The west Florida controversy

Front matter

MUERATOIULY

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Contents

CHAPTER I THE DEFINITION AND DELIMITATION OF WEST PEGRUIAD chee ce eee ee ee a eet I CHAPTER II THE OCCUPATION OF THE NATCHEZ DISTRICT.... 32

CHAPTER IIT Tue LovuistaNA PURCHASE AND THE FLoripas.. 64

CHAPTER IV

Preface

It is to be hoped that the title, scope, and subjectmatter of this study will be self-explanatory, and that the notes will prove clear and detailed enough to supply the place of a formal bibliography. But neither text nor notes show definitely my indebtedness to the courteous and efficient aid of a number of individuals who have assisted in gathering material for the volume and in preparing it for the press. To most of these persons I can render only a general acknowledgment ; of a few I must make special mention.

No detailed study such as is here attempted would be possible were it not for the series of helpful guides published during the last ten years by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. In addition to these printed aids, I have had access to the notes, cards, and manuscript reports belonging to the Bureau of Historical Research of that institution, and have been furnished with extensive excerpts from these sources, and with proof sheets of reports in process of publication. For these and many other evidences of helpful interest in my work, I wish to express my personal thanks to the director of the Bureau, Dr. J. Franklin Jameson, and to his efficient associate, Mr. Waldo G. Leland.

While working over the Papeles Procedentes de ix x PREFACE

Cuba, in the Archivo General at Seville, I experienced the usual courteous attention and assistance of Sefior Don Pedro Torres Lanzas, the chief of the archive, and of the assistant chief, the late Sefior Don José Gonzalez Verger. It was also my good fortune to meet there Professor Roscoe R. Hill, now of the University of New Mexico, who was then engaged in preparing for the Carnegie Institution his monumental “Descriptive Catalogue” of the Papeles . . . de Cuba. By making use of Mr. Hill’s notes, which he freely turned over to me, I was able to avoid much unnecessary labor in what proved the most fertile collection of material for my purpose and also to make my search infinitely more fruitful. Moreover, Mr. Hill has made me doubly his debtor by reading the proofs of the present work.

Several volumes of transcripts from the Papeles are to be found in the State Department of Archives and History at Jackson, Mississippi. It was my privilege to examine these before going abroad, with the aid of Mr. J. A. Robertson’s valuable “List of Documents” (also published by the Carnegie Institution), and to find that this preliminary work measurably curtailed my labors at Seville. Moreover, the depository at Jackson contains the original letter books of Governor W. C. C. Claiborne and other valuable documentary sources for the territorial period of Mississippi history. The letter books, in part duplicated at Washington, have recently been edited and published

PREFACE xi by the director of the Department, Dr. Dunbar Rowland. This timely publication, of more than local significance, will readily supplement my references to the manuscript sources. In addition to courteous assistance in his own Department, I am also indebted to Dr. Rowland for many practical suggestions regarding the local archives in his vicinity.

To the keepers of these archives, and to the officials in charge of other local, state, and national repositories, including the archives of the State and War departments at Washington and the manuscript collections in the Library of Congress, space forbids more than a general acknowledgment. But I wish to reiterate the customary expression of obligation that a growing list of American scholars gladly render to these helpful and courteous custodians. In the same manner I must express my indebtedness to the officials of historical societies, and to numerous private individuals, who have opened their libraries and manuscript collections to me in unstinted measure. For the archives at Washington, the guides prepared by Messrs. Van Tyne and Leland and D. W. Parker for the Carnegie Institution were very helpful.

The guide of Messrs. Paullin and Paxson, or rather notes prepared for their guide, afforded me a serviceable survey of the collections in the British Public Record Office. The notes of Mr. Leland rendered the diplomatic correspondence in the Archives des Affaires Etrangéres at Paris immediately available.

xii PREFACE

Professor W. R. Shepherd’s guide was of assistance in the Archivo Historico Nacional at Madrid. At all these archives the officials in charge gave substantial aid, but I must mention in particular the helpfulness of Sefior Don Ignacio Olavide, who was temporarily in charge of the Archivo Historico Nacional at the time of my visit there.

