Benjamin Hawkins - Georgia

Georgia

Hawkins began to teach European-American agricultural practices to the Creek, and started a farm at his and Lavina's home on the Flint River. In time, he purchased enslaved Africans and hired other workers to clear several hundred acres for his plantation. They built a sawmill, gristmill and a trading post for the agency. Hawkins expanded his operation to include more than 1,000 head of cattle and a large number of hogs. For years, he met with chiefs on his porch and discussed matters there. His personal hard work and open-handed generosity won him such respect that reports say that he never lost an animal to Indian raiders.

He was responsible for 19 years of peace between the settlers and the tribe, the longest such period during European-American settlement. When in 1806 the government built a fort at the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, to protect expanding settlements just east of modern Macon, Georgia, the government named it Fort Benjamin Hawkins in his honor.

Hawkins saw much of his work to preserve peace destroyed in 1812. A group of Upper Creek (who became known as the Red Sticks) were working to revive traditional ways, and they opposed the assimilation of the Lower Creek (with whom Hawkins worked closely) and continuing encroachment by European Americans. They allied with the Shawnee chief Tecumseh of the Western Confederacy to resist increasing settlement by European Americans. During the War of 1812, the British encouraged the Red Stick resistance. Although Hawkins was not attacked, he was dismayed by the damage to the Creek people from their civil war, with the White Sticks and Red Sticks at odds.

During the Creek War of 1813-1814, Hawkins organized the friendly Lower Creek under Major William McIntosh, a chief, to aid Georgia and Tennessee militias in their forays against the Red Sticks. General Andrew Jackson led the defeat of the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in present-day Alabama. Hawkins was unable to attend negotiations of the Treaty of Fort Jackson in August 1814, which required the Creek to cede most of their territory and give up their way of life. Hawkins later organized friendly Creek warriors against a British force on the Apalachicola River; they had threatened to rally the scattered Red Sticks and reignite the war on the Georgia frontier. After the British withdrew in 1815, Hawkins was organizing a force to secure the area when he died from a sudden illness in June 1816.

Hawkins never recovered from the shock of the Creek civil war. He tried to resign his post and return from the Georgia wilderness, but his resignation was refused by every president after Washington. He remained Superintendent until his death on June 6, 1816. At the end of his life, he formally married Lavina Downs in a European-American ceremony, making their children legitimate in United States society. They already belonged to Downs' clan among the Creek, as they had a matrilineal system; this gave them status in the tribe.

Benjamin Hawkins was buried32°40′0.61″N 84°5′45.73″W / 32.6668361°N 84.0960361°W / 32.6668361; -84.0960361 at the Creek Agency near the Flint River and Roberta, Georgia.

Fort Hawkins was built overlooking the ancient site since designated as the Ocmulgee National Monument. Revealing 17,000 years of human habitation, it is a National Historic Landmark and has been sacred for centuries to the Creek. It has massive earthwork mounds built nearly 1,000 years ago as expressions of the religious and political world of the Mississippian culture, the ancestors to the Creek.