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Gayoso portrayed the Natchez assembly and treaty as a success in concluding a process to foil the American settlement at Nogales and secure better relations with both the Choctaws and the Chickasaws. Four key people—the Choctaw chiefs Franchimastabé and Taboca, the trader Turner Brashears, and the Chickasaw “king” Taskietoka—seemed now on the side of the Spanish. These people continued to play signi¤cant roles as Spanish of¤cials sought to build on the success of this assembly to strengthen ties with Indian groups. They were joined by others, and their efforts resulted in two more events of some importance within the year that followed: a November assembly in New Orleans to propose a confederation of Indians aligned with the Spanish and a treaty the following May ceding to the Spanish the site of the former French Fort Tombecbe for a new Spanish post.The discussion in this chapter will focus on the diplomacy associated with preliminary efforts to create a confederation and the May treaty at Boukfouka ceding land on the Tombigbee to the Spanish. Building on the experience and successes leading to the 1792 Natchez congress , Gayoso continued to play the major Spanish role in pursuit of these objectives. Shortly after submitting his report on the Natchez assembly, he prepared an analysis of “the political state of Louisiana” to inform the new Spanish minister of state, the Conde de Aranda, about the “Plaza and District of Natchez” and to recommend measures to make the entire province, of which his jurisdiction was part, a more effective barrier “against the ambitious intentions of the United States.”1 His observations about the United States in this essay re®ected an awareness of ongoing diplomatic negotiations between Spanish representatives and American of¤cials over the issues of boundary and navigation of the Mississippi River and evidence of a desire on the part of United States of¤cials to achieve more paci¤c relations with Indian groups south of the Ohio River as a way to avoid the consequences of the more bellicose north of the river. Almost constant warfare between Americans and In6 Paths to Boukfouka and the Tombigbee, 1792–1793 dians had characterized those relations since 1789, and in November 1791 an American army suffered a major defeat in the Maumee country.2 The year before that military setback, the United States had created a “Territory South of the Ohio River” out of land ceded by North Carolina and appointed William Blount its governor.3 The American secretary of war, Henry Knox, who was in charge of relations between his government and Indians, then appointed three commissioners to the major nations of that jurisdiction: James Seagrove for the Creeks, James Robertson for the Choctaws and Chickasaws , and Leonard Shaw for the Cherokees.4 As Gayoso prepared his report for the Conde de Aranda, Blount was making preparations for his major assembly with Choctaws and Chickasaws in Nashville for August 1792, but he met a setback when Brashears intervened to discourage Choctaws from attending during the council held by Blount’s emissary, Anthony Forster.5 In his essay, Gayoso described the United States as divided into two bodies, one that was “submissive to the government” and one that was not. The latter body, he wrote, was permeated by “the private associations of persons who are nourishing new projects,”speci¤cally the companies of North and South Carolina on the Yazoo River and of a Virginia company on the Tennessee River. Although deterred with regard to establishing a settlement at Nogales, the Yazoo speculators remained alive and well and eager to hatch new schemes adverse to the interests of Spain, he noted. Furthermore, these speculators, along with those who had populated the settlements in Kentucky, Cumberland, and Franklin, had interests, he said, that were “directly opposed to those of the rest of the United States.”He noted that their agents continued to court the Indians actively and put pressure on their national government to secure navigation rights on the Mississippi River by making free use of the river the central diplomatic issue in talks between the United States and Spain.6 Gayoso praised the actions already taken to strengthen Louisiana,but he recommended that more be done. He lauded the creation of “a respectable squadron of galleys” for the Mississippi River and other measures to improve what he had described to Carondelet, shortly after the latter’s arrival as governorgeneral in late 1791, as the poor state of provincial defense. To build...

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