MILLY FRANCIS
historical background
Topics
"Creek Pocahontas"
Milly Francis was a real person. Although she may never have confronted Andrew Jackson face to face, her life intersected with his from her childhood through her death.
The story of her rescue of Duncan McKrimmon from her father's warriors is also true. Newspapers across the country published the story, christening her the "Creek Pocahontas."
Twenty-five years later, in recognition of her act of mercy, she became the first woman ever to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. No one knows what happened to the medal. There are no extant images of Milly.
Creek and Seminole Nations
In the early 19th century, the Muscogee (Mvskoke), were one of the Five Civilized Tribes in the American Southeast. The British called them "Creeks." Their traditional lands encompassed what is now Alabama, southern Tennessee, western Georgia, and part of northern Florida. Descended from the pre-Columbian Woodland Mound Builder culture, they developed a network of farms and towns that were more sophisticated than anything on the white frontier.
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Like the Cherokee, the Creeks initially tolerated white settlement. Intermarriage between Creek women and European settlers was common. Both of Milly's parents (Polly and Josiah Francis) were of mixed race. Clans were matrilineal--children born of mixed unions identified as Creek. Creek women had more power in their culture and greater sexual freedom than their white counterparts.
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After the Creek War, many Upper Creeks (including Francis and Milly) fled to Spanish Florida. They joined with the remnants of other tribes to form the Seminoles. (The word "Seminole" is derived from the Muscogee word simanó-li, which may itself be derived from the Spanish word cimarrón, meaning "runaway" or "wild one.") Groups of free blacks who attached themselves to a Seminole chief and lived in a nearby settlement became known as Black Seminoles.
Florida
Spanish explorers and priests were the first Europeans to colonize Florida in the 1520s. In 1763 Spain traded Florida to Great Britain in exchange for Cuba. Although the original native inhabitants had been wiped out by war and disease, Creeks began moving into Florida even before the Creek War. They were joined by blacks escaping slavery in the southern United States, and both became allies of the British.
Spain regained Florida in 1783 but never again had firm control of the territory. This allowed the British to occupy Florida during the War of 1812 and use it as a strategic beachhead for an assault on the southern United States. Their goal was New Orleans and access to the Mississippi River. After the War of 1812, the British abandoned both Florida and their Creek and black allies.
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Jackson's invasion of Spanish Florida was tacitly approved by President Monroe, allowing John Quincy Adams to negotiate a treaty with Spain that not only gave the United States Florida and the entire Gulf Coast, but also drew a border with Mexico all the way to the Pacific.
Red Stick Movement
The Red Stick Movement was formed to resist white encroachment and assimilation and to preserve traditional Creek culture. Prophet Francis was its charismatic spiritual leader, and he was influenced in turn by Tecumseh, a Shawnee prophet.
The group got its name from the painted handles of the long wooden clubs that the Creeks used to declare war. Composed mostly of Upper Creeks, the Red Sticks established a stronghold at Holy Ground, along the banks of the Alabama River near present-day Montgomery. The movement was crushed by Jackson at the end of the Creek War in 1814, and the survivors fled to Spanish Florida.
The Great Comet and New Madrid Earthquakes
Two extraordinary natural events occurred in 1811. Prophet Francis and Tecumseh interpreted them as signs, and many Creeks were won over to the Red Stick cause.
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The first event was the exceptionally large and bright Great Comet of 1811, which appeared in the sky in March and remained visible all over the globe for 260 days. It reached its zenith in September and October. References to the comet appear in Tolstoy's War and Peace. Tradition has it that Napolean viewed the comet as a favorable sign from heaven to invade Russia.
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The second event, the New Madrid earthquake, struck the central United States in December. At an estimated magnitude of 7.2-8.2, it remains the strongest earthquake on record to strike the eastern half of the continent. The epicenter was in the Mississippi River town of New Madrid, but church bells rang as far away New York City. For a time, the Mississippi River appeared to flow backward. Three aftershocks of similar magnitude struck over the next two months.
