by Richard Green

June Times 2003 

In the 1780s the Chickasaws were split into roughly two factions. They were distinguished mainly by their two well-known, charismatic leaders and the imperialist nations they supported. One faction, led by Piomingo, supported the Americans; the other, led by Ugulaycabe, generally backed the Spanish. The Chickasaw king, Mingatuska, changed his support from one side to the other. This may have been a tactic on his part to keep his chiefs and both suitor nations off balance. Or he may have been indecisive or vain or corrupt. We don’t know enough about Mingatuska yet to know. 

At any rate, both factions seemed to do as they pleased. Ugulaycabe (the modern Chickasaw pronunciation is Oo-Goo-LA-ka-bee) signed a treaty of alliance with Spain at Mobile in 1784. Piomingo signed a similar treaty with the United States at Hopewell in 1786. 

These commitments to powers competing for control of the lower Mississippi Valley might have led the Chickasaws to war with the United States or Spain, or to a civil war. But the tribe benefited from the attention of both nations in terms of military hardware and supplies. Spain’s plan was to use the Indian nations of the South as a buffer between its territory Louisiana and the American settlements. During the 1780s and 1790s, the Spanish governor held several meetings with the Chickasaws, Choctaws, Cherokees, and Creeks, proclaiming that Spain was the Indians’ protector. Ugulaycabe was invited periodically to New Orleans, where the Spanish officials wined, dined, and bribed (or gifted) him with an annual sum of $500. 

The Americans conducted similar acts of “diplomacy.” American agent William Davenport in 1786 distributed gifts and medals to Piomingo and the other tribal leaders. George Washington had dispensed military commissions to Piomingo, William Colbert, and several head warriors. 

It was clear that neither Spain nor America wanted to go to war over the lower Mississippi Valley, and both sides were content to continue courting the southern Indians. Even though Piomingo remained staunchly pro-American, Spain was more attentive to Chickasaw needs. Spain’s special Chickasaw agent, Captain Juan de la Villebeuvre, lived among the tribe. America’s Chickasaw agent, James Robertson, lived in Nashville and refused to move south. He was replaced in 1797 for that very reason. 

Still, war was possible largely through the actions of one man: Alexander McGillivray, a mixed-blood Creek chief. His motivation for signing an alliance agreement with Spain in 1784 had been hatred for Americans. His enmity derived in part from America’s support of Georgia’s encroachment on Creek lands. With Spanish arms, he and his warriors attacked white settlements on the eastern edge of the Creek Nation, thereby checking Georgian expansion. 

McGillivray was most active in lining up the other southern tribes to form an alliance with Spain. He regarded the Chickasaws as the most problematic tribe because of Piomingo’s unswerving friendship with the Americans. Ugulaycabe’s group supplied clandestine reports to McGillivray about Piomingo’s activities and those of American agents and traders in the Chickasaw Nation. 

In 1787 McGillivray demanded that the Chickasaws expel American agents. When the Chickasaws did not comply, he began sending or leading raiding parties into the Nation to harass and occasionally kill Americans or Chickasaws not supporting the Spanish. One Chickasaw killed by Creek raiders in 1789 was Piomingo’s nephew, who was carrying a message from Piomingo to President Washington. 

Simultaneously, McGillivray, aware that the Chickasaw king was angry at the Americans for ignoring him in favor of Piomingo, attempted to whip up intratribal hostility. In response to Creek incursions, Piomingo visited New York and Philadelphia, requesting military assistance and trade goods. McGillivray’s warriors had been intercepting American trade goods intended for Chickasaws. Only Spanish goods were getting through. Piomingo told the Americans that the trade goods were indispensable and that Chickasaws would wind up fighting the Creeks or joining the Spanish alliance. 

Meanwhile, in 1790 President Washington invited McGillivray to come to New York to negotiate an agreement between his faction of Creeks and the United States. His profession of “justice” aside, Washington issued the invitation because he knew the United States was facing an Indian war in the Northwest and he did not want hostilities on two fronts. For agreeing to give up some land to Georgia, McGillivray received a promise of federal protection and the right to evict whites from tribal land. He also received $1,200 and a commission as a brigadier general in the U.S. Army. When he arrived back home, he promptly revealed the details of the treaty to the Spanish governor, Miro, and accepted a $2,000 annuity from Spain. 

The Americans were unresponsive to Chickasaw requests for aid until 1791, when Piomingo and 50 warriors volunteered to help the young republic put down the Indian uprisings in the Northwest. Finally, U.S. officials realized that Piomingo’s faction would be useful in combating the Spanish and Creeks. President Washington lavished gifts on Piomingo and invited him to Philadelphia for a personal meeting. 

