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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings

	FORT CONFEDERATION (Fort Tombigbee) Alabama
Sumter County, just off U.S. 11, on the Tombigbee River, near Epes. Tombigbee

Originally the French Fort Tombigbee, whose spelling varies widely in historical records, stood on this site. Constructed in 1735 above the confluence of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers, in Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian country, it served as an advance base during the Chickasaw War, as a base for trade with the Choctaws, and as a check against British influence in the area. After the French and Indian War the British occupied it, renamed it Fort York, and abandoned it 5 years later. It then fell into ruins.

In 1794 the Spanish rebuilt the fort and renamed it Fort Confederation. They remained until 1797, the year before Congress designated the Mississippi Territory, at which time the fort became a possession of the United States. In 1802-3 Government officials negotiated there one of a series of treaties by which the United States absorbed the Choctaw lands and by which the area along the Tombigbee-Mobile Rivers was opened to settlement. Soon afterwards the fort fell into ruins and was abandoned. The National Society of Colonial Dames of America has placed a marker on the site.

	FORT MIMS SITE Alabama
Baldwin County, on an unimproved road, 4 miles west of Tensaw. Fort Mims Restoration Association

In July 1813 Samuel Mims, a settler in Alabama, built a stockade around his farm, on the eastern bank of Lake Tensaw. The next month some 500 white and halfbreed settlers, fearing a Creek uprising, took shelter in the stockade, which came to be known as Fort Mims. Maj. Daniel Beasley, the leader of a group of militiamen stationed there, regarded the settlers' fears as unfounded and refused to take adequate precautions. Before the month was out a group of Creeks, led by half breeds, attacked the fort and massacred the soldiers and settlers. This massacre spurred military action against the Creeks and marked the beginning of the Creek War (1813-14), during which Andrew Jackson achieved national fame. A monument erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy marks the approximate site of the fort.

	MCGILLIVRAY PLANTATION SITE Alabama
Elmore County, on County Route 47, about 4 miles north of Wetumpka.

Alexander McGillivray, halfbreed Creek leader, lived at a plantation on this site during the period of his greatest influence. Son of a Scottish trader and his French-Creek wife, McGillivray acquired a well-rounded education in Charleston and Savannah, but returned to Creek country after the outbreak of the War for Independence. During the war he served as a British agent and sent Indian war parties against the U.S. frontier. Befriending William Panton, the influential trader, he became a leader of the Creeks, whose cause he always held foremost. In 1784 he negotiated on behalf of the Creeks and Seminoles a treaty of alliance and trade with Spain. In return for his services, McGillivray received a commission as colonel and an annual salary from the Spanish Government. In the following years, from his plantation, he directed Indian attacks on the Georgia frontier and the Cumberland River settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The U.S. Government, recognizing McGillivray's influence, in 1790 persuaded him to negotiate peace in New York. In the Treaty of New York the Creeks and Seminoles agreed not to make alliances with other nations and approved a boundary settlement in Georgia. McGillivray, commissioned a brigadier general in the U.S. Army and awarded an annual salary from the U.S. Government, returned to Alabama, where he secretly abrogated the treaty. Financially stable, having commissions and salaries from both the United States and Spanish Governments, he began to promote a powerful Southern Indian confederation, but he died in 1793. No traces of the plantation buildings remain, though the site, on privately owned farmland, is marked by a boulder placed by the Alabama Anthropological Society.