CHIEF ALEXANDER MCGILLIVRAY

(1750-1793)

The leader of the Creek forces at the Battle of Jack’s Creek in September 1787 was Chief Alexander McGillivray. McGillivray was born in 1750 to a Creek woman named Sehoy Marchand and a wealthy Scottish trader, Lachlan McGillivray. Alexander grew up straddling both cultures, the matrilineal Creek society of his mother’s Wind Clan and the colonial society of his father. He spent his early years in Augusta, received a formal education in Charleston, then held a business post in Savannah before returning to the Creek society of his mother in 1777.

Alexander McGillivray’s language skills and knowledge of both cultures helped him assume important leadership roles in both worlds. During the American Revolution he held a commission in the British army. In 1783 he became the Chief of the Upper Creek towns and was respected as an intelligent and able spokesman for the tribes along the Georgia-Florida border. McGillivray was known among the Creeks as Hoboi-Hili-Miko, the Good Child King. He was depicted “as a man of an open, generous mind, with good judgment and a tenacious memory.”

After the Revolutionary War, McGillivray used his influence to protect Creek rights to the land as settlers flooded into Georgia. The Battle of Jack’s Creek in present-day Walton County in September 1787 was one of many bloody conflicts between frontier families and Creeks dispossessed of their territories. In the summer of 1790, President George Washington sent an envoy to invite McGillivray to New York for a personal conference with Washington and Henry Knox, US Secretary of War, about the mounting tensions. His tribal council accepted Washington’s invitation during their special ceremony of the Black Drink (a beverage brewed from leaves of the yaupon believed to have purifying powers). A Creek named Hollering King gave this reply:

“We are glad to see you. You have come a great way, and, as soon as we fixed our eyes upon you, we were made glad. We were invited to the treaty at Rock Landing. We went there. Nothing was done. We were disappointed, and came back with great sorrow. The road to your council house is long, and the weather is hot; but our beloved Chief shall go with you, and such others as we may appoint. We will agree to all things that our beloved Chief shall say. We will count the time he is away, and, when he comes back, we shall be glad to see him with a treaty that shall be as strong as the hills and lasting as the rivers. May you be preserved from every evil.”

McGillivray and his fellow tribal leaders traveled to New York on horseback dressed in full Creek regalia in a procession that took more than 6 weeks. The result of their negotiations was the 1790 Treaty of New York, the first of six treaties that dealt with Creek territory in what would become Walton County. The treaty established the Altamaha and Oconee rivers as boundaries between Creek and US territory. The treaty was a failure, though: neither side followed the provisions of the Treaty and no survey of the land ever took place. The remaining Creek lands were ceded to the government in the Treaties of 1818 and 1821, which cleared the way for the establishment of Walton County. Years after the Treaty of New York, a secret agreement signed by both Washington and McGillivray was found which accorded McGillivray the rank and salary of brigadier general in the United States Army. 

Alexander McGillivray died in 1793 at the age of 43, but his important ideas and influence lasted for many years. Theodore Roosevelt later remarked “it was the consummate craft and master diplomacy of McGillivray which enabled the Creeks for a generation to hold their own more successfully against the restless Americans than any other native race.”