Once they arrived at Savannah, the commissioners sent messages to the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, telling them that the United States was strong and “our great warrior, General Washington,” was now “the head-man of all our councils, and the chief of all our warriors.” Washington wanted the Indians to know “that the United States regard the red men with the same favorable eye that they do the white men, and that justice shall always be maintained equally between them.”71 The commissioners sent notices announcing their mission to McGillivray and to Georgia governor George Walton. Americans knew that no treaty with the Creeks would hold without McGillivray.72
On September 20 the commissioners arrived at Rock Landing. Hoboithle Mico, Eneah Mico (Cussetah King), and Hallowing King came to see them and expressed their hopes for a lasting peace. They smoked “the pipe of friendship” with the commissioners and brushed their faces “with the white [eagle’s] wing of reconciliation in sign of their sincere intention to wipe away past grievances.”73 McGillivray sent the commissioners a note insisting that he meet with them in private before the treaty opened.74 When he arrived he had an entourage of nine hundred warriors. It was a demonstration of the power that McGillivray believed had forced the government to negotiate. The Americans had “fondly thought that they could Seize with Impunity every foot of Territory belonging to the Red Natives of America,” he told Miró. Now “these haughty republicans” had sent commissioners “to bend & Sue for peace from the people whom they had despised & marked out for destructing.”75
The next day McGillivray dined with the commissioners. He impressed Humphreys with his ability to hold his liquor. The commissioners drew up a draft of the proposed treaty and, after participating in the black drink ceremony with the Creeks, presented the treaty and repeated their assurances that Washington, “who led our armies to conquest wherever he turned his face,” was determined to see justice done to the Indian nations. “You know him,” the commissioners said, “and he never speaks the thing which is not.” The chiefs met in council late into the night. Then McGillivray informed the commissioners they had some objections, principally regarding the boundary.76 As he explained to William Panton, the treaty terms assumed the sovereignty of the United States over the Creeks, left the contested lands between the Oconee and Ogeechee in Georgia’s possession, and prohibited the Creeks from making treaties with any other nation or state, which would require them to terminate their treaty with Spain. Humphreys tried to ease McGillivray’s concerns and argued that the disputed lands had been ceded to Georgia in an earlier treaty, but his “arts of flattery, ambition and intimidation were exhausted in vain.” Humphreys was a man with few insights into his own limitations, and McGillivray dismissed him as a “puppy” and “a great boaster.” After informing Humphries, “By G—— I would not have such a Treaty cram’d down my throat,” McGillivray brought the meeting to an abrupt halt by decamping with his followers and heading for home.77 William Irvine told Madison that Humphreys personally offended McGillivray, who, after hearing what the commissioners had to say, “observed it was the old story” and “went off in wrath.”78
“The Parties have separated without forming a Treaty,” the commissioners reported to Knox the next day. In their view McGillivray was entirely to blame.79 The United States could never depend on McGillivray, Humphreys told Washington; ego and financial gain dictated his conduct. The commissioners agreed that the boundary issue was secondary; McGillivray’s main objective was to see if he could get better terms from Spain than from the United States.80 McGillivray had “the good sense of an American, the shrewdness of a Scotchman, & the cunning of an Indian,” Humphreys told Washington. Humphreys did not think much of McGillivray: he was “so much addicted to debauchery that he will not live four years,” he said; he dressed “altogether in the Indian fashion,” and he was “rather slovenly.” Nevertheless, he acknowledged that McGillivray’s influence was “probably as great as we have understood it was” and that he could be very useful to the United States, “if he can be sincerely attached to our Interests.”81
