cGillivray, Miro found a weapon fashioned to his hand. If
the Creek chieftain's figure might stand as the symbol of treachery, it
is none the less one of the most picturesque and pathetic in our early
annals. McGillivray, it will be remembered, was the son of Adair's
friend Lachlan McGillivray, the trader, and a Creek woman whose sire had
been a French officer. A brilliant and beautiful youth, he had given his
father a pride in him which is generally denied to the fathers of sons
with Indian blood in them. The Highland trader had spared nothing in
his son's education and had placed him, after his school days, in the
business office of the large trading establishment of which he himself
was a member. At about the age of seventeen Alexander had become a
chieftain in his mother's nation; and doubtless it is he who appears
shortly afterwards in the Colonial Records as the White Leader whose
influence is seen to have been at work for friendship between the
colonists and the tribes. When the Revolutionary War broke out, Lachlan
McGillivray, like many of the old traders who had served British
interests so long and so faithfully, held to the British cause. Georgia
confiscated all his property and Lachlan fled to Scotland. For this, his
son hated the people of Georgia with a perfect hatred. He remembered how
often his father's courage alone had stood between those same people and
the warlike Creeks. He could recall the few days in 1760 when Lachlan
and his fellow trader, Galphin, at the risk of their lives had braved
the Creek warriors--already painted for war and on the march--and so had
saved the settlements of the Back Country from extermination. He looked
upon the men of Georgia as an Indian regards those who forget either
a blood gift or a blood vengeance. And he embraced the whole American
nation in his hatred for their sakes.

In 1776 Alexander McGillivray was in his early thirties-the exact date
of his birth is uncertain. * He had, we are told, the tall, sturdy, but
spare physique of the Gael, with a countenance of Indian color though
not of Indian cast. His overhanging brows made more striking his very
large and luminous dark eyes. He bore himself with great dignity; his
voice was soft, his manner gentle. He might have been supposed to be
some Latin courtier but for the barbaric display of his dress and his
ornaments. He possessed extraordinary personal magnetism, and his power
extended beyond the Creek nation to the Cho