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McINTOSH, William, Creek
chief: b. near Cus-seta, Chattahoochee county, Ga., probably about 1780;
murdered at his farm on the banks of the Chattahoochee, April 30, 1825.
Son of William Mcintosh, a colonel in the British army, and a full-blooded
Creek woman of influential tribe. He was educated, tall, finely formed and
intelligent, and a firm friend of the whites. He attained the leadership
of the Lower, or Georgia, Creeks, as contrasted with the Upper Creeks of
Alabama. In 1810 he headed a deputation to assure Governor Mitchell of his
tribe's desire for continued friendship. During the War of 1812, when the
Upper Creeks, instigated by the British, took up arms against Georgia, he
aided the whites, and was given the title of general by the Federal
authorities. He became a man of substances, owning two large farms on the
Chattahoochee, in what is now Carroll county, with over a hundred negro
slaves and three full-blooded Indian wives. When Governor Troup was
attempting to acquire the Creek lands, and President Monroe summoned a
council at Indian Springs to consider a treaty, Mcintosh earnestly
advocated the treaty, in opposition to the chiefs of the Upper Creeks. In
revenge for the part he had played, his house was surrounded by a band of
marauding Upper Creeks on the night of April 29, 1825. Toward daybreak the
house was set on fire, and Mcintosh was murdered and scalped as he rushed
from the flames. |
