The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-25
Alexander McGilIivray, the Freneh-Scotch- Greek Chieftan, Diplomat and Man of Affairs of Alabama * * -;- * *


 French officer with Indian ceremonies Then the Indian wife died, but another little Sehoy was left, a girl who bore the blood of the Tribe of the Wind and her French father. When she had lived on this plateau above the Coosa at Little Tallassee until she was about the age of her mother when the French came in 1722, for 1t was then about 1740, another white man came that way--a Lachlan McGilllvray- from far-off Savannah. McGillivray | had come as boy to America from Scotland and he had spent his early years among the trappers and traders of the Atlantic coast When he became ambitious, he fell into the paths of those who went far to the south to traffic among the Indians below the Appalachian mountains. He came to the Coosa and the little French Indian girl, Sehoy, in little Tallassee. and there he fell under the same spell that caught the French Marchand twenty years before
 Good words and promises were not for these girls of the Tribe of the Wind--only the marriage rites of the Creeks sufficed--and married were Se- hoy and Lachlan by these ceremonies. Their children, there in Little Tallas- see, were Alexander and two girls French Scotch and Indlan-of the Creek Tribe of the Winds When Alex ander came to be young man he was taken to Savannah and educated, and In the classics at that. Then, like the real Indian or he who has the tang of the woods in his blood he went back to his people. Milfort came and mar ried his sister and became the fighting chief of the tribe, for he had been d soldier in France and went back to be one again under Napoleon--but Mc GilIlvray was the head of his people in all but fighting. and so remained un- til his death late in the century.
 And if one realizes that the Creeks stood for all that was Indian in the far South at this time, one will know for what McGillivray their chief, stood. From France. Spain and England he held commissions and uniforms and drew pay at times, and at last he was enticed to New York by the great Washington himself to make the tre- atty that commissioners could not ne- gotiate. How he was feted there and how the Spaniards tried to win him away from the Americans while he was their guest are passing pages in his history which is that of man notable above all men of his class and time. It is only another Illustration of how n mans fame may rest, not on what he accomplishes but on tho nature of his environments. Many man whose work counted for far less In the pre- limlnaries of our national history Is portrayed in the halls of Fame with relics to attest his greatness and birthplace preserved to be pointed out to the youth of later times.
 But this man-the French Scotch Creek chieftaln and diplomat who rep resented the people Of all the lower Mississippi valley and who. with all -gs-l.., a Itch .ag in negotiating the needed treaties or those days yet had a soft spot in his heart for the dawning America, has no memorial and hardly place in his tory. And here on the Coosa where he was born, where hc lived and was married and where he administered the affairs of his powerful Indian nation and received the representatives ot half-dozen nations-all anxious to court his favor and win his infiuence-there is not even presen.-day knowledge of Little Tallassee. IL was, perhaps. not an idle suggestion made by my companion when nc looked over the gravelly field befoee us, and then said that tablet should at least mark the place for neither he nor I doubted that we had found the site of the real Wetumpka.
 The influence of McGnlivray in his day and the power exercised at this place can hardly be overestimated. The entire trade of the thousands of In- dians of all this region--all that they had to sell and all that they received in return for the produce of the forest, was under McGillivrays control. It was a traffic sought by the traders of all nations fringmg on that part of the undeveloped South. That the classic read chief profited by this is easily known or 1t would be, If one could but recall and examine the books of the old trading house of Panton and Les lie. with stores and posts everywhere, but with a main depot at Pensacola. r. was the private Hudson Bay Company of the South, and the paths of the hundreds of couriers led always at some time past the door of the great McGillivray-the silent partner. No