The preparation of this book is due in a peculiar manner to the cooperation of three universities. The greater part of the necessary research was carried on during a leave of absence from the University of Cincinnati. Subsidies afforded by a Harrison Research Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and the Albert Shaw Lectureship at Johns Hopkins University enabled me to employ this leisure most advantageously. My colleagues, Professor Merrick Whitcomb, Dr. Reginald C. McGrane, and Professor Clyde W. Park, have still further exemplified this spirit of academic cooperation by a careful reading of manuscript and proof sheets. Mr. Carl E. Otto and Mr. K. W. Bronson, students in my classes, have assisted in preparing the maps. In the drudgery of composition and proof reading my wife, as might be expected, has been my constant mentor and indispensable partner.

Isaac JOSLIN Cox.

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI, December, 1917.

Chapter I The Definition And Delimitation Of West Florida

During the first six decades of the eighteenth century, Spain, France, and Great Britain asserted overlapping claims in what is now the southeastern part of the United States. Their uncertain spheres of influence, to borrow a modern term, comprised coastal plains on the Gulf and the Atlantic, indented by shallow bays and inlets and drained by rivers of moderate size, together with an indefinite hinterland. This region was peopled by numerous aborigines, largely grouped in imposing confederacies, mutually hostile but generally unfriendly toward intrusive Europeans. Position, physical characteristics, and native population thus jointly served to give an immense strategic value to the entire region, and these same basic conditions likewise suggested that political control and development therein must be unified.

For nearly two hundred years after its discovery the region attracted but casual international attention. Then, in the early part of the eighteenth century a series of factors—physical, racial, colonial, international—began in more thorough measure to exert their influence in blocking out a part of the region for future diplomatic and border controversies. This period,

I which may not inaptly be called the period of definition, ended in 1763.1 West Florida, first named and tentatively defined in that year, was the residuary legatee of the international claims and controversies that had hitherto characterized the history of the entire region.

Great Britain, now possessing all the territory lying between the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Mississippi, except the Island of New Orleans, was in a position to establish that unified control so necessary to its complete development. Her first step to this end, the Royal Proclamation of 1763, gave West Florida a name and a northern boundary, the thirty-first parallel. This line, derived from the early Carolina grants, was destined to play an important part in the succeeding history of the region. The attempt to prescribe definite limits for the new province, an attempt repeated by the British and their successors during the next thirty-five years, began what we may term its period of delimitation. Shortly after 1763 the English authorities themselves modified the boundaries that they had first prescribed, because they found that it was advisable to extend the jurisdiction of West Florida to include all white settlements below the junction of

1 For a description of the terms “definition” and “ delimitation” as used in this chapter, consult my article on “The Significance of the Louisiana-Texas Frontier ” in Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, 1909-1910, 198-215.

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Bee ts ot es eS oO a o o ry mae i} ° 0 ce @ 2 A the Yazoo with the Mississippi. During the American Revolution Spain conquered the English holdings and retained them under the Treaty of 1783. But that power was immediately involved in a territorial controversy with the United States and in 1795 was obliged to yield to her rival the portion of the province above the thirty-first parallel.

By the early part of 1798 the stipulations of the treaty of the Escorial, by which Spain made this cession to the United States, were in process of adjustment. The thirty-first parallel was reestablished as the boundary of West Florida, this time becoming an international line in the area east of the Mississippi. We may, therefore, take 1798 as the closing date for what we have called the period of delimitation in West Florida. The territory of Mississippi and the province of West Florida, the frontier jurisdictions of their respective nations, were separated by a definite limit, as well marked, in the course of the next two years, as their needs required. But such a settlement violated the essential unity of the region and the quarrel between Spain and the United States that had lasted fifteen years was soon renewed. In this dual dispute Great Britain and France, two of the parties to the original controversy that was settled in 1763 and still bitter commercial and political rivals, threatened to intervene whenever it should suit their individual purposes. The United States, ambitious heir of the former, desired to acquire both the Floridas, and after 1803 claimed that portion of the western province. lying between the Mississippi and the Perdido as part of the Louisiana Purchase.’ This claim, which was largely responsible for the bitter territorial disputes in which the United States was immediately involved, and the measures taken by its officials during the succeeding decade to establish the claim and occupy the disputed area, form the subject of the present study.