Although the negotiations broke up without a formal treaty, the Creeks sent Washington a white eagle-tail fan as a symbol of peace, which Benjamin Lincoln presented to him after he returned to New York on November 10.82 The commissioners lodged their official report with Knox on the seventeenth, with further observations on the Creek situation on the twentieth, and Washington received it on the afternoon of the twenty-first. He gave it a quick reading, promising (in his diary) to read it again, with more attention, later. The next day, a Sunday, he spent the evening in close conversation with the commissioners about the negotiations and “their opinion with respect to the real views of Mr. McGillivry.” He recorded their views in his diary:
The principles of [his] conduct they think is self-Interest, and a dependence for support on Spain. They think also, that having possessed himself of the outlines of the terms he could Treat with the United States upon, he wished to Postpone the Treaty to see if he could not obtain better from Spain. They think that, though he does not want abilities, he has credit to the full extent of them and that he is but a short sighted politician. He acknowledges however, that an Alliance between the Creek Nation & the United States is the most Natural one, & what they ought to prefer if to be obtained on equal terms. A Free port in the latter seems to be a favourite object with him.83
In his “Memoranda on Indian Affairs,” Washington noted the reasons McGillivray gave for walking away from the peace talks; from his conversations with Humphreys he had expected full justice and restoration of the contested Oconee hunting grounds, but finding there was no such provision in the treaty, he had resolved to return home and defer making peace until the next spring. The Creeks “sincerely desire a Peace, but cannot sacrafice much to obtain it,” he said. Washington also made a note of the “Influential Characters” among the Creeks, placing McGillivray first among the Upper Creeks, followed by the White Lieutenant of Okfuskee and Mad Dog (Efau Hadjo) of Tuckabatchee; among the Lower Creeks, Hallowing King (commanding the war towns) and Cussetah King or Eneah Mico (commanding the peace towns), along with Tallassee King (Hoboithle Mico), Tall King, White Bird King (Fusatchee Mico), the king of the Seminoles, and the king of the Euchees, merited attention. The leader of the American nation needed to know who the leaders of the Creek nation were.84
Clearly intrigued by McGillivray, Washington was not ready to give up. The crisis of affairs with the Creeks required the United States to try “every honorable and probable expedient … to avert a War with that tribe,” Knox advised him in February 1790.85 Three weeks later, Washington wrote Knox, expressing his approval for bringing McGillivray to New York as a way of avoiding that war.86 “The President, who does not change his principles easily, wants to try the medium of negotiations a second time,” Louis Guillaume Otto, secretary of the French legation in the United States, reported to the French minister of foreign affairs; “and if he succeeds in getting some savage plenipotentiaries to come here, he is too adroit to let them leave without having obtained and signed a permanent peace.”87
Washington sent as his special emissary to McGillivray Colonel Marinus Willett, a very different character from Humphreys. Willett’s mission, Washington noted in his diary, “was not to have the appearance of a Governmental act.” Willett carried with him a passport Washington had authorized guaranteeing safe conduct to “such of the Chiefs of the Creek Nation as may desire to repair to the seat of the General Government on the business of their Nation,” and a letter of introduction from former commissioner and now US senator Benjamin Hawkins of North Carolina. Hawkins introduced Willett as an honorable gentleman with whom McGillivray could talk openly, rebuked the Creek leader for refusing to treat with the United States when he had been solemnly invited to settle the disputes “on terms of mutual advantage,” and urged him to consider going to New York to make peace.88 Willett assured McGillivray that Washington did not desire Creek lands and would respect the tribe�
�s claims. A treaty made at New York would be “as strong as the hills and lasting as the rivers,” he said.89
McGillivray, like Washington, was not ready to give up on peace. A treaty with the United States might bolster his resistance against Georgia and increase his bargaining power with Spain. Like the federal government, he was concerned by the activities of the Yazoo speculators. Georgia’s original charter had located the colony’s western border at the Mississippi, and in December 1789 the Georgia legislature, most of whose members were shareholders in the speculation, announced the sale of more than 20 million acres in the region of the Yazoo River, an area in present-day Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee disputed by Spain and the United States, to three out-of-state land companies in Virginia, Tennessee, and South Carolina, collectively called the Yazoo Companies, at a cost of roughly four-fifths of a cent per acre. Washington and his government opposed the brazen scheme, maintaining that Georgia should cede its rights and that the national government rather than the state government should dispose of the Yazoo lands. What was more, the lands were still occupied by Indians, and Indian land could only be acquired by war or treaty. The Constitution—which Georgia had ratified—granted both powers to the federal government. McGillivray and Washington shared a common interest in blocking a scheme that threatened Creek territory and federal authority.90
