Boys' Book of Indian Warriors and Heroic Indian Women

by Edwin L. Sabin

The Red Sticks now agreed to a treaty of peace with the United States; and Chief Menewa, scarred from head to foot, was the hero of his band. "One of the bravest chiefs that ever lived," is written after his name, by white historians. In due time he again opposed Chief Macintosh, and won out.

For in 1825 Macintosh was bribed by the white people to urge upon his nation the selling of the last of their lands in Georgia. He signed the papers, so did a few other chiefs; but the majority, thirty-six in number, refused.

Only some three hundred of the Creeks were parties to the signing away of the land of the whole nation. The three thousand other chiefs and warriors said that by Creek law, which Chief Macintosh himself had proposed, the land could not be sold except through the consent of a grand council.

As the nation owned the land, and had built better towns, and was living well and peacefully, the council decided that Chief Macintosh must be put to death—for he was a traitor and he knew the law.

Chief Menewa was asked to consent; he ruled, by reason of his wisdom and his scars. Finally he saw no other way than to order the deed done, for the Creek law was plain.

On the morning of May 1 he took a party of warriors to the Chief Macintosh house, and surrounded it. There were some white Georgians inside. He directed them to leave, as he had come to kill only Chief Macintosh, according to the law.

So the white men, and the women and children, left. When Chief Macintosh bolted in flight, he was shot dead.

The Georgia people, who desired the Creek land, prepared for war, or to arrest Menewa and his party. But the President, learning the ins and outs of the trouble, and seeing that the land had not been sold by the Creek nation, ordered the sale held up. The Creeks stayed where they were, for some years.

Menewa went to war once more, in 1836, and helped the United States fight against the Seminoles of Florida. In return for this, he asked permission to remain and live in his own country of the Creeks. But he was removed, with the last of the nation, beyond the Mississippi to the Indian Territory.

There, an old man, he died.