The Creek War and War of 1812
The War of 1812 (1812-1815) between the United States and Great Britain is remembered mostly for the Star Spangled Banner and the burning of Washington, DC. In the South, however, the war had less well known consequences for Milly Francis and the Creek nation.
During the war, the British used Florida as a staging ground for an assault on the Gulf Coast and recruited both Upper Creeks and free blacks as allies. Preoccupied with Napoleon and the negotiation of lucrative trade treaties, however, the British government soon lost interest in fighting with its former colonies.
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At the end of 1814, Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Ghent. Two weeks later, not realizing that the war was over, British troops attacked New Orleans. Jackson led his ragtag militia, who were vastly outnumbered, to an astonishing victory against an army of Redcoat veterans of the Peninsular War. Jackson's reputation as the Hero of New Orleans would later help propel him to the White House.
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Meanwhile, the Creeks were fighting their own war with Jackson and the United States. The Creek War (1813-1814) began as an internal conflict within the Creek confederation between the Lower Creeks, who wanted to accommodate the whites, and Upper Creeks, like Francis and his Red Sticks, who opposed assimilation.
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White interests quickly embroiled themselves in the conflict. Both the British traders and the Spanish in Florida sold the Red Sticks arms and supplies. The United States formed alliances with opposing tribes, including the Lower Creeks.
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Jackson defeated the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. He made all the Creeks--Upper and Lower Creeks alike--sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which forced them to surrender more than 21 million acres of their traditional homelands in Georgia and Alabama. Although the terms of the Treaty of Ghent mandated that Creek lands be returned, that article of the treaty was never enforced. The British refused to intervene, and the U.S. government auctioned off the land to white settlers.
"Negro Fort"
Forbes and Company established a trading post at Prospect Bluff on the Apalachicola River in 1804. During the War of 1812, the British turned the post into a military fort. After the war, they left the fort to their Creek and black allies, along with a substantial cache of weapons.
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By 1816 the so-called Negro Fort had grown into a thriving settlement--the largest community of free blacks in North America. It became a beacon for slaves escaping the southern states. When American ships used the Apalachicola River to access U.S. forts in Georgia from the Gulf of Mexico, they had to sail past the Negro Fort on their way upriver. For Southerners such as Jackson, the fort represented an existential threat to their way of life.
Based on his correspondence with General Gaines, Jackson was undoubtedly behind the orders to "take care of" the fort. Hambly, a former Forbes and Company employee, was familiar enough with the layout to aim the cannon at the central powder magazine. The resulting explosion ripped apart almost every inhabitant--soldiers later reported seeing body parts in the trees. Less than two years later, Jackson built Fort Gadsden on the site.
First Seminole War
This conflict (1817-1818) would more accurately be called the Conquest of Florida. Jackson's thinly veiled pretexts for his invasion of Spanish territory were to recover escaped slaves and to stop raids by Creek and Seminole warriors on the new white settlements in Georgia.
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Some of that was true: The Southern Underground Railroad operated as far north as Virginia and helped slaves reach freedom in Florida. But the border raids went both ways. White squatters and Native warriors routinely crossed the Georgia-Florida border to seize corn and cattle from each other, and sometimes the raids turned violent. The injustice of the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which had allowed Jackson to seize millions of acres of Creek lands, made the border conflicts inevitable.
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Although Jackson's unchecked behavior in Florida caused it political headaches, the Monroe administration wanted the territory. The war put pressure on Spain to ratify the Adams-Onis Treaty, and the official transfer of Florida to the United States happened in 1821.
Trial of Arbuthnot and Ambrister
The trial of Arbuthnot and Ambrister was not a legitimate court proceeding. It was a hastily conceived military tribunal that caught up two British citizens in the undeclared war between Jackson and the Seminoles.
Based on the transcripts, we know that Jackson rigged the proceedings to get the outcome he wanted. Arbuthnot, for example, was not allowed to introduce evidence that might have exonerated him. Hambly's testimony against him was obviously hearsay and fabricated to serve his own interests.
