An Indian perspective into native and Euroamerican diplomacy in the south

In this volume, Amos J. Wright Jr. compiles and presents the source materials relating to the lives and careers of Laughlin McGillivray and Alexander McGillivray. The volume represents tweny years of meticulous detective work, during which the author has ferreted out details previously unknown, has clarified some of the problems raised by previous research, and has righted several current misconceptions. There is much here that is of genealogical interest, bearing on such matters as the relationship between the McGillivray and McIntosh clans in Scotland, and the fate of Alexander McGillivray’s son who was sent to Scotland after the death of his father. Among the many conclusions and carefully weighed opinions offered in these pages, the author has included a consideration of Alexander’s cause of death, as he was rumored to have been poisoned by a Spaniard. Publication of these source materials is sure to further our scholarly understanding of these fascinating individuals who were born into fascinating times.

An Indian perspective into native and Euroamerican diplomacy in the South First published in 1939, McGillivray of the Creeks is a unique mix of primary and secondary sources for the study of American Indian history in the Southeast. The historian John Walton Caughey's brief but definitive biography of Creek leader Alexander McGillivray (1750-1793) is coupled with 214 letters between McGillivray and Spanish and American political officials. The volume offers distinctive firsthand insights into Creek and Euroamerican diplomacy in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi in the aftermath of the American Revolution as well as a glimpse into how historians have viewed the controversial Creek leader. McGillivray, the son of a famous Scottish Indian trader and a Muskogee Creek woman, was educated in Charleston, South Carolina, and, with his father's guidance, took up the mantle of negotiator for the Creek people during and after the Revolution. While much of eighteenth-century American Indian history relies on accounts written by non-Indians, the letters reprinted in this volume provide a valuable Indian perspective into Creek diplomatic negotiations with the Americans and the Spanish in the American South. Crafty and literate, McGillivray's letters reveal his willingness to play American and Spanish interests against one another. Whether he was motivated solely by a devotion to his native people or by the advancement of his own ambitions is the subject of much historical debate. In the new introduction to this Southern Classic edition, William J. Bauer, Jr., places Caughey's life into its historiographical context and surveys the various interpretations of the enigmatic McGillivray that historians have drawn from this material.

Excerpt from Alexander McGillivray: The Last King of the Creeks England, by a frail title, was holding by her goods and her bayonets a thin line along the Atlantic Ocean from Florida to the St. Lawrence, although her royal grants were generally bound ed o-n the west by the South Seas, wherever that might be found to be. Her title to this dominion was based under the law of nations, upon the fact that Sebastian Cabot. Under authority of Henry VIL, sailed along the coast from Florida to Newfoundland and back again. La Belle France was claiming and holding all the St. Law rence and the Lake regions, with tributaries, and afterwards, by reason of the discovery of the Mississippi River, was claiming the whole valley drained by its waters. For about 62 years the Alleghany mountains were her eastern boundary, during which time what is now Tennessee was part and parcel of New France. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.