The Sun.
London, England, 1819-01-28 00:00:00

tion to the Creek Nation, with whom the United States bad
already node peace; by a Treaty concluded on the 9th day of
August, 1514, more than four months before the Treaty of
Ghent was signed. Yet Colonel Nicholls.not only affected to
consider it as applying to the Seminoles of Florida, and the
outlawed Red Sticks, whom he had induced to join him
there, hut actually persuaded them that Meg were entitled by
virtue of the Treaty of Ghent to all the lands which had be-
longed to the Creek Nation, within the United States, in the
year 181 r, and that the Government of Great Britain would
support them in that pretensi*n. He asserted
also this doctrine in correspondence with Colonel Haw-
kins, then the Agent of the United States with the
Creeks, and gave him notice, in their name, with a moc-
kery of solemnity, that they had concluded a Treaty of Al-
liance, offensive and defensive, and a Treaty of Navigation and
IX,] Commerce with Great Britain, of which more was to he
heard after it should be ratifisd in England. Col. Nicholls,
then evacuated his fort, which, in some of the enclosed pa-
pers, "is called the Fort at Prospect Bluff, but which lie had
`dCtioniinatcd the British post on the Appalachicola; took with
'him the white portion of his force, anti embarked fur Eng-
lanel,•with several of the wretched savages whom he was thus
deluding to their fate ; among whom was the Prophet Francis,
or Hillis Hadjo; and left the Fort, amply supplied with mili-
tary stores and ammunition, to the Negro department of his
IV. V.l allies. It- afterwards was known by the name of
Negro Fort. Col. Hawkins immediately communicated to
this Government the correspondence between him and Ni-
cholls, here referred to, (copies of which, marked No. I to 5,
aro herewith enclosed,) upon which Mr. Munroe, then
X.] Secretary of State, addressed a letter (copy marked G.)
to Mr. Baker, the British Charge d'Affaires, at Washington,
complaining of Nicholls's conduct, and showing that his pre-
tence, that the 9th article of the Treatyof Ghent could have any
application to his Indians, was utterly destitute of foundation.
XL] Copies of the same correspondence were transmitted to
the Minister of the United States then in England, with in-
s:ructions to remonstrate with the British Government against
these proceedings of NichAs, and to show how incompatible
they were with the peace which had been concluded between
the two nations. These remonstrances were accordingly
NIL a. h.] made, first in personal interview with Earl Ba-
thurst and Lord Castlereagh, and afterwards in written
XIII. a. b.] notes, addressed successively to them (copies of
which, together with extracts from the dispatchesof the Ame-
rican' Minister to the Secretary of State, reporting what
passed at those interviews, are enclosed).- Lord Bathurst, in
the most unequivocal manner, confirmed the facts, and dis-
avowed the misconduct of Nicholls; declared his disappro-
bation of the pretended treaty of alliance, offensive and de-
fensive, which be had made ; assured the American 111inister
that the British Government liad refused to ratify that ttea-
tv, and would send back the Indians whom Nicholls had
brought with him, with advice to make their peace on such
terms as they could obtain. Lord Castlereagh confirmed the
assurance that the treaty would not be ratified; and if, at the
same time that these assurances were given, certain distinc-
tions of public notoriety were shown to the Prophet Hillis
Hadjo, and he was actually honoured with a commission, as
it British Officer, it is to be presumed that these favours were
granted him as rewards of past services, and not as an en-'
couragement to expect any support from Great Britain, in 'a
continuance of savage hostilities against the United States,
all intention of giving any such support having been repeat-
edly And earnestly disavowed.:

The Negro fort, however, abandoned by Col. Nicholls, re-
mained on the Spanish territory, occupied by the banditti to
whom be had left it, and held by them as a post, from whence
to commit depredations, outrages, and murders, and as a
XIV.] receptacle for fugitive slaves and malefactors, to the
great annoyance both of the United States and Spanish Flo-
rida. In April, 1816, General Jackson wrote a letter to the
Governor of Pensacola, calling upon him to pot down t7►is
common nuisance to the peaceable inhabitants of both coun-
XV.] tries. That letter, together with the answer of the
Governor of Pensacola, have already been communicated to
the Spanish Minister here, and by him, doubtless, to his Go-
vernment. Copies of them are, nevertheless, now again
XXIII ] enclosed ; particularly as the letter from the Go-
vernor explicitly admits, that this fort, constructed by Ni-
cholls, in sinlation both of the territory and neutrality of
Spain, was still no less obnoxious to his Government than to
the United States; hut that be had neither sufficient force,
nor an authority, without orders from the Governor-General
of the Havannah, to destroy it. It was afterwards, on the
.27th of July, 1816, destroyed by a canner-shot from a gun-
vessel of the United States, which, in its passage up the river,
was fired upon fromit. It was blown up, with an English
flag still flying as its standard, and immediately after the bar-
barous murder of a.boat's crew belonging to the mry of the
United States, by the banditti left in it by Nicholls.

In the year 1817, Alexander Arbuthnot, of the island of
New Providence, a British subject, first appeared, as an Indian
trader in' Spanish Florida ; and as the succesSur Of Colonel
Nicholls, in the employment of instigating the Seminole and
outlawed Red Stick Indians to hostilities against the United
Stales, by reviving the pretence that they were entitled to all
the 'ands which had been ceded t 3 the Creek Nation by the
United States, in August, 1814. A's a mere Indian trader,
the intrusion of this man into a Spanish province was con-
trary to the policy observed by all the European Powers in
this hemisphere, and by none mole rigorously than by Spain,
of excluding all foreigners from intercourse with the Indians
within their Territories. It must be known to the Spanish
Government, whether Arbuthnot had a Spanish license for
trading with the Indians in Spanish Florida or not ; but they
also know that - Spain was bound by Treaty to restrain by
forte all hostilities on the part of those Indians, against the
citizens of the United States, and it is for them to explain
how, consistently with those eng,.gements, Spain conld, con-
trary to all the maxims of her ordinary policy, grant such a
license to a foreign Incendiary, whose principal, if not his only
object, appears to have been to stimulate those hostilities
which Spain had expressly stipulated by force to restrain.—
In his infernal instigations he was but too successful. No
NUN.] sooner did he make his appearance among the
Indians, accompanied by the Prophet Hillis Hadjo, returned
L.] from
.his expedition to England, than the peaceful inha-
bitants on the borders of the United States were visited with
all the horrors of savage war; the robbery of their property,
and the barbarous and indiscriminate murder of woman, in-
fancy and age.
After the repeated expostulations, warnings, and offers of
peace through the summer and autumn of 1811, on the part
1.1. a.] of the United States, had been answered only by re-
Lir.] newel outages, anti after a detachment of 40 men,
under Lieutenant Scott, accompanied by seven women, had
been way-laid and murdered by the Indians, orders were
given to General Jackson, and an adequate force was piaci!