McGillivray also had to rethink his position as the controller of Indian trade. In 1788 the Spanish had temporarily curtailed Indian trade goods, rendering McGillivray’s connection with Panton, Leslie & Company less lucrative. In 1790 the looming threat of war between Britain and Spain over Nootka Sound in the Pacific Northwest—where vessels from both nations competed for the sea-otter trade with the coastal Indians before sailing across the Pacific to China and exchanging the pelts for tea, silk, and spices—rendered Creek reliance on Spain, and the trading status of Panton, Leslie & Company, even more precarious. It also presented Washington with a potential foreign policy crisis if the nations went to war in the American hemisphere. Meanwhile, William Augustus Bowles, a former Loyalist from Maryland living in Creek country, presented himself as McGillivray’s rival as leader of the Creek nation and took advantage of the disruption in commerce to insert himself and his merchant backers in the Bahamas as competitors with Panton and Leslie.91 In the circumstances, turning to the United States offered the Creeks an alternative supply of manufactured goods and offered McGillivray the opportunity to control it. Of course, McGillivray knew that bribery was common in treaty negotiations and that he could expect to return from New York an even wealthier man.92
A Creek delegation had traveled to London, the imperial capital, in the 1730s. Now McGillivray decided to lead a delegation to the American capital. He sent runners summoning Creek chiefs to council to hear Willett, who declared that a treaty “ratified with the signature of Washington and McGillivray would be the bond of Long Peace and revered by Americans to a very distant period.” McGillivray told William Panton he did not hesitate to accept the invitation.93 Panton and Miró attempted to stop him, but by the time they heard of it, McGillivray had already left for New York. The United States wanted to reject the Georgia land grants because it wanted those lands itself, Panton said; “their pretension to Justice and humanity is all a bubble and it is obvious to me that McGillivray will find it so before he returns.”94
McGillivray was no fool. He knew that “all the eagerness which Washington shows to treat with me on such liberal terms is not based … on principles of Justice and humanity.”95 As he departed from Little Tallassee at the beginning of June, McGillivray wrote Miró explaining his reasons for wanting to make “a good Peace,” as Spain had encouraged. At the same time, he suggested his journey could serve Spanish interests: “Tho I do not pretend to the ability of a Machiavel in Politics, Yet I can find out from my Slender abilities pretty near the disposition of the American Politics so far as they respect the Spanish Nation, & Your Excellency may depend on receiving a faithful account of every matter whenever I may return.”96
He set off with Willett, a nephew and two servants, and eight Upper Creek warriors.97 More chiefs joined them at Stone Mountain, and Hoboithle Mico joined them at General Pickens’s plantation in mid-June. Willet had originally planned to sail to New York by ship, but the Creeks claimed a “mortal aversion” to water so the group traveled overland.98 McGillivray rode on horseback at the head of the procession or with Willett in a carriage, and twenty-six chiefs and warriors followed in three wagons.99 Washington had Knox ask the governors of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania to furnish the Creek delegates “with whatever might be deemed a proper respect that they might be kept in good humour.”100 William Blount, hearing of McGillivray’s journey north, saw it as evidence of a retreat after having rebuffed the federal treaty commissioners the previous fall: he was now traveling to Congress to supplicate for the same terms they had offered him on his own soil. “He is I suppose like most other great Men,” Blount mused; “if so the more he is seen the less he is admired.”101