The American claim included that portion of the Mississippi delta and its back country of which Baton Rouge is the natural center, the alluvial bottoms of the Pearl and the Pascagoula, and the area around Mobile Bay. The western portion resembled the Natchez district, with which it made a common physiographic unit. Here was found the larger part of West Florida’s scattered population, gathered into considerable communities along the lakes and streams as far eastward as the Pearl. There were isolated habitations at Bayou St. Louis and Pass Christian, the Bay of Biloxi, and the mouth of the Pascagoula. The group of settlements second in importance was that scattered around Mobile Bay. For these the town of that name formed a military and business center. Pensacola,

2 Cf. Chambers, “ West Florida in its Relation to the Historical Cartography of the United States,” in J. H. U. Studies, Ser. XVI, No. 5.

beyond the Perdido, lay outside the disputed area, but was the capital of West Florida under both British and Spanish rule. The only unity to this artificial jurisdiction was afforded by the chain of lakes and bays through which its rivers discharged their waters into the Gulf.

The significant part of West Florida was, therefore, merely a strip of the Gulf coast possessing little intrinsic value, but rendered temporarily important through international rivalry. It had even greater claims to distinction. Its creation, development, occupancy, and division determined the destiny of the whole region of which it was a part. It afforded at once an epitome and a prophecy of territorial expansion in the Southwest. The American pioneer in his varying aspects—turbulent squatter, domiciled subject, covert revolutionist—found it an adequate stage for his unconscious propaganda in behalf of democracy. Small as it was it bulked large enough in contemporary diplomacy to modify Napoleon’s commercial system and to further Jefferson’s Pan-American views. Frontier turbulence, foreign and domestic wrangling, and evasive treaty provisions marked each phase of its brief history and afforded a warning or an incentive for subsequent diplomatic procedure. Foreign invasion and filibustering left their marks upon its soil. After West Florida had thus put its sinister impress on nearly every important contemporary issue, the single star, emblem of its short-lived independence, disappeared and the territory was quietly absorbed by the neighboring commonwealths.

It was fitting that the first historical event connected with the region should arouse controversy. The Spaniard Pifteda discovered what he called the Bay and River of Espiritu Santo. Whether this was the Mississippi or the Mobile was long in dispute, but modern scholarship is inclined to think the latter. De Vaca skirted its shores, and De Soto visited upon its leading Indian community his most signal act of cruelty. More significant still is the interest manifested in its occupation by the Mexican viceroys, Mendoza and Velasco. The latter’s representative touched at Mobile Bay in 1558 and made such a favorable report that the viceroy sent De Luna the following year to establish a definite settlement. He selected the nearby Pensacola Bay as his headquarters, but after two years of discouraging hardships his surviving followers found refuge in Hispaniola and Cuba.* For the next century and a quarter the region remained unnoticed except for random mention such as that by Father Alonso Benavides ;> but the early Span-

3 Hamilton, Colonial Mobile (ed. 1910), Io.

4Lowery, Spanish Settlements within the Limits of the United States to 1562, 356-375.

5 The Memorial of Fray Alonso de Benavides, 1630, 64-66.

Translated by Mrs. Edward E. Ayer, Chicago, 1916. Privately printed.

iards had indicated a connection with Mexico and Cuba that was to characterize in large measure the later stages of their control.

In the closing years of the seventeenth century the Spaniards were destined to a rude awakening from their apathy. The intrepid La Salle, seconded by his lieutenant Tonty, narrowly missed becoming the first French colonizer of the region. He did link it with Texas, likewise to be associated in a future boundary controversy. The English also claimed it under the Carolina and subsequent grants ; and, shortly after the Peace of Ryswick, a certain Daniel Coxe dispatched a vessel to explore the mouth of the Mississippi. This prospective rivalry led La Salle’s successor, the Sieur d’Iberville, to favor some point east of the Mississippi for his settlement. He preferred Pensacola Bay. But when, early in 1699, he reached its vicinity and found the jealous Spaniards already established there, he led his garrison of eighty men to old Biloxi. During this period his brother, Bienville, encountered Coxe’s captain at the mouth of the Mississippi, but succeeded in persuading him to depart.” Thus by the opening of the eighteenth century

® The most complete collection of La Salle material is in Margry, Découvertes et Etablissements des Francais, Vols. II and III, passim. For a brief sketch consult the introduction to my Journeys of La Salle in “ The Trail Makers’ Series.” 7 Margry, Découvertes et Etablissements, IV, 53, 229, 393.

the future West Florida was involved in a tripartite dispute which was to continue for six decades.