The following year the Americans invited delegates of many southern tribes, including the Creeks, to Nashville to sign a peace treaty. William Blount, a superintendent of Indian affairs, uttered a sentence that would have lived in infamy if so many other government officials had not said the same thing. He told the Indians that while Spain would demand land cessions, “we shall not; we wish you to enjoy your lands and be as happy as we ourselves are . . . the United States have land enough.” 

In 1792 McGillivray signed another treaty with Spain, guaranteeing all Creek lands that the tribe possessed and the support to defend those lands. The chief’s annuity was increased to $3,500. The Creeks guaranteed to the Spanish the territory of Spain in Louisiana and West Florida. 

Creek raids on the Chickasaws increased, and in February 1793 a raiding party killed a Chickasaw hunter and then made an example of him by hacking and mangling his body. Piomingo convened his followers, who voted to retaliate against the Creeks. Simultaneously, the chief requested American aid. This time the federal government promptly shipped a large supply of arms by gunboat to Piomingo’s warriors at Chickasaw Bluffs (now Memphis, Tennessee). Now, well equipped and highly motivated, they drove the Creeks out of their Nation. It probably helped that McGillivray had died. While visiting the trader William Panton in Pensacola in February 1793, the chief, about 34, succumbed, apparently to several physical and mental ailments. He told Panton he was “approaching to a despondency” over the prospects of a general alliance against the Americans. 

Changing tactics, Spanish officials tried to bribe Piomingo. Unsuccessful, Spain obtained authorization from the Ugulaycabe faction to build a palisaded fort in the Nation at Chickasaw Bluffs, garrisoned with 150 men and supplied by the trading firm of Panton and Leslie. Then many of Ugulaycabe’s followers established a settlement nearby for protection against Piomingo’s warriors seeking retribution. 

But Piomingo’s warriors were by then attacking Creek settlements. In 1795 the Creeks counterattacked, sending an estimated 1,000 warriors across the Tombigbee River. Their objective was to subdue Long Town, Piomingo’s headquarters. Blessed by excellent reconnaissance, the Chickasaws hid in the woods near the Long Town stockade. When the Creeks sortied, the Chickasaws came screaming out of the woods at their unsuspecting attackers, who fled willy-nilly. Approximately 40 Creeks were killed, and five Chickasaws, according to Malcolm McGee, a Chickasaw interpreter. 

Actually McGee was not present. He and a delegation of Chickasaws were on a mission to protest to American officials Creek aggressions and the building of the Spanish fort at Chickasaw Bluffs. They first stopped in Nashville to register their complaints with General James Robertson and ask him to equip them for the trip to Philadelphia to see the president. 

Blount had asked Robertson to “turn them back if you can.” Robertson tried his best but wound up outfitting them for the trip. Washington received the delegation on August 22, 1795. It consisted of McGee, Major William Colbert, John Brown the Younger, and Captain William McGillivray, who like Colbert had received his commission from Washington. They asked Washington when he would be sending an army against the Creeks, as General Robertson had told them was in the offing. 

Washington said his man was wrong. “It was never the design of the U.S. to interfere in the disputes of the Indian Nations among one another unless as friends to both parties, to reconcile them. If I were to grant you the aid of my warriors . . . the consequence would be a general war between the United States and the whole Creek Nation. But the power of making such a war belongs to Congress exclusively. I have no authority to begin such a war without their consent.” But the president told the delegation that his friendship for the Chickasaws “will not permit me to let them suffer from the want of provisions” and that Governor Blount “will receive my orders on this subject.” 

Washington called the building of the fort on Chickasaw Bluffs an “unwarranted aggression as well against the United States, as the Chickasaws to whom the land there belongs. I shall send talks, and do what else shall appear to me proper to induce the Spanish King, or his Governor, to remove their people from that Station, and to make no more encroachments on your lands.” 

Washington diplomatically directed the Spanish governor of Natchez, Gayoso, to remove the fort. Though the president may have been persuasive, Spain recognized the futility of its plan to create and maintain an Indian confederation loyal to the Spanish. As a result, the United States and Spain signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo, recognizing U.S. title to all of the southwestern lands north of 31 degrees and west to the Mississippi River—in short, all of the land that Spain had sought to use as a buffer between its own territory and the United States. 

Bibliography 

Note: This article was developed from secondary sources. Several of its elements could be expanded by researching primary sources and more secondary sources. Many of both kinds of sources are listed in the bibliographies of the following books and articles. 

R. S. Cotterill, The Southern Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), 56-114.

Arrell Gibson, The Chickasaws (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 80-91.

Jane M. Berry, “The Indian Policy of Spain in the Southwest 1783-1795,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 3 (1916-17), 462-77.

Interview of Malcolm McGee by Lyman Draper, 1841, Draper Manuscripts, Vol. 10, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.

A. L. Crabb, ed., “Notes and Documents: George Washington and the Chickasaw Nation, 1795,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Dec. 1932, 404-407.