Creek Paths and Federal Roads: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves and the Making of the American South

Epilogue

167 Epilogue In mid-March 1830, a young man named Richardson turned up on the doorstep of one Mr. Harris, who lived near the Georgia-Creek border. He was covered in blood. He recounted a journey into the Creek Nation where an elderly Creek man overtook him on the road. To the old man’s remarks, young Richardson made no reply, since he did not speak the Creek language. He passed by only to be ambushed later by the same Creek man and two others, who stabbed him in the throat. Rumors suggested that the attack was retaliation for a white traveler’s assault of a Creek man several days previous.∞ In many ways, this brief report, which originally appeared in the Columbus Enquirer, encapsulates both the drama and the complexity of crossing the borders of the South in the early nineteenth century. As with the attacks that took place on the roadsides of the Creek Nation during the Creek War, it is difficult and perhaps unwise to reduce such an encounter to a single explanation. The Creek attackers’ motivations may have involved blood revenge , but may also have been rooted in their long and bitter resentment of American travelers in their homelands. It may have been a way to bloody the path that had for so long linked their destiny to that of their American neighbors. Or the report may have been entirely untrue—an example of the misinformation that flowed so easily along the roads that both joined and divided the Creeks and their neighbors. Instead of an innocent victim, perhaps Richardson was a criminal lucky to escape execution by the Creeks, a fugitive who later lied about the reasons he was targeted. But the most important aspect of this report might not be its content at all. Instead, what should fix our attention is that the incident was first described in the local newspaper of Columbus, Georgia. This ‘‘embryo town,’’ as Basil Hall called it in 1828, was created by the Georgia legislature at the head of navigation on the Chattahoochee River. The city was planted on the eastern shore of the river on land acquired from the Creeks and is now Georgia ’s third-largest city (after Atlanta and Augusta).≤ Almost immediately adjacent to the falls of the Chattahoochee, where the river declines precipi- 168 epilogue Figure 4. An 1830s engraving of a newly constructed covered bridge over the Chattahoochee River at Columbus, Georgia. The bridge, the steamboat, the cotton bales, and the town all suggest the rapid transformation of the location from the heart of the Lower Creek world to the commercial jewel of Georgia’s Nile. The image appears in Francis de Castelnau, Vues et souvenirs de l’Amérique du Nord, plate 13, ‘‘Pont de Columbus. (Georgie et Alabama).’’ (Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven.) tously toward the Gulf, Columbus is practically on top of the former center of the Lower Creek World. The Federal Road passed very near the town, as did other trails that linked it to both east and west; now as then it is advertised as a major hub for the interior South.≥ The fact of Richardson’s escape is not nearly as significant as the location of its report, once at the heart of the Lower Creeks, by 1830 rapidly becoming the jewel of Georgia’s Nile (see figure 4). While the Creek world had changed dramatically, as the rise of Columbus vividly demonstrates, the U.S. sociopolitical landscape was also undergoing paradigmatic shifts. In many ways, these changes were the culmination of a long series of transformations, foremost among which were the emergence of American political parties, the hardening of racial concepts, and the entrenchment of the market economy. Among the most significant national developments was the election of soldier-hero and land speculator Andrew Jackson to the presidency on a platform that included acting immediately to remedy the ‘‘Indian problem.’’ Casting Indian people as a ‘‘few savage hunters’’ who occupied far more land than was necessary and presented an obstacle to development, Jackson epilogue 169 characterized Indian removal as essential for the economic progress of the American nation.∂ In his 1830 address to Congress, he acknowledged the role that Indian affairs had played in conflicts over states’ rights and asserted that removal would put ‘‘an end to all possible danger of collision between the...