Iberville wished to combine French and Spanish interests against the English, and for the purpose suggested that Spain should cede Pensacola, or possibly all Florida, to France in return for a guarantee of its possessions in Mexico. A century later a more famous Frenchman made a similar proposal. The Council of the Indies then resented the presence of the French in Louisiana, and rejected Iberville’s proffer. Their representatives at Pensacola even protested when Bienville moved his fort from Biloxi to the shores of Mobile Bay, and later to the present site of Mobile, but they were powerless to do more. The ensuing relations between their respective frontier garrisons were generally friendly, although during a few weeks in 1719 Pensacola was captured by the French, recaptured by the Spaniards, retaken by the French, and finally restored to its original occupants. By this time the French had established their headquarters at New Orleans, but they still retained Mobile for the sake of controlling the Indians. From that date the frontier commanders at that post and at Pensacola agreed to observe the Perdido as the limit of their respective jurisdictions.® By their silence the home governments tacitly accepted this boundary.

8 Margry, Découvertes et Etablissements, IV, 539-568. 9 Margry, Découvertes et Etablissements, IV, 381-385, 503.

Above the coast the French government, in the grant to Crozat and to the Western Company, vaguely spoke of Carolina as limiting their claims on the east. The English peril, threatening from the first, became more Pronounced with the founding of Georgia in 1732. Its leader, Oglethorpe, brilliantly defended the new colony against the Spaniards and in addition endeavored to extend his influence among the western Indians. From the Carolinas and the colonies to the north English traders also visited the Choctaws and the Chickasaws. To maintain French prestige over his former allies, Bienville, in 1736 and 1740, undertook expeditions against the Chickasaws, which resulted disastrously and still further weakened the allied Bourbon defense.?°

On the eve of the decisive contest for territorial supremacy in North America, Spanish Florida, extending over the peninsula and up to the Perdido, was guarded by Saint Augustine and Pensacola. The French settlements at Mobile and at New Orleans had as their eastern outposts Fort Natchez, Fort Tombecbé, and Fort Toulouse. English Carolina, now divided, was protected by the buffer colony of Georgia. The 539-541, 561, 577-580; V, 426, 461; Historia, Vol. 43, Optsculo I, par. 31, 54, 63-67, MS., Archivo General y Publico de la Nacion, Mexico; French, Historical Collections of Louisiana, III, 63-65; ibid., new series, I, 147.

10 Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, 126-130; Gayarré, History of Louisiana, The French Domination, 470-488, 503-517.

IO DEFINITION AND DELIMITATION OF WEST FLORIDA capital of the latter, Savannah, was flanked by forts Augusta and Frederica. The conflicting claims are summed up by Du Pratz, who mentions the Perdido as the limit between the French and Spaniards ; and by De Lisle, who on his map draws an irregular line between the British and French possessions from that stream to the mountains, and so to the northward. Montcalm, in 1758, suggested about the same line as the limit between the English and the French.1* The decision in the Valley of the St. Lawrence, later registered in the preliminary treaty at Versailles, brought the contested area between the mountains, the Mississippi, and the Gulf into the hands of the English. At the same time Spain surrendered the Florida Peninsula in exchange for Cuba. By this double transfer the English sphere of influence was enlarged to include all the territory east of the Mississippi except the Island of New Orleans. The first Bourbon combination failed to check the English advance predicted by Iberville.

West Florida now passed from the period of definition to that of delimitation, in which the diplomat plays a more important part than the discoverer or settler. The first paper marking this period is the treaty which closed the Seven Years’ War. Inci-

11 Le Page du Pratz, Histoire de la Louisiane, I, 160; Winsor, The Mississippi Basin, 63, 74; Thwaites, France in America, 156.

DEFINITION AND DELIMITATION OF WEST FLORIDA II dentally this document partially delimited West Florida by a “line drawn along the middle of the Mississippi . . . to the river Iberville, and from thence by a line drawn along the middle of this river, and the lake Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea.” In order to carry out this provision, the French king ceded to “His Britannic Majesty, the river and port of Mobile and everything which he possesses or ought to possess on the left side of the river Mississippi, except the town of New Orleans and the island in which it is situated.” The remainder of this seventh article provides for the free navigation of the entire Mississippi by the subjects of both nations. The twentieth article of the treaty calls for the cession by Spain to Great Britain of “Florida, with the Fort Augustine and the Bay of Pensacola, as well as all that Spain possessed on the continent of North America to the east or the southeast of the river Mississippi.’ Following the transfer of the territory thus designated, the English sovereign proceeded to organize his new possessions. His proclamation for this purpose bears the date of October 7, 1763. It contemplates four new colonial governments, of which the second and third are of immediate concern. East Florida, the second mentioned in the proclamation, was “bounded to the westward by the Gulph of Mexico and the Appalachicola river.” The third colony,

