William Augustus Bowles and the State of Muscogee

Early America was filled with charlatans, imposters and adventurers.  There were several men claiming to the be Lost Dauphin of France, a college professor who claimed and may have been, Marshal Michel Ney, and many would-be emperors and alleged emperors, among them former Vice-President Aaron Burr, who either wanted to seize land from Mexico or carve out an empire from a portion of the newly-acquired Louisiana Purchase.  Then there was William Augustus Bowles. 

Bowles (1763-1805) was born in Maryland and joined the British Army when he was thirteen.  That young age was allowed back in the day.  He served as an ensign with the Maryland Loyalist Battalion, traveling with it to what is now Pensacola.  Here accounts differ.  Some sources say that he was cashiered for insubordination.  Others that he simply resigned his commission and left to join the Natives.  He was captured by members of the Creek Nation.  Spanish forces began bombarding Pensacola in May, 1781, and Bowles convinced the Creeks to support the British garrison.  When it nevertheless fell to the Spanish and most of the garrison were taken prisoner, Bowles escaped with the Creeks. 

After the battle, he was reinstated to the British Army and posted to the Bahamas.  Later, Lord Dunmore (Yes, that Lord Dunmore), sent him back to the Creeks to establish a trading base with them.  Bowles opened a trading post along the Chattahoochee River.  He also married two wives, one Cherokee, and one Hitchiti, the daughter of Hitchitee Muscogee chief William Perryman.  He used this particular marriage alliance to exert continued influence among the Creeks.  He was appointed by the Creeks to represent them at an embassy to George III and convinced the King's government to back his attempts to create an independent State of Muscogee in Florida as a buffer between land claims by the Americans, the British and the Spanish. 

In 1795, along with the Seminoles, he formed the State of Muscogee from part of East Florida, with himself as the "Director-General".  In 1800, he declared war on Spain with a fleet of three schooners and an army of four hundred Natives, frontiersmen and adventurers.  Spain put a bounty on his head of $6,000 and 1500 kegs of rum.  He was eventually captured and taken to Madrid, where he was offered considerable money to serve as a mercenary for Spain.  He refused and eventually escaped.  He commandeered a ship and returned to the Gulf of Mexico, supporting himself through piracy.  He returned to Muscogee, but his luck and success so far got to his head.  He angered his Native allies when he declared himself at a tribal council to be "chief of all Indians present".  His erstwhile Creek allies betrayed him to Spain.  He was taken to Castillo Moro in Havana, Cuba, where he refused to eat and eventually died in 1805. 

After his death, the State of Muscogee quickly evaporated.  Its capitol of Miccosuke, near present-day Tallahasse, lingered as a Seminole town until 1818,when it was destroyed by Jackson during the First Seminole war in 1818.  Bowles, called Estajoca by his Creek allies, and Billy Bowlegs by his enemies and detractors, is a local hero in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.  While the City is quick to point out that Bowles has no relation to Billy Bowlegs (Bolek), the later Seminole leader, they celebrate William Augustus Bowles as a pirate hero complete with a week-long Mardi Gras style blowout.  Parades, floats, a royal court, the Krewe of Bowleges, you name it.