William Augustus Bowles

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William Augustus Bowles (1763-1805), also known as Estajoca, was a Maryland-born English adventurer and organizer of Native American attempts to create their own state outside of Euro-American control.

Some sources give his date of birth as 1764.[1] Bowles was born in Frederick County, Maryland. He joined the British Army as a foot solider at 13 and served with the Maryland Loyalists Battalion as an ensign during the American Revolution. After the Battle of Monmouth he went to Jamaica. He was officer in Royal Navy by age 15, but was cashiered for dereliction of duty for returning too late to his ship. This occurred at Pensacola, Florida.

At this point he moved north to live with the Creek Indians. Apparently he met some of the Creek in Pensacola to receive British aid for their alliance with the British in the war. He would marry two wives, one Creek (the chiefs daughter) and the other Cherokee, became heir to Creek chiefdom. Bowles was the leader of the Creek forces who fought at Pensacola on the British side in the battle in which it fell to the Spaniards. This occurred May 9, 1781, when Bowles was either 16 or 17 years old.

In one of the bizarre twists that makes Bowles so interesting, after this battle, he was reinstated in the British Army, then went to New York. After this, he moved to the Bahamas where he worked as a comedian and a portrait painter. However, after a few months in the Bahamas, Lord Dunmore the British governor there, sent Bowles back among the Creeks with a charge to establish a trading house among them.

Bowles established a trading post along the Chattahoochee River. Alexander McGillivray did not take kindly to this activity and ordered Bowles to leave or have his ears cut off. Bowles chose to keep his ears and returned to the Bahamas.

Pursuing his idea of an American Indian state after the end of the war, he was received by George III as 'Chief of the Embassy for Creek and Cherokee Nations' and it was with British backing that he returned to the Bahamas to train Creek Braves as pirates to attack Spanish ships.

A furious Spain offered $6,000 and 1,500 kegs of rum for his capture, and when he finally was captured, he was transported to Madrid where he was unmoved by Charles IV of Spain's attempts to make him change sides. He then escaped, commandeering a ship and returning to the Gulf of Mexico. One of the main victims of his piracy was Panton.

In 1795, along with the Seminoles, he formed a short-lived state in northern Florida known as the "State of Muskogee", with himself as its "Director General", and in 1800, declared war on Spain. Bowles operated two schooners and boasted of a force of 400 frontiersmen, former slaves, and warriors.

In 1803, not long after having declared himself 'Chief of all Indians present' at a trial council, he was betrayed and turned over to the Spanish and died in prison in Havana two years later, having refused to eat.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Bowles, William Augustus, General

[edit] External links

Le Clerc Milfort's Travels & Sojourn in the Creek Nation