12 The Annual Register, 1762, 233-247.

I2 DEFINITION AND DELIMITATION OF WEST FLORIDA

West Florida, was to be “bounded to the Southward by the Gulph of Mexico, including all islands within six leagues of the coast, the river Appalachicola to Lake Pontchartrain,” and to the westward by the line laid down in the treaty. Its northern limit was a “line drawn due East from that part of the Mississippi, which lies in the 31st degree of North latitude, to the river Appalachicola, or the Catahouchee,” which was its eastern limit.’®

From this time the colony of West Florida is fairly defined except to the northward, where lay the Indian country marked out by the same proclamation. It shortly appeared that the line of the thirty-first parallel would pass below extensive settlements at Natchez, and possibly below some on the Mobile. These communities were not important enough for an independent government, and they could not be attached without great difficulty to distant Georgia. Accordingly, by a supplemental royal order issued in 1764, the territory of West Florida was enlarged to include all white settlements below a line drawn due east from the mouth of the Yazoo river. This extension was

13 Tbid., 1763, 209-213. C. E. Carter states that the selection by the British of the thirty-first parallel was wholly arbitrary, because this was “as far north as the Settlements can be carried, without interfering with lands claimed or occupied by the Indians.” But it seems to me that it was by no mere coincidence that they hit upon the line that had already appeared in the Carolina grants. Cf. Mississippi Valley Historical Review, I, 365.

repeated in the commissions issued to the various British governors from 1764 onward.* Very little of the territory was actually occupied by white settlers, till at a conference with Colonel John Stuart in 1770 the Chickasaws and Choctaws agreed to sell a portion of their land to the west and south of what was called the Chaterpé line. This limit began on the Tombigbee, about 135 miles above Mobile, and ran to the Yazoo some 15 miles above its junction with the Mississippi, and included territory along the Alabama, Tombigbee, and Pascagoula rivers, which the Choctaws had previously agreed to sell.1* These cessions may be regarded as establishing a provisional line between the Indians and the whites under British rule. Some thirty years later the American government in new treaties negotiated by General Wilkinson gained substantially the same territory.

The revolt of the English colonies checked the running of Indian boundaries, and brought another set of interests to the front. The new American government desired to carry on commerce with the Spaniards at New Orleans, and to intimidate or occupy the

14 American State Papers, Public Lands, I, 57.

15 Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, 242-246; Farrand, “The Indian Boundary Line,” in American Historical Review, X, 782; Gayarré, History of Louisiana, The Spanish Domination, 412; Ellicott to Pickering, Sept. 20, 1797, Ellicott and the Southern

Boundary, MS., Bureau of Rolls and Library, Department of State.

British settlements at Natchez, Mobile, and Pensacola. Patrick Henry favored such a scheme. Oliver Pollock, the American agent at New Orleans, and his associate, James Willing, tried to carry it out; but the Tory element at Natchez, led by Anthony Hutchins, a retired British officer, proved too much for them, even when their efforts were secretly aided by Bernardo de Galvez, governor of Spanish Louisiana.1® In the course of a few years diplomatic complications in Europe forced the Americans to moderate their western ambitions. Accordingly, in 1779, their representative to Spain was instructed to ask for the thirty-first parallel as the southern boundary. In this they followed the early Carolina grants as did the Proclamation of 1763; but in claiming to the Mississippi, they disregarded a very essential part of that proclamation. They likewise demanded the right to navigate this river and to use a suitable port of entry below the designated boundary. The instructions furthermore show that, while they abandoned all hope of conquering the Floridas for themselves, they were ready to assist Spain to do so, provided that power would grant a substantial subsidy.**

16 Winsor, The Westward Movement, 147-149, 155; Enclosure No. 6 in Ellicott to Pickering, Nov. 14, 1797, Ellicott and the Southern Boundary, MS., Bureau of Rolls and Library; James Dallas to Colonel John McGillivray, July 3, 1778, MS.,

Bancroft Collection, University of California. 17 Foreign Affairs, Secret Journal, 1775-1781, 132, 138, 139,

In 1779 war broke out between Spain and Great Britain, and the latter power planned to strengthen Pensacola, and, with the aid of southern Indians, to push the Spaniards away from New Orleans. But George Rogers Clark and his men prevented cooperation between Hamilton at Detroit and Campbell at Pensacola. This indirect aid from the Americans enabled Galvez, in September, 1779, to reduce the British establishments on the Mississippi. In the following March he occupied Fort Charlotte at Mobile, and in 1781 forced the English to surrender Pensacola.'#

