Creek country his journal amply reveals the sorry and demoralized state of affairs he found. When he left, despite the Creek War (which was essentially part of the War of 1812), he had done much to better the Creeks individually and to strengthen them as a nation by adapting their ancient form of government into a more effective centralized form.
When Hawkins first became familiar with Creek customs, he was particularly offended by the strict observance of the old law, a life for a life, no matter how accidental a death might have been, and under which a perfectly innocent person could suffer. He never tired of citing irrational instances of this bloody custom in his journal and during his agency did much to mollify the hard, old way. The fact that the first seven of these laws are laws easing the old custom is probably a tribute to Hawkins. The Creeks relied greatly on Hawkins’ judgment in these matters, and it seems likely that they felt no need to record such laws until after his death.
In format the Laws consist of four folded sheets (16 pages) of unlined and unwatermarked paper, with a fifth sheet of the same paper being used for a cover. The dimensions are 12⅜ x 7 13/16 inches, and creases show that the document was formerly folded twice to a 4 x 7 13/16 size. Round holes and slits in the left margin indicate that it was both sewed with cord and tied together with a ribbon at some time in its history. Nine pages are covered with writing in legible script, with scant margins on all four sides. The front edges are slightly frayed and the inner margin shows a little damage caused by the slits cut for the ribbon. The black ink originally used has faded to a dark brown. Except for these slight imperfections the manuscript is in good condition.
The document is in Chilly McIntosh’s hand and signed by him on the forepage. The slips of Chilly’s pen have a certain quaint charm to them. One can fairly hear the thick Creek accent in such mistakes as “big” for “pig,” “tudy” for “duty,” “soper” for “sober,” and “indefare” for “interfere.” He wrote in a good, firm, graceful hand. Later his English became practically faultless.
Chilly died many years later after the Creek removal to Oklahoma, a valued and effective member of his faction among the Creeks.
Savannah, Georgia |
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1The two were first cousins. McIntosh’s father, William, and Troup’s mother, Katherine, were brother and sister, children of John McIntosh of McIntosh Bluff, Alabama.
2This earlier version, containing eleven laws and formulated at the request of D. B. Mitchell, Indian Agent, was published at a general meeting of the chiefs and warriors at Thleancotchean (Broken Arrow) on June 12, 1818. It was signed three days later by General William McIntosh and four other Creek leaders. All the earlier laws are included in the later compilation but with wide variation in some of the wording. The original manuscript of the 1818 laws is in the D. B. Mitchell Manuscript Collection, the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois.
3The seat of the Creek National Council, a Coweta town near Fort Mitchell on the west bank of the Chattahoochee River.
4Governor John Clark, a violent political enemy of Mitchell’s, put the charge succinctly: “In November, 1815, General D. B. Mitchell was elected Governor of Georgia, for two years, and in the spring of 1817 he received the appointment of Agent of Indian Affairs, and for this office the government of Georgia was relinquished. As a man known to be ambitious of political distinction would not probably have made such a change with a view to public honor, it is natural to conclude that some pecuniary inducements must have led to it. And this is rendered more probable from the remark of the Agent himself, who was heard to remark that he had ‘served the public long enough, and he would be d----d if he did not now serve himself!’” Clarke, John, Considerations on the Purity of the Principles of William H. Crawford. . . . Augusta: Printed at the Georgia Advertiser Office, 1819, p. 131. See also letter from Andrew Jackson to James Monroe, September 28, 1819 (in Jackson, Andrew, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, edited by John Spencer Bassett. 7 volumes. Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1926-1935, pp. 433-37); and Mitchell, David Bridie, An Exposition of the Case of the Africans, Taken to the Creek Agency, by Captain William Bowen, on Or About the 1st Dec’r. 1817. Milledgeville: Camak & Hines, 1821.
5Little Prince to E. P. Gaines in Council at Broken Arrow, when asked what was the cause of the differences between McIntosh, the Agent, and John Crowell, answered, “All that he knows is that it was on account of Stinson, who was brought into the Nation, and who traded without a license; and because the Agent would not join with him in cheating the nation out of their annuity, which McIntosh and the former Agent, Mitchell, were in the habit of doing. McIntosh and Mitchell used to steal all our money, because they could write.” U. S. Congress. House. Select Committee. Report of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives, to which Were Referred the Messages of the President U. S. of the 5the and 8th February, And 2d March, 1821, with Accompanying Documents: And a Report And Resolutions of the Legislature of Georgia. . . . 19th Congress, 2nd Session, House Report 98. Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1827, p. 449. For similar testimony see that of Joseph Hardage, pp. 421-22; William Hambly, p. 397; and Thomas Triplett, p. 390.
6“Our prospects of obtaining land from the Indians upon our first arrival were gloomy, but they now begin to brighten. . . . General McIntosh is very unwell, but if his health should improve and the treaty be effected, he will pay you a visit in a few days for the purpose of obtaining money, and we are in hopes the fine opportunity of obtaining a vast acquisition of territory so highly beneficial to our State and fellow citizens generally, will not be neglected for the want of a little money, even if it should amount to forty thousand dollars.” David Adams and Daniel Newnan to Governor John Clark, 31 December 1820. Unpublished letter, Governor John Clark File, Georgia State Department of Archives and History. It should also be remembered that this transaction set aside in addition for McIntosh’s personal possession the valuable reserve at Indian Springs. For this holding, under the terms of the questionable treaty of Indian Springs (February, 1825) McIntosh was to receive an additional $25,000.
7U. S. Congress, House. Select Committee. Op cit., pp. 322-23, 404.
8“An interchange of Chiefs has been established and continued from the time that there was but one Agent [Hawkins] for the four nations.” Ibid., p. 452n.
9Ibid., p. 452.
10Ibid., p. 419.
11Ibid., pp. 420-21.
12Ibid., pp. 455-57.
13Ibid., p. 395.
14Ibid., p. 814.
15Ibid., p. 389.
16Ibid., p. 690.
17Ibid., p. 447.
18Ibid., p. 418.
19Ibid., p. 419.
20Ibid., p. 814.
21Ibid., p. 432.
22A positive identification of this as Governor Troup’s handwriting was made by O. B. Bell, handwriting expert for the Liberty National Bank, Savannah, Georgia.
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