Мускоги басшысы: Ақ Батыр Уильям МакИнтош өмірі мен трагедиясы

Muscogee chief

William McIntosh (1775 – April 30, 1825), also commonly known as Tustunnuggee Hutke (White Warrior), was one of the most prominent chiefs of the Creek Nation between the turn of the 19th century and his execution in 1825. He was a chief of Coweta town and commander of a mounted police force. He became a large scale planter, built and managed a successful inn, and operated a commercial ferry business. Early American historians attributed McIntosh's achievements and influence to his mixed race Scots/European ancestry. Since the late 20th century, historians have argued much of McIntosh's political influence stemmed more from his Creek upbringing and cultural standing, particularly his mother's prominent Wind Clan in the Creek matrilineal system, and to other aspects of Creek culture. Because McIntosh led a group that negotiated and signed the Treaty of Indian Springs in February 1825, which ceded much of remaining Creek lands to the United States in violation of Creek law, for the first time the Creek National Council ordered that a Creek be executed for crimes against the Nation.

Tustunnuggee Hutke (or "White Warrior") was born in the Lower Creek Town of Coweta in present day Georgia to Scottish American soldier William McIntosh and to Senoya (also spelled Senoia and Senoy The senior McIntosh's mother was Margaret "Mary" McGillivray, believed to have been a sister of the Scot Lachlan McGillivray, a wealthy fur trader and planter in Georgia. After the Revolutionary War, Captain McIntosh moved from the frontier to Savannah to settle. There, he married a paternal cousin, Barbara McIntosh. White Warrior gained his status and place among the Creek from his mother's clan. Benjamin Hawkins, first appointed as United States Indian agent in the Southeast and then as Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the territory south of the Ohio River, lived among the Creeks and Choctaws, and knew them well. He commented in letters to President Thomas Jefferson that Creek women were matriarchs and had control of children "when connected with a white man." Hawkins further observed that even wealthy traders were nearly as "inattentive" to their mixed race children as "the Indians". What he did not understand about the Creek culture was that the children had a closer relationship with their mother's eldest brother than with their biological father, because of the importance of the clan structure. Married around McIntosh's twenty fifth birthday, he and Eliza's marriage produced five children: Chillicothe (aka "Chilly"), Jane, Kate, Sallie, and Louis. Their daughter Jane married Samuel Hawkins, Kate married William Cousins, and their daughter Sallie's husband was George McLish.

Chief McIntosh as a leader adopted certain elements of European American culture. He was interested in introducing American education among the Creeks, adopted the use of chattel slavery on his plantations, and played a role in centralizing the Creek National Council over the years. As a successful merchant and gentleman farmer, he owned more than one hundred black slaves and two plantations where he grew cotton and raised livestock. He also operated two ferries, an inn, and a tavern. He used his influence to improve a Creek trail connecting the Upper and Lower Towns, that ran from Talladega, Alabama, to the Chattahoochee River. He owned two plantations, Lockchau Talofau ("Acorn Bluff") in present day Carroll County, and Indian Springs, in present day Butts County His plantation of Acorn Bluff was at the eastern terminus of the McIntosh Road, where the chief developed a ferry operation across the Chattahoochee River. Acorn Creek, a tributary of the Chattahoochee located adjacent to the McIntosh estate, is named after the plantation. He owned numerous black slaves to cultivate cotton as a commodity crop on his plantations. He also built a resort hotel at Indian Springs, hoping to attract more travelers along the improved road. Parts of this route are still referred to as the McIntosh Road, or the McIntosh Trail. It passes through several northern counties in Alabama and Georgia.

Internal Creek tensions resulted in the Creek War (1813–1814), when tensions between the Lower Creeks and the traditional Red Sticks of the Upper Towns erupted into open conflict. McIntosh and other Lower Creeks allied with United States forces against the Red Sticks after 1813, during the War of 1812. The Red Sticks were allied with the British, as both wanted to limit American expansion in the Southeast. McIntosh fought in support of General Andrew Jackson and state militias in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, marking the defeat in 1814 of the Red Sticks and the end of the Creek War. McIntosh was appointed a brigadier general of the United States Volunteers by then Major General Jackson and enjoyed the full emoluments, such as pay and allowances for subsistence, forage and servants, as officers of the same flag officer rank in the United States Army. The Creeks were forced to cede lands to the United States in the early 1800s. Maps mark the strips that were ceded over the years. McIntosh played a role in negotiations and cessions of 1805, 1814 (21 million acres after the Creek War), 1818 and 1821. For his role in completing the cession in 1821, American agents awarded McIntosh 1,000 acres of land at Indian Springs and 640 acres on the Ocmulgee River.

Like other prominent chiefs, McIntosh worked closely with Benjamin Hawkins, the U. S. Indian Supervisor in the Southeast for two decades until 1816. Hawkins was instrumental in gaining Creek cessions of land through that period, but he also supported McIntosh's efforts to bring European American education to the territory by welcoming missionaries who set up schools. After President James Monroe came to office, in November 1817 his administration appointed David Brydie Mitchell as the U. S. Indian Agent to the Creek Nation. Mitchell had formerly been the governor of Georgia (1809–1813) (1815–1817), as well as holding other posts in the state. After the Creek War, the people suffered from the disruption. The U. S. provided food and supplies as part of the annuities for the land cessions, especially the 21 million acres the Creeks were forced to cede following the war. Mitchell and McIntosh were suspected of controlling some of the distribution of food and annuities for their own benefit in this period, increasing McIntosh's power among the Creeks. The brothers had both been educated at Princeton. Samuel had married McIntosh's daughter Jane, and Benjamin would later marry his daughter Rebecca. Then they set McIntosh's house on fire. Chilly McIntosh, the chief's oldest son, had also been sentenced to die, but he escaped by diving through a window. Etommee Tustunnuggee, another Creek chief who signed the 1825 treaty, was killed during the raid. The Creek had "adopted certain Anglo American legal concepts, welded them to their own concepts of political independence and used them to serve decidedly Creek purposes." His burial site and part of his plantation have been preserved as the McIntosh Reserve in Carroll County, Georgia. The grave is located near a replica of McIntosh's home in McIntosh Reserve Park near Whitesburg. In this new treaty, the Creek received an immediate payment of $217,660 and a perpetual annuity of $20,000. The state of Georgia ignored the new treaty and worked to evict the Creeks from their lands before official removal started in the 1830s.

After William's death, his younger half brother Roley McIntosh advanced to serve as chief of the Lower Creeks until 1859, moving with them to Indian Territory in the 1830s. His first wife had died and the widower married Susannah, the widow McIntosh. Both brothers later became Baptist ministers in the Indian Territory. Eight McIntosh men served with the Confederate Army during the war. Daughter Catherine "Kate" McIntosh and her husband Eufauli Creek Billy Cousins became a pre statehood Florida pioneer family after settling in the sparsely populated Northwestern Florida Panhandle in September 1842. Daughter Rebecca McIntosh married Benjamin Hawkins in the Western Creek Nation in 1831. In 1860, her "personal wealth was reported to have been $85,000, and her real estate valued at $35,000. She was the wealthiest person in Marion County, where her plantation Refuge was located. Most of her personal wealth was attributed to the value of the one 102 people she held in bondage." By 2011 the Trail had received preliminary approval for its alignment, with the Three Rivers Commission due to review its corridor plan.