McIntosh grew up to become “A Man of Two Worlds,” as the subtitle of George Chapman’s very good biography attests. He was accepted in both the Creek and American cultures of his day.
Read MoreMurder in Carroll County
Murder in Carroll County
By Lawrence W. Reed
Two hundred years ago, on April 30, 1825, a killing in adjacent Carroll County sparked fears of a wider war. The place was Acorn Bluff, overlooking the Chattahoochee River in what is now McIntosh Reserve Park near Whitesburg.
The victim was Tustunnuggee Hutke (“White Warrior” in the language of his Creek or Muscogee native peoples of this area). We know him as Chief William McIntosh, the son of a Scottish American military man and a full-blooded Creek woman for whom the city of Senoia here in Coweta County was likely named.
McIntosh grew up to become “A Man of Two Worlds,” as the subtitle of George Chapman’s very good biography attests. He was accepted in both the Creek and American cultures of his day. His bilingual upbringing and natural leadership abilities eventually led to his being named one of multiple tribal chiefs among the Creeks.
The Creek Indians were recognized by the early U.S. federal government as one of the “Five Civilized Tribes” of Native Americans because they adopted some of the ways (both positive and negative) of Anglo-American culture—including intermarriage with whites and a written constitution. Some even owned black slaves.
Being thought of as “civilized” by white Americans, however, didn’t preclude conflict—both amongst themselves and occasionally with white settlers. The Creeks fought wars against the Choctaws and the Cherokees, for example. From 1813-1814, the Creeks fought a civil war (sometimes called the Red Stick War) in which McIntosh’s Lower Creeks clashed with the Upper Creeks. Growing tensions between white settlers and all the tribes of the American Southeast would lead to the tragic “Trail of Tears” in the 1830s.
George Chapman’s 1988 biography, Chief William McIntosh: A Man of Two Worlds,” notes that McIntosh’s business ventures included a trading post, taverns, and a ferry service that crossed the Chattahoochee just south of Columbus. He also was “the first Indian to codify Creek laws.” He knew and admired the man for whom the seat of Coweta County is named, General Daniel Newnan (even naming a son after him).
In February 1825, Chief McIntosh and eight other Creek chiefs signed the Treaty of Indian Springs, which ceded millions of acres of Creek land in Georgia and Alabama to the U.S. government. In payment, the Creeks were to receive the equivalent in today’s money of about $15 million. Did McIntosh sign for personal gain, or because he thought it was the best deal he could get for the Creeks in the face of an impossible situation? He surely knew that pressure from white settlers and their governments would only grow.
Historians are divided on that question, but we certainly know what swiftly happened next. The rival chiefs within the Muscogee (Creek) National Council were horrified by the unauthorized agreement McIntosh and the others had signed and ordered their executions.
On April 30, 1825, just two months after the treaty, as many as 150 warriors descended on McIntosh’s home at Acorn Bluff. The house was burned, and McIntosh was stabbed and shot some 50 times. His grave is prominently marked today in McIntosh Reserve Park. The assassins' cause proved a lost one, as Indian removal commenced just a few years later.
To learn more about this fascinating history, read the Chapman book and also Benjamin W. Griffith’s McIntosh and Weatherford: Creek Indian Leaders.
(From The Newnan Times-Herald, 9 April 2025.)