Alexander McGillivray

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Alexander McGillivray (December 15, 1750 – February 17, 1793) was a leader of the Creek (Muscogee) Indians during and after the American Revolution who worked to establish a Creek national identity and centralized leadership as a means of resisting American expansion onto Creek territory.

McGillivray was born Hoboi-Hili-Miko ("Good Child King") at Little Tallassee in Alabama on the Coosa River. His father, Lachlan McGillivray, was a Scottish trader (of the Clan MacGillivray chief's lineage). His mother, Sehoy Marchand, was the daughter of Jean Baptiste Louis DeCourtel Marchand, a French officer at Fort Toulouse, and Sehoy, a full-blooded Creek woman of the prestigious Wind Clan.[1] Educated in Charleston, South Carolina, where he learned Latin and Greek, McGillivray returned to the Wind clan at the beginning of the American Revolution after Georgia confiscated the property of his loyalist father, who then returned to Scotland.

A loyalist like his father, he resented much of American Indian policy, however, did not wish to leave the Untied States. McGillivray became a leading spokesman for all the tribes along the Florida-Georgia border areas. In 1790, George Washington invited him to attend a conference in New York City that resulted in the Treaty of New York, an attempt to pacify the Southern frontier. He became a resident of Pensacola and a member of the Masonic Order.

[edit] Sources

Forman, Carolyn Thomas. "Alexander McGillivray, Emperor of the Creeks", Chronicles of Oklahoma 7:1 (March 1929) 106-120 (retrieved August 18, 2006).