Talk:Alexander McGillivray

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I have removed Image:AMcgillvray.jpg. As Kevin Myers pointed out to me when I added the same image, the man in that portrait is usually identified as Hopoithle Mico or Hoboithle Mico, a Creek leader who was often a political adversary of McGillivray. (The image is identified as Hopoithle Mico in Tecumseh by John Sugden and A Spirited Resistance by Gregory Dowd). An online example is at [1]. See also the version of the image at [2], that appears to have the original caption, which reads "Hopothle Mico - or the Talasee[?] King of the Creeks -- J. T. - New York 1790" (this is in context at [3]). Kevin Myers suspects there may not be any extant portraits of McGillivray. -- Mwanner | Talk 22:48, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I would like to edit the third paragraph of the article so far to read: "Alex tried to remain neutral during the Revolutionary War, seeing the new United States as a threat to the first nations, but reasoning that the British may not hold on the colonies. On becoming a leading chief of the Creeks soon after American independence was achieved, he struggled for several years to unite his people and maintain a stance of armed neutality by making alliances, first with the Spanish on the Gulf coast and Florida and later with the US Federal government with the Treaty of New York, while trying to stem the incursions of white settlers from the north and east. Ultimately his death robbed the Creek nation of an able diplomat and statesman and they joined the Cherokee and other tribes on the Trail of Tears." My source for this is 'Diplomat in Warpaint - Alexander McGillivray of the Creeks" by Arthur Orrmont. Despite inventing, I suspect, conversations which were unlikely to have been recorded by anyone but McGillivray himself, this seems to be a more probable account than the impression given so far that he was a fan of the new republic. However he saw the Treaty with the federal government as a possible way of preventing the Georgians from overrunning Creek territory. Orrmont also agrees there is no portrait of McGillivray. His main source is "McGillivray of the Creeks" by John Walton Caughey. D Ron Field (talk) 01:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

D Ron Field (talk) 01:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

"Revised" into hatchet job

This article has been "revised" into a poorly done hatchet job against McGillivray, with the only source for the attributed negative "conclusions" and citations coming from this Saunt person's poorly researched nonsense. The article cites "conclusions" and allegations which are both contrary to every other source on the subject and/or absurd on the face of it. For example: That McGilivray's influence among the Creeks was due to his giving gifts to various chiefs, while claiming that his salaries from the Spanish and US Governments were some kind of under-the-table graft. Payments and gifts to senior chiefs were intended to be distributed to the chief's followers, which was the normal practice in all European government dealings with the tribes, widely known and in no sense improper. Whether his standing was "controversial" or "resented" is an opinion that amplifies the normal political interplay of any society. His "duplicity in the Treaty of New York" is a crime only discovered by this Saunt and is simply a lie. His "alienation" from the "majority of the Creeks" is another factor only discovered by Saunt. That "The Creeks 'soon concluded that McGillivray had deceived them'" is again an invention of Saunt. The article repeatedly harps on the fact that McGillivray owned slaves, in common with almost every other significant landowner in the South, and implies that his association with the Panton, Leslie trading firm was, again, some kind of under-the-stable power grab when in fact his father had been associated with the firm for many years and Alexander simply continued the association. He did not buy a plantation with 60 slaves from the settlement for his father's stolen lands, when in fact he owned his own plantations well before then. That he actually owned more than the "60 slaves" repeatedly cited in the article is only another proof of the incompetent research underlying these revisions.

This article is nonsense, and both Saunt and his acolyte idiots. I am not that familiar with Wikipedia's procedures to know whether I should re-research and completely rewrite this article, or can I simply challenge the sources and impartiality of Saunt and whoever is peddling his calumnies, and leave the matter to those more involved in these matters? My own degrees are in history and I suspect I could do a credible job - at least more so than the last - but as I am a multi-grand-nephew of McGillibray's I might be considered somewhat prejudiced in the other direction.Deleweye (talk) 04:38, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

May I add that in the 1911 Britannica, he is described as noted for "treachery, craftiness and love of barbaric display."deisenbe (talk) 11:00, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

And may I add that the 1911 Britannica is noted for its many horribly racist articles. Carlstak (talk) 11:35, 30 August 2018 (UTC)