Galvez was friendly to the Americans, but the Spanish government at home already regarded their territorial ambitions with jealousy. Consequently Pollock at New Orleans was unable to gain needed assistance for Clark and other American leaders, while John Jay at Madrid vainly tried to negotiate a loan of five millions of dollars. The Spanish representative, Diego de Gardoqui, plainly told him that this loan was contingent upon abandoning the claim to the navigation of the Mississippi. Owing to the lack of military success during 1780, Congress was more ready to 149, 226, 262; Winsor, Westward Movement, 160; Phillips, The West in the Diplomacy of the American Revolution,

Sin Ges 18 Winsor, Westward Movement, 162, 181, 189; Manuel Serrano y Sanz in Revista de los Archivos, Madrid, Mar—Apr., 1914, 167.

I6 DEFINITION AND DELIMITATION OF WEST FLORIDA yield this point; but even so, Jay was unable to take advantage of the concession.’®

After he was transferred to Paris, Jay discovered that the Spanish government wished to retain the territory above the thirty-first parallel that Galvez had conquered, and also insisted upon absolutely controlling the navigation of the Mississippi. The French minister, Vergennes, tried to maintain an unsatisfying neutrality towards both Spanish and American pretensions, but his secretary, Rayneval, supported Spain. Under the circumstances, Jay and John Adams persuaded Franklin to make a separate provisional treaty with Great Britain, despite their instructions, and thus secured from the mother-country a recognition of their territorial claims and of the right to navigate the Mississippi.”° A secret article, however, called for the Yazoo line, in case Great Britain recovered the Floridas; in case Spain retained them, the thirty-first parallel.?

19 Revista de los Archivos, Mar.—Apr., 1914, 201; Johnston, Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, I, 460.

20 Johnston, John Jay, II, 388; Foreign Affairs, Secret Journal, IV, 73; Annual Register, 1782, 322-324.

21 Foreign Affairs, Secret Journal, 1781-86, 338; Revista de los Archivos, Mar.—Apr., 1914, 174. In 1802 Lord Lansdowne told Rufus King that twenty years before he wished to obtain the Floridas, New Orleans, and some of the West Indies in exchange for Gibraltar, but that popular outcry prevented. He also stated that Jay and Franklin were willing for Great Britain to seize the Floridas, after the provisional treaty, if they could avoid the appearance of collusion. King, Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, IV, 93.

This provisional treaty between the United States and Great Britain was not modified in the later general peace. But when the latter ceded the Floridas to Spain she mentioned no definite limits.2? Obviously here was a chance for dispute, and possibly Great Britain intended that there should be. Nor was the prospect of trouble removed when the Spanish authorities shortly afterward learned of the secret article. The territory involved was a strip about a hundred miles wide, extending from the Mississippi to the Chattahoochee, but the strip itself was not the most significant factor. Spain insisted upon this territory largely because it strengthened her assumed right to the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi. This in turn involved the control of the Indians in the region west of the mountains and south of the Ohio. For the next two decades these three factors constituted the leading issues in southwestern diplomacy.

In this struggle the Creeks, under the astute Alexander McGillivray, entered into an alliance with the Spanish governor, June 1, 1784, and agreed to protect his territory from encroachment. This led to a border war with Georgia which continued, in spite of the intervention of the national government under Washington, until the death of the great half-breed removed the principal stumbling-block to peace in the Southwest. The Spaniards gained some temporary advantage from their connection with him, as well as from their treaties with the Chickasaws and Choctaws. They also exerted some influence over the Cherokees, who carried on hostilities with the Watauga and Cumberland settlements.22 For a generation to come Mobile and Pensacola, and for a shorter time, New Orleans, in Spanish hands, continued as recruiting centers for the Southwestern Indians.

Aside from Indian affairs the most significant event in the Southwest during this decade was the attempt by Georgia to organize Bourbon County in the Natchez district. Thomas Green, the leader in this project, failed to cooperate with his associates. The greater part of the inhabitants at Natchez probably sympathized with him, but feared to take a definite stand that might result in their total ruin. The Spanish authorities absolutely refused to yield the territory in question, and Georgia was too far away to conduct a military campaign to advantage. At the same time the Indians defeated another attempt by Georgia to organize a county in the bend of the Tennessee River: =