Tooanahowi: The Maturation of the Next Yamacraw Leader

Near the center of the famous portrait of the Georgia Trustees receiving the Yamacraw Creek Indians during their visit to London in the summer of 1734 appears a young boy with dark skin dressed in the traditional British garb of a bright royal blue coat with a white waistcoat, breeches, shirt, cravat, and stockings and black shoes with metal buckles. He stands out from the crowd because of his youth and his unusual appearance, and he is situated almost in the center of the painting near the Trustees but still close enough to his Native kin to be included and associated with them. This boy is Tooanahowi, the designated heir of Tomochichi, the elderly headman, or mico, of the Yamacraw and the more recognized and studied Native individual in the painting.¹ Even though Tomochichi played a vital part in the negotiations that led to the founding and preservation of the Georgia colony, he also knew that his successor stood poised to play an even greater role than he did. In fact, the future of the Yamacraw hinged upon the abilities of their next leader to maintain and build upon his legacy as a diplomat and defender of his people. This weighty mantle would fall on Tooanahowi, a character who has only made brief appearances in the historical literature thus far and who therefore requires further attention because of his responsibilities as a mediator, both in Georgia and in England, as well as his contributions as a warrior during the War of Jenkins’s Ear.

Tooanahowi was a Yamacraw Creek Indian and step-grandson of Tomochichi and his wife, Senauki, although most contemporaries, including Tomochichi himself, referred to him as his nephew.² The origin of the Yamacraw as a separate Creek entity remains disputed to this day. All Creeks identified themselves politically by their town, or talwa, and every citizen in the town could voice his opinion about any matter and could agree or disagree with any decision. Each town had a headman who acted as its spokesman during larger gatherings but who had no official authority over his people. He looked out for their best interests, represented their concerns and needs to the larger group, and served more as an intermediary than a ruler. Because each town and each Creek could make their own choices, differences occurred with regard to any number of policies and actions, yet these differences did not result in the disintegration of the whole. This fluidity also allowed individuals to break away from or move to other towns if the differences became too great and could not be resolved to each party’s satisfaction. Such was the case with Tomochichi and his Yamacraw Creeks. The exact reasons why he chose to leave the Chattahoochee River basin remain uncertain, ranging from disagreement over the powerful Coweta headman Brims’s handling of the Yamasee War to banishment for some serious crime. Regardless, Tomochichi gathered a band of followers (about two hundred total) from several different towns and relocated eastward in the late 1720s to the bluffs of the Savannah River, where he claimed the bones of his ancestors lay. The location provided natural protection from intruders, access to a major river, and fertile land to grow crops.³

Little is known about Tomochichi and Senauki’s marriage except that they did not come from the same clan and they produced no children. Their childless situation did not pose a problem, however, because, much like the Creek political organization as a whole, patterns of leadership inheritance were not fixed and did not always keep precisely to hereditary lines. Traditionally in southeastern Indian culture, kinship followed a matrilineal lineage, meaning that an individual traced his or her relationships through the women of his or her family. When a man married a woman, he joined her clan, and they established their household close to her relatives. Children born from this union associated themselves with their mother’s clan and kin, which often confused Europeans who used a patrilineal system. It was therefore only natural and indeed expected that Tooanahowi would serve as Tomochichi’s...