Chattahoochee Valley Historical Society

Chief William McIntosh in Context

The Spring program of CVHS will be held virtually on April 27th, at 3:00 PM (EDT). Our presenter, Dr. Gary Van Valen, is a longtime instructor of History at the University of West Georgia. As an expert on Native American history and contemporary issues facing Indigenous communities, he will be presenting about the assassination of Muscogee leader William McIntosh in 1825. This year marks the 200th anniversary of both this event and the signing of the Treaty of Indian Springs (which preceded it). In addition to the presentation topic itself, Dr. Van Valen will also be briefly discussing (and promoting) an upcoming event in which McIntosh’s living descendants will be giving a public appearance on April 30th in Whitesburg, Georgia.

William McIntosh was the son of a Scottish Loyalist and a Muscogee (Creek) woman, who became a leader in his mother’s nation in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. He played important roles in negotiating treaties with the U.S. government between 1805 and 1825 which resulted in the surrender of all Muscogee lands in Georgia, and he fought on the side of U.S. forces in the First Creek and First Seminole wars in Alabama and Florida. In 1825, Upper Creeks from Alabama killed McIntosh at his home on the Chattahoochee River as punishment for the final land surrender of that year. McIntosh almost immediately became a subject of history and legend. This presentation will clarify what historians actually know about McIntosh’s identity, his position in Muscogee society, and his actions in the context of both Muscogee culture and U.S. Indian policy.

Essentially, the history of William McIntosh is very relevant not only to the history of Alabama overall, but especially for the regions of East Alabama (including Chambers, Lee, Randolph, and other counties). This land cession to the United States Government in 1825 opened up this land for White settlement. Interestingly enough, since this occurred five years before the passage of the Indian Removal Act, the Muscogee (“Creeks”) in this area were not immediately subject to removal. Unfortunately, they would be removed in the following decade with the outbreak of the Second Creek War in 1836.

Gary Van Valen, our presenter, was born in New Jersey and grew up in the town of Dumont. He completed his B.A. in history at Montclair State University in 1988, his M.A. in Latin American history at the University of South Carolina in 1995, and his Ph.D. in Latin American history at the University of New Mexico in 2003. He is a historian of Latin America and indigenous peoples who has taught at the University of West Georgia since 2006.

He is the author of Indigenous Agency in the Amazon: The Mojos in Liberal and Rubber-Boom Bolivia, 1842-1932 (University of Arizona Press, 2013), which won the American Society for Ethnohistory’s Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Book Award, as well as several articles and chapters in edited volumes. He is currently collaborating with fellow West Georgia faculty and members of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in a project to highlight the role of William McIntosh in local history.

On Wednesday, April 30th, the descendants of Chief William McIntosh will hold a public meet and greet at the Whitesburg, GA, Public Library. The event will be from 1:00 to 3:00 pm and is meant to commemorate the bicentennial of Chief McIntosh’s death. It has been arranged by the Friends of McIntosh Reserve. McIntosh lived in the eastern edge of what is now Carroll County, Georgia. A public commercial area in Carrollton bares his name (“McIntosh Plaza,” where Publix and Target are located).

Join us for this very informative and interesting presentation on April 27th. To attend this virtual meeting email ccpowers02@gmail.com prior to 12:00 PM noon (EDT) on Sunday, April 27th. You will then be sent the Zoom link with instructions regarding how to join the meeting.