White Warrior: William Mc Intosh of the Creek

Treaty negotiations and signings brought out a lot of emotions, anger at the government for forcing the treaty or making a tribe or its leaders believe they had no choice to sign (which oftentimes they did not).  There was sadness at parting with ancestral homelands, and often divisions within the tribe between those who felt that cooperation was the key to survival and those who wished to continue the fight.  Many chiefs who were otherwise respected lost their standing by signing these treaties, which were often the product of fraud or duress.  We'll look at one such leader today.  A man who might otherwise merit a Great Leader post, but who can't have one because he broke his own tribe's law by signing a treaty.

William Mc Intosh was born in Georgia in 1775, a  member through his mother of the powerful Wind Clan featured in a previous post.  His father, William Mc Intosh, was from a prominent Savannah family who were Loyalists during the Revolutionary War.  The Senior McIntosh may have been married to a sister of Lachlan Mc Gillivray, making Alexander Mc Gillivray and William, Jr., cousins on the paternal as well as maternal side.  Young William would have received his warrior's training through an uncle on his mother's side, while his father provided him with a White education.  William's family connections on both sides and his own personal ability insured that he grew up to be a warrior, an orator, a natural-born leader and a successful planter and businessman.  He was named to the Creek National Council.  Among his colleagues on the Council was William Weatherford.  But while Weatherford embraced the Red Stick Creek faction, which favored less assimilation with Settlers and more traditional Creek values, Mc Intosh urged greater cooperation with their White neighbors, placing him in the White Stick or peace faction. 

Mc Intosh married several times had had many children and, for awhile, life looked good.  He was in favor of universal education for Creek children and strengthening the power of the National Council.  He sponsored improvements to a trail which connected the Upper and Lower Creek towns and ran a ferry operation across the Ocmulgee River.  In the years between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, though, tensions simmered among the Creek as White settlers encroached on more and more of their land.  Some leaders, like Mc Intosh, believed that the more assimilated their society became, the more accepting Whites would become of them.  Tensions burst into the open with the War of 1812 and the Creek War.  While White Stick leaders such as Mc Intosh sided with and fought with United States forces, Red Sticks such as Weatherford, Peter Mc Queen and others fought with the British and carried the war on their own after the British turned their attention again to the Northwest Territory.  During this time, Mc Intosh was among leaders who ceded increasing amounts of land in 1805, 1814, 1818, and 1821.  For his assistance during the 1821 negotiations, he was awarded with hundreds of acres of land of his own. 

In 1824, the Creek National Council made it a capital offense to agree to cede any more tribal land.  Leaders in Georgia and the federal government continued to pressure the Creek Council to cede yet more land to make room for cotton farming.  On February 12, 1825, William Mc Intosh and two of his sons in law were among the signatories of the Treaty of Indian Springs, signing away yet more Creek land in direct violation of Creek law.  The treaty ceded all of the Creeks' remaining land in the Southeast.  Treaty provisions provided for an annuity to Mc Intosh and a lump sum payment, plus payment in exchange for the land he had previously been awarded under the 1821 agreement.  Sources differ as to whether the money was the incentive for him to sign, or whether he believed that removal was inevitable and hoped to make the best of a bad situation.  Either way, self-dealing on the part of any official negotiating a treaty was as illegal then as it is now.  As Opothleyahola and other Creek leaders scrambled to fix this situation, Mc Intosh's life was in grave danger.

In their attempts to modernize their society along the lines of the White society, the Creek had established a court system with police and constables known as Law Menders.  The Creek National Council ordered the death penalty for Mc Intosh and the others who had signed the Indian Springs Treaty.  They assigned Menawa, a former Red Stick leader, to carry out the sentence.  Menawa's men surrounded Mc Intosh's plantation and set the house and buildings on fire.  Mc Intosh was wounded by gunfire, pulled from the burning buildings and stabbed in the heart before being shot almost fifty times.  Another Creek leader who had signed the Treaty was also killed.  Mc Intosh's oldest son was also under a death sentence, but escaped.  The two Hawkins brothers, his sons-in-law, were also attacked.  Samuel was hanged and Benjamin was shot, but he, too, managed to escape alive.  Mc Intosh's body was thrown naked into an unmarked grave.  

Through the efforts of Opothleyahola, Menawa and other leaders, the Treaty of Indian Springs was renegotiated by the Treaty of Washington of 1826, which allowed the Creek to keep some of their land in Alabama and Georgia.  The Creeks were also compensated with money for the land they weren't allowed to keep.  Georgia authorities ignored the new treaty and began evicting Creek families.  Alabama signaled its intentions to do the same.  Removal of the last Creeks from Georgia and Alabama would happen by the 1830's as Opothleyahola and others led their people on their own trail of tears.  William's half brother and his son, whose death sentence had been canceled, also led contingents of Creeks to Oklahoma.  Others of Mc Intosh's children married into prominent families, both White and Creek.  In Georgia, Mc Intosh is memorialized as a patriot who fought with the United States during the War of 1812.  His signing of the 1825 treaty is remembered in Georgia as a selfless act of patriotism, not a betrayal of his own people.  Several place names in Georgia bear his name.