Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas

5. “Decoying Them Within”

Chapter 5 “Decoying Them Within”: Creek Gender Identities and the Subversion of Civilization Felicity Donohoe As the eighteenth century drew to a close, a group of American settlers in Tensaw, Alabama, breathed a sigh of relief after narrowly averting a bloody encounter—and certain death—at the hands of Creek Indian men. The Creek warriors, determined to resist encroaching American settlement, were halted by the Creek chief’s deputy, Sophia Durant, the elder sister of Alexander McGillivray. Durant, aged forty-four and only two weeks away from giving birth, rode to Hickory Ground where the recalcitrant chiefs were duly summoned, chastised , and subdued. The Alabama planter and amateur historian Albert James Pickett described the event: In the summer of 1790, while McGillivray was at New-York, the Creeks threatened to descend upon the Tensaw settlers, and put the whole of them to death. Mrs. Durant mounted a horse, with a negro woman upon another, and set out from Little river, camped out at night, and, on the fourth day, arrived at Hickory Ground, where she assembled the Chiefs, threatened them with the vengeance of her brother upon his return, which caused the arrest of the ringleaders, and put a complete stop to their murderous intentions. Two weeks afterwards, this energetic and gifted woman was delivered of twins, at the Hickory Ground.1 188 donohoe This account focused on a number of features that reveal something of the character of Sophia Durant. The heroic, Boudicca-like charge while heavily pregnant at an advanced age presents an image of a politically powerful woman, so confident in her authority that she felt comfortable arresting the violent intentions of her kinsmen. Pickett ’s narrative also reveals how traditionally masculine virtues of physical power, economic success, and respect among warriors had significant implications for Native American women.2 With few archival sources available to allow the historian to reconstruct the lives of Creek women, such accounts afford a rare look at the influential Native American women who operated in the Southeast during the early years of the American republic. Even if Durant only attracted historical attention because she displayed exceptional leadership qualities, her story allows us to reexamine changes in socioeconomic and cultural life for indigenous women in the American South during the early republic. Sophia Durant was a member of the powerful Wind clan, a matrilineal society famous for its strong female leaders.3 One of these women , Sehoy Marchand, was Sophia Durant’s grandmother. Marchand married her first husband, Captain Francois Marchand from Fort Toulouse, in 1721. She gave birth to another influential Wind clan woman, Sehoy II, Durant’s mother, who married Scottish trader Lachlan McGillivray and had a number of children: three with Lachlan and others with Malcolm McPherson.4 With traditional matrilineal powers on her side, Sehoy McGillivray used her status as clan matron to engineer a marriage for her daughter Jeannet to a European man, and produced Chief Alexander McGillivray, the youngest of the three.5 Wind clan women were thus well acquainted with the benefits of interracial unions. Like other southeastern Native Americans, these unions became such a common occurrence that European observers complained that Indian women exercised too much power in selecting one, and sometimes multiple, husbands. For Native American women, however, marriage to European outsiders reflected their in- fluence over issues such as marriage and clan adoption. Indigenous creek gender identities 189 women would have gone into such marriages aware that the children produced by the union would inherit their clan status, with maternal uncles providing the educational and material support that Europeans associated with a father’s responsibilities.6 When in 1770 Sophia, at the age of twenty-four, married a white man, the sixteen-year-old trader Benjamin Durant, she did so safe in the knowledge that her children would inherit her clan identity .7 The indomitable Durant, therefore, was representative of a number of crucial aspects of Creek female identity during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although her possession of slaves, wealth, and military command was perhaps exceptional, her marital choice and political clout were not particularly unusual among Creek women. After all, Durant grew up witnessing IndianEuropean marriage alliances and acquiring insights into colonial society from the white men who married in to Creek society. Her actions and decisions, moreover, were endorsed by tradition and matrilineal privilege. However, by the end of...