The Creeks’ progress took on the appearance of a state visit. They attracted large crowds, and McGillivray was welcomed by prominent citizens and civic leaders in the towns they passed through. At Guildford Courthouse in North Carolina, a woman broke from the spectators and approached McGillivray, who recognized her as a former captive he had freed. They embraced in a tearful reunion, which Willett described as “truly affecting.” In Virginia, the Creeks dined with dignitaries, including Governor Beverley Randolph, at Richmond and attended a theater performance at Fredericksburg. Willett and McGillivray were shown Washington’s birthplace. More public dinners and theatrics followed in Philadelphia. Americans drank toasts to “the Creek Washington.”102 Although he no doubt appreciated all the attention, McGillivray found the trip “tedious & fatiguing,” in part owing to a “Violent indisposition” that seized him along the way.103
Finally, on July 21, 1790, the delegation ferried across the Hudson River into New York. McGillivray, who reports said looked “like a white man,” and his followers, who were “adorned with feathers, beads, earrings, and silver gorgets,” disembarked to church bells, cheering crowds, and a salvo of cannon fire.104 Officers and members of New York City’s Tammany Society, wearing what they imagined to be Indian costume and carrying bows, arrows, and tomahawks, escorted the Creeks up Wall Street to Federal Hall, where Congress was in session, then to Washington’s house, and finally to the City Tavern on Broadway, where Knox and Governor Clinton hosted them at dinner. The society members were doing more than simply welcoming the visitors; in the early Republic such appropriation and parodying of Native practices constituted a public declaration of an emergent national identity that laid claim to an aboriginal American identity, incorporated “noble” Indian traits such as courage and freedom, and distinguished Americans from Europeans; it could also be seen as a declaration that Americans had replaced, or were replacing, Indians as rulers of the land.105 It was the biggest celebration since Washington’s inauguration. “We hope good from this visit,” wrote Jefferson.106
Still weak from the pneumonia that had almost killed him in the spring, Washington left most of the negotiations to Knox. McGillivray, who was also unwell, lodged at Knox’s home—perhaps so the secretary of war could keep a close eye on him—while the rest of the delegation roomed at the Indian Queen Hotel and outside the city at Richmond Hill in Greenwich Village. Writing to her sister, Abigail Adams said that “my Neighbours the Creek savages” were lodged nearby. “They are very fond of visiting us as we entertain them kindly, and they behave with much civility.” They were the first Indians she had seen, and she thought them “very fine looking Men.” After dinner one of the chiefs conferred an Indian name on her, the meaning of which she did not understand. Dressed in European clothing and light skinned, McGillivray spoke English “like a Native.” He impressed Abigail as “grave and solid, intelligent and much of a Gentleman, but in very bad Health.”107
The events attracte
d international attention. Spain and Great Britain watched from the wings. Carlos Howard, one of a number of Irish officers who entered Spanish imperial service and who was now secretary to the governor of East Florida, was dispatched to join José Ignacio de Viar, the Spanish agent in New York. Howard contacted McGillivray as the chief made his way from Philadelphia, offering his own and Viar’s services and “to clarify any ambiguities” he might have about Spanish policy.108 He reminded McGillivray of their joint opposition to the Americans, their trade agreements, and the Pensacola treaty. Howard said US officials did not leave McGillivray alone for a minute and “also appointed people to watch and follow my footsteps.”109 Yet he still managed to communicate with McGillivray throughout the negotiations, reminding him that Spain had always wanted the Indians to be at peace with the Americans—just not at Creek or Spanish expense.110
The British, too, kept a careful eye on the negotiations. If the Nootka Crisis erupted into open war, alliance with the Creeks would offer Britain an opportunity to seize Spanish-held territory in Florida and Louisiana. The British government assigned an agent, George Beckwith, to discover the exact terms of any treaty and gain McGillivray’s confidence.111 Beckwith enjoyed a close relationship with Alexander Hamilton and so had greater access to the treaty talks than did his Spanish counterparts. Beckwith thought McGillivray was “a man of talents and ambition”; he thought Washington’s talents were greatly overrated.112
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