against its great gains, the business
was most alluring. Young Lachlan rose rapidly, and soon became one of
the richest and most influential traders in the Creek country.

Like most traders, he married into the tribe, wooing and wedding, at the
Hickory Ground, beside the Coosa River, a beautiful half-breed girl,
Sehoy Marchand, whose father had been a French officer, and whose mother
belonged to the powerful Creek family of the Wind. There were born to
them two daughters and one son, Alexander. All the traders, though
facing danger at every moment, from the fickle and jealous temper of the
savages, wielded immense influence over them, and none more than the
elder McGillivray, a far-sighted, unscrupulous Scotchman, who sided
alternately with the French and English interests, as best suited his
own policy and fortunes.

His son was felt by the Creeks to be one of themselves. He was born
about 1746, at Little Tallasee, on the banks of the clear-flowing Coosa,
where he lived till he was fourteen years old, playing, fishing,
hunting, and bathing with the other Indian boys, and listening to the
tales of the old chiefs and warriors. He was then taken to Charleston,
where he was well educated, being taught Greek and Latin, as well as
English history and literature. Tall, dark, slender, with commanding
figure and immovable face, of cool, crafty temper, with great ambition
and a keen intellect, he felt himself called to play no common part. He
disliked trade, and at the first opportunity returned to his Indian
home. He had neither the moral nor the physical gifts requisite for a
warrior; but he was a consummate diplomat, a born leader, and perhaps
the only man who could have used aright such a rope of sand as was the
Creek confederacy.

The Creeks claimed him as of their own blood, and instinctively felt
that he was their only possible ruler. He was forthwith chosen to be
their head chief. From that time on he remained among them, at one or
the other of his plantations, his largest and his real home being at
Little Tallasee, where he lived in barbaric comfort, in a great roomy
log-house with a stone chimney, surrounded by the cabins of his sixty
negro slaves. He was supported by many able warriors, both of the half
and the full blood. One of them is worthy of passing mention. This was a
young French adventurer, Milfort, who in 1776 journeyed through the
insurgent colonies and became an adopted son of the Creek nation. He
first