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This week marks the 200th anniversary of the death of William McIntosh. In what U.S. and Georgia leaders considered an act of murder and what many Creeks felt was an act of justice, the famed Native American leader was killed on his plantation in what’s now Carroll County, Georgia on April 30, 1825. In marking this date in history, some of his descendants took part in an event on Wednesday at the public library in Whitesburg, Georgia in an area that has long been called the McIntosh Reserve.

This past Sunday, the life and death of William McIntosh was the subject of the quarterly program of the Chattahoochee Valley Historical Society (CVHS). In an online program, Dr. Gary Van Valen talked about this and the enormous influenece McIntosh had in early 19th century Georgia. Van Valen is a professor of history at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton and has studied McIntosh for years.

Born in 1775, McIntosh was the son of a Scottish Loyalist and a Creek woman. He rose to becoming a leader in his mother’s nation in the first quarter of the 19th century, He played key roles in negotiating treaties with the U.S. government between 1805 and 1825 which resulted in the surrender of Muscogee lands in Georgia, He fought on the side of U.S. forces in First Creek War in what’s now Alabama in 1813 and 1814 and in the First Seminole War in Florida in 1817 and 1818.

In 1825, Upper Creeks from Alabama killed McIntosh at his home on the Chattahoochee River in Carroll County. This was punishment for his having acted alone in giving up Creek land to the U.S. That year, McIntosh almost immediately became a subject of history and legend.

“Southern whites considered him one of their own,” Dr. Van Valen said, “but he chose to live his life as a Muscogee person. When he signed the Second Treaty of Indian Springs in 1825 he was content to go to Oklahoma and continue living as a Muscogee.”

In the early 19th century, there was s split among the Muscogee peoples in how to deal with the continuing white encroachment on what had long been their ancestral lands. These two groups have been identified with two different colors. Those who wanted to resist this and fight for their land identified with the warlike color red, and those who preferred peaceful solutions identified with the color white.

McIntosh sided with the white way of thinking and was becoming a very wealthy man by the middle 1820s. He was the chief of a Coweta tribal town, was a large-scale planter, had built and managed a successful inn and operated a commercial ferry business.

Van Valen noted some changing views on McIntosh’s rise as a leader. While the nineteenth century historians mostly attributed this to his mixed-race Scottish ancestry, historians of the 20th and 21st centuries give much credit to his mother’s side of the family. She was from the prominent Wind Clan of the Muscogee. Her name was Senoia, and there’s a Georgia town bearing her name today.

Van Valen explains that matriarchy mattered a lot in the Muscogee culture. Who your mother was meant a lot in Creek society. It could determine who you could marry and whether or not you could engage in blood revenge.

U.S. Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins had a big influence on McIntosh. He taught him much about large-scale agriculture. “He was a protege of Hawkins,” Van Valen said. “Hawkins taught him Southern-style farming, including the use of slave labor.”

Among the Muscogee, McIntosh was known as Tustunnuggee Hutke, or White Warrior. His mother’s clan identity influenced all aspects of his life, even the kind of sports teams he could play on in his youth. As a young man he aspired to be a great warrior, and if he would live to old age he would evolve into a peacemaker.

Van Valen said that McIntosh was born in a Coweta town on the Chattahoochee River, probably near the modern-day city of Columbus. His town had affiliations with Creek towns in Alabama such as Tuckabatchee, Autosse, Oakfuskee and Talladega.

A number of treaties with the U.S.government in the early 1800s set the stage for what would later become the policy of Indian removal. These included the Compact of 1802, the Treaty of Washington (1805). the Treaty of Fort Jackson (1814) and the First Treaty of Indian Springs (1821). By the time the Second Treaty of Indian Springs was being negotiated in 1825, the handwriting was on the wall that the native peoples were going to be removed to Oklahoma. McIntosh understood this and was prepared for it.Those who favored the red side of the Muscogee split were adamant about not giving up more land. When McIntosh signed the Second Treaty of Indian Springs to do this, the red stick Creeks considered it an act of treason because he gave up Creek land without the backing of the Creek National Council. The Red Sticks considered this an act punishable by death. McIntosh was executed by his long-time political nemesis Menawa and a large force of what were called Creek law menders. Led by Menawa, up to 150 of them went to the McIntosh plantation in what’s now Carroll County and killed McIntosh and two other signers of that treaty. A son of McIntosh named Chilly was also shot but escaped. He later relocated to Oklahoma and in the 1860s served as an officer in the Confederate army during the Civil War.

A majority of the McIntosh descendants were in Oklahoma before 1831, when the U.S. government began forcibly removing tribes west of the Mississippi River on the infamous Trail of Tears.

Van Valen said that McIntosh owned two plantations, one in Indian Springs in present-day Butts County and the other in Carroll County. The one near the Chattahoochee River was known as Acorn Bluff. It was on Acorn Creek, one of the river’s tributaries. 

In killing McIntosh in 1825, Menawa no doubt exacted some revenge for not only the Second Treaty of Indian Springs but also for what McIntosh had done in the First Creek War in 1813-14. He led an estimated 100 friendly Creeks in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Menawa was the leader of the Red Sticks that day and was decisively defeated by General Andrew Jackson’s overwhelming forces. Though gravely wounded, Menawa lived to fight another day. He would later die on the way to Oklahoma in the Indian removal of the 1830s.

It’s estimated that more than 800 Red Sticks were killed in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Less than 50 of Jackson’s army were killed. It’s believed to have been the second largest loss of life by Native Americans in a battle on what’s now U.S. soil. The largest loss of life was also in Alabama. That took place in 1540 during the DeSoto Expedition.

Cherokee leader John Ross led an estimated 500 Cherokee warriors that day in 1814, and they played a pivotal role in the battle, crossing the Tallapoosa River and setting fire to the village of  Tohopeka while most of the Red Sticks were awaiting Jackson’s main attack at the wooden wall that crossed the neck of the horseshoe. Unlike McIntosh, who favored relocation, Ross later became a bitter opponent of moving west.

Van Valen said that treaties with Native Americans were always about getting land. “This went on till 1871,” he said.

By then the U.S. had achieved its goal of a manifest destiny, or expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

McIntosh was 50 years old when he was killed in 1825. Though preparing to move to Oklahoma, he had acquired some wealth in early Georgia. There was a McIntosh Road that connected his holdings near Ocmulgee, at Indian Springs and at Acorn Bluff in Carroll County.

He was aware of the hostility that was directed his way by the red stick faction, but did not fear for his life. “He thought his cousin, Georgia Governor George Troup, would protect him until he got to Oklahoma,”  Van Valen said. “There’s lots of information out there about McIntosh. There’s lots of interest in him, and I’ve been trying to make sense of it all.”

Van Valen is of the view that Indian removal had a catastrophic impact on Native Americans. “It’s not just about the loss of land.” he said. “There’s also a matter of the loss of unity and to be at peace with your own identity. That was lost with Indian removal.”

William McIntosh does have an enduring legacy in Georgia. There’s a McIntosh Reserve Park in Carroll County, there’s a Chief McIntosh Lake and a McIntosh High School in Peachtree City. In 1921, McIntosh’s grave was marked with a boulder with a bronze tablet placed by the William McIntosh Cuapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).

It reads: “To the memory and honor of General William McIntosh, the Distinguished and Patriotic Son of Georgia, whose devotion was heroic, whose friendship unselfish and whose service was valiant, who negotiated the treaty with the Creek Indians which gave the state all lands lying west of the Flint River, and who sacrificed his life for his patriotism.”