McGillivray of the Creeks

Southern Classics

by John Walton Caughey, William J. Bauer (Introduction)

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.

389 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2007

About the author

John Walton Caughey was an author and educator, who was considered the dean of California historians and a leading intellectual civil libertarian. A history professor at UCLA from 1930 until his retirement in 1970, Caughey wrote textbooks and scholarly articles that were so readable they became popular with mainstream readers.

His book "California," first published in 1940, was evaluated by a Times book critic at the time as "unquestionably the most important and valuable single-volume history of California ever published."

Caughey's more than 25 books also included "Los Angeles: Biography of a City," which he edited in 1976. His prolific writing included books on American and Western history as well as accounts of California. Among the books were "History of the Pacific Coast of North America" in 1938, "America Since 1763: A Survey of Its History" in 1955, and "The American West: Frontier and Region" in 1969.

In 1949 Caughey had defied the Regents of the University of California by refusing to sign a loyalty oath he considered unconstitutional. He was fired but eventually vindicated in court and reinstated. That experience started him on a new career as a civil rights activist. Together with his wife LaRee Caughey he worked to oppose the death penalty, nuclear testing, and especially racial discrimination.

In the 1960s the couple wrote a fourth-grade textbook (California's Own History) and an 8th-grade US history textbook (Land of the Free, in collaboration with Ernest R. May and John Hope Franklin), both designed to address the need to teach children the truth about some of the less glorious aspects of our history, such as internment of Japanese-Americans and Jim Crow, as well as about the labor movement, the women's movement, and other grassroots efforts for change.

Reviews

[Randall Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alexander McGillivray was one of the greatest Native American leaders of all time. He met with George Washington and in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, his treaty with the U.S. and “consummate craft” and “masterful diplomacy” made it possible for the Creeks “for a generation to hold their own better than any other native race against the restless Americans.” This book is a 1939 short biography of McGillivray that also includes 214 primary documents. The height of Alexander’s career was from 1783 to 1793 when he died. His father Lachlan was Scottish, his mother Sehoy Marchand, was born of a French father and a Koasati (a Muskogeon speaking people, ancestors of the present Coushatta nation of Louisiana) mother from the matrilineal Creek Wind Clan. Information-wise this book is however a snooze fest next to R. Michael Pryor’s book or even the McGillivray and McIntosh Traders by Amos Wright, Jr. This is because here you’ve got 200 pages of old letters reeking of “If it pleases Your Excellency…” mixed in with “When shall the barley shipments arrive?” To learn about Alexander as a great leader, read Pryor’s book instead…