Great Warrior: Menawa of the Creek

In every society or era of history there is one person who seems to be there for all the important events.  One such is Menawa of the Creek (c 1765-c 1835), a Red Stick leader who paid the ultimate sacrifice while leading his people into the unknown.

Menawa was born in Oakfuskee on the Tallapoosa River in present-day Alabama, a site that is now covered by Lake Martin.  His mother was a Creek woman of status and his father was a fur trader of Scottish ancestry.  Like many young boys in that situation, he derived his standing in the tribe from his mother, and an uncle or other maternal relative would have provided his warrior's training.  How much involvement his father had in his education and upbringing is unknown.  As a boy and young man, Menawa went by the name of Hothlepoya.  It wasn't until he was much older, and made second Chief of Oakfuskee that he was given the name he was better known by, Menawa.

Menawa opted for the Red Stick faction of the Creek War (1813-14), opposing continued White incursion into Creek lands and believing that traditional ways should be upheld over assimilation into White society.  Along with William Weatherford, Peter McQueen and Josiah Francis, some of whom we've already run across, he became one of the prominent leaders of the Creek War on the Red Stick side.  He was on the Native command team at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814), where he was wounded seven times but managed to escape. 

After the War, he continued to impose White encroachment on Creek lands.  He supported the law passed in 1824 by the Creek National Council outlawing any more cession of Creek land.  When the sentence of death was passed against William Mc Intosh for signing the Treaty of Indian Springs in 1825, Menawa was chosen to lead the hit on Mc Intosh.  He and a party of warriors surprised the erring chief at his plantation, killed him and another leader who had signed the treaty, and tracked down Mc Intosh's two sons-in-laws, hanging one and wounding the other, who managed to escape.  Menawa was appointed to the National Council and went with Opothleyahola, whom we've also met, to Washington to try to salvage whatever communal land they could.  They negotiated the 1826 Treaty of Washington, which allowed the Creek to retain some land, and compensated them for lands they had lost.

But removal was inevitable.  Both Alabama and Georgia immediately began eviction of Creek families, signaling that they were not willing to abide by the new treaty.  The Indian Removal Act sealed the fate of most Southeastern Natives.  The Creek began their own Trail of Tears in 1834, emigrating in waves to Oklahoma from 1834-37.  Menawa led his people on one of these treks and died along the way of the same harsh conditions they were experiencing.  He was buried on the trail and his burial place is not known.