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CHAPTER XI INTERNATIONAL RIVALRIES IN THE OLD SOUTHWEST 1715-1730 The Yamasee War had set the stage for international rivalries in the old Southwest throughout the colonial era. For the southern Indians it was the most disturbing event since the coming of the whites, followed as it was, immediately, by the wholesale removal of the hostile Indians from the South Carolina border. The war, and this migration, promoted a further amalgamation of tribes, Muskhogean and non-Muskhogean, into that remarkable league, the Creek confederation. Moreover , in the presence of the three-sided rivalries of England, France, and Spain, there occurred a significant reorientation of Creek policy. For a generation past South Carolina had sought to consolidate a double bulwark of Indian allies in the zone of the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers, a region now completely deserted . Later, a few fugitive Chickasaw were induced to settle upon the Savannah, but all efforts failed to draw back the Yamasee and Creeks. In the new provincial defense system border forts and rangers were substitutes for sentry-towns of friendly Indians. Inevitably, too, the dispeopling of the Savannah -Altamaha country led to schemes for English settlement on that advanced frontier. The Indian retreat, then, furnished the occasion and the setting for the projects of Montgomery, Barnwell, Purry, and ultimately Oglethorpe. 'In 1716 the Ocheese Creek Indians with the Cowetas, Savanas, Hogologees [Yuchi] and Oconees and Apalachees and several remnants of other small tribes moved to this river. They are now at peace with us but suffer the French as well as us to trade with them. They are in all about 1000 men, the most warlike Indians in these parts.' Thus a legend on a contemporary English mapl described the return of the Creeks with part of their confederates to their old land of Apalachicola, on the Chattahoochee, at the meeting of the trails from Charles Town, Apalache, and Mobile. No other region in the South, 1 C.O. Maps, N.A.C. General, 7. [254 ] THE OLD SOUTHWEST 255 henceforth, was so much the theatre of international intrigue. Meanwhile, other allies, more completely committed to Spain, had fled farther southward. They established a ~ew border for Florida from the St. John's River to Apalache Bay, the forks of the Apalachicola, and Santa Maria de Galve. Most of the Yamasee took shelter near the presidio of St. Augustine. In 1727 they were settled in three neighboring towns: Tolemato, where the Huspaw and Altamaha people lived together, Nombre de Dios, and Pocotaligo.2 Their skill in border forays, developed under English tutelage, was still in requisition, but now for scalping and negro-stealing raids against the plantations of POIt Royal and Pon Pone For several years their usual partners in these incursions were the Creeks of Cherokeeleechee 's town, migrants from the Palachacola Town of the old Carolina border. Contemporary maps showed the fort which the Apalachicola built in 1716 at the confluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers.3 The Apalache were at first ·widely dispersed. Some found shelter with the Creeks, some near Pensacola, others joined their tribesmen who had fled from Moore in 1703 to Mobile.4 With these changes in the map of the southern Indian country occurred also a great revolution in wilderness politics. The eclipse of English prestige, for the moment complete, was reflected in the enhanced influence of the Spanish and the French. In the midst of the war Creeks and Yamasee had resorted to St. Augustine and Pensacola. They had been eagerly welcomed and supplied with trading goods and ammunition. In 1717 the Spanish achieved a master-stroke of diplomacy. Seven Apalache and Creek chiefs were sent from Pensacola to Mexico to give their allegiance to the King of Spain in the person of his viceroy .5 The Choctaw and the Mississippi tribes in the West reverted to the French league. Bienville in 1715 had hastened to extend the existing peace with the Alabama to the other divi2 JC, August 4, 9, 1727 (testimony of the Squirrel King of the Chickasaws regarding a recent raid). Cf. Swanton, Early History, p. 104. 8 C.O. Maps, N.A.C. General, 7; Florida, 2. Compare Popple (1733) and Mitchell (1755). 4 Serrano y Sanz (ed.), Documentos, p. 228; Swanton, Early History, pp. 124 f. 15 Ibid., pp. 101£. (from Brooks transcripts); Serrano y Sanz (ed.), Documentos, pp. 238-42; Barcia, Ensayo crono16gico, p. 330; ]BT, July 15, 1716. c.o. 5 :1265, Q 152. [13.59.122.162...

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