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Instead of defending himself, Ambrister threw himself on the mercy of the court. In the end, the tribunal changed its initial sentence of death to flogging and one year of hard labor. Jackson overturned the tribunal's decision and ordered Ambrister's immediate execution--a clear violation of military law.
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While Arbuthnot was likely innocent of everything he was accused of, Ambrister had sought to train and lead an army of Black Seminoles--but against Spain, not the U.S. In any event, under the law of war, neither man had committed a crime. As British citizens, the two men owed no loyalty to the United States, particularly in Spanish Florida. Neither Britain nor Spain was at war with the United States. Much to President Monroe's consternation, the argument Jackson used to condemn the two men would have allowed the British to execute Lafayette for his role in helping the United States win the Revolutionary War.
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The account of Jackson's role in the trial of Arbuthnot and Ambrister is recorded in the Annals of Congress (see American State Papers, 15th Congress, 2nd Session). Despite eloquent denunciations and pointed warnings about the future implications, the vote to censure him for his actions failed along mostly partisan and regional lines in February 1819.
Jacksonian Era
President James Monroe presided over what has naively been called the "Era of Good Feelings." The name alludes to the political elite's insistence that partisan politics had no place in the American experiment. Reasonable and enlightened men would govern without competition or conflict.
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Conflicts were nonetheless simmering under the surface, not least of which was the tension between the North and the South. The illusion of harmony was shattered entirely when Andrew Jackson got involved in national politics and ushered in what is now known as the Jacksonian Era.
By the 1820s, most states had begun expanding the right to vote to include all white men over the age of 21. Jackson capitalized on the growth of a less educated, less affluent, and frustrated electorate. He won the White House in 1828 after the first truly populist presidential campaign in U.S. history--complete with raucous rallies, inflammatory campaign songs, brazen propaganda, and one-sided newspaper coverage (typically bought and paid for). As President, he governed with an imperial sense of entitlement that the country had never seen before.
Trail of Tears
Although the pressure to remove Native Americans from their lands in the southeastern United States began under Thomas Jefferson, it escalated under Jackson. One of Jackson's first acts after assuming office was to push the Indian Removal Act, which allowed the federal government to force Native Americans (primarily the Five Civilized Tribes) to surrender their land for less desirable territory west of the Mississippi.
Debate in Congress over the bill was heated. Figures such as Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, and Theodore Frelinghuysen (an outspoken abolitionist) fiercely opposed it. In the end, the Act passed the Senate on a vote of 28 to 19. It passed the House by an even narrower margin, 103 to 97.
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A total of about 60,000 Native Americans were forcibly relocated from their traditional lands. Tribal governments were dissolved. Land speculators and white squatters quickly moved in. Milly and three of her children walked barefoot and without blankets or adequate food from Alabama to present-day Muscogee, Oklahoma, in the winter of 1837. She was never paid for her land in Alabama or given the provisions promised by the government. Historians estimate that at least 10,000 and as many as 17,000 Native Americans died as a result of the forced removal.
Slave Ownership in Native Tribes
Before the arrival of Europeans, "slaves" in Creek culture were war captives, typically noncombatant women and children who were absorbed into the victors' families. With the establishment of black slavery in the South, however, some tribes, including the Creeks, bought and sold black slaves.
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After the Revolutionary War, as more slaves escaped to Creek territory, traditional Creek groups (including Francis' band) became reluctant to return them. They resisted pressure from the Americans to practice race-based chattel slavery and followed the traditional practice of integrating black slaves into their family units.
Over time, interracial relationships formed, and the mixed-race children of Creek mothers were considered Creek. This did not mean, however, that the Creeks did not "own" slaves. During the Trail of Tears, some black slaves accompanied their Creek owners to Oklahoma. Milly Francis "inherited" a number of black slaves from her father, although she never recovered them.
What Became of William Hambly?
Although he has mostly disappeared from history, Hambly and his partner did receive a substantial land grant in Florida after Jackson's war to acquire the territory for the United States. Per the Congressional Record, Congress awarded them 640 acres in 1826 in recompense for the land they lost after the War of 1812.
© 2024 by Jennifer Morison Hendrix & Sam Morison
WGA Registration 2039711