The captain spent the rest of his life at St. Augustine trying to raise a force of 500 men for another trip to Crystal Mountain, promising to make every one of them rich, as well as any who would help finance the expedition. Since he had failed in his fort-building mission and had not been able to pick up a pocketful of gems, even when he was walking—or running—over them, he was unable to find 500 men willing to risk life and fortune on the venture. Pardo’s diamonds and rubies are still to be found on top of the ground at the base of the mountain. They are crystals of quartz, fully as beautiful as gem stones, but not so rare, and therefore not so valuable. Many of today’s visitors, less hurried than the captain and his men, pick up a few for souvenirs.
The first eye-witness description of Stone Mountain in English appears to have been an account written by a British officer and published in London in 1788. The Britisher almost certainly came into the area to incite Indians to fight against the colonists in the Revolutionary War. Unlettered traders probably viewed it earlier than that, but seeing no profit, dismissed it as being of no consequence to themselves.
The mountain enacted its first role in modern history on June 9, 1790. President George Washington had sent Colonel Marinus Willet to confer with chiefs of the Creek Nation and arrange for an emissary to visit him at the capitol in New York. In that era of few addresses in the wilderness the meeting was scheduled for Stone Mountain as a spot familiar to all the Indians.
The colonel reported in his Narration of the Military Acts of Col. Marinas Willet:
“Here we found the Cowetas and Curates to the number of eleven waiting for us. While I was at Stony Mountain, I ascended the summit. It is one solid rock of a circular form about one mile across. Many strange tales are told by the Indians of the mountain. I have now passed all Indian settlements and shall only observe that the inhabitants of these countries appear very happy.”
Elias Nour and Willard Neal near the top of Stone Mountain
The colonel could have made us all happier by setting down some of the stories he was told. By his failure to do so, those strange tales are lost forever. Incidentally, even in 1790 the southern Indians were no longer savage aborigines. They had been trading with the Spanish, British and French for more than two hundred years, had adopted many of the white men’s ways and utterly forgotten much of their tribal lore. Their extensive farms had grown up in trees and their elaborate system of trade had been abandoned, while they depended largely for their living on hunting for furs or hiring out in the white men’s wars.
Head of the Indian delegation at Stone Mountain was Alexander McGillivray, son of a Scotch trader and a half-breed Indian princess. After completing his education in Baltimore, McGillivray worked in a counting house in Savannah until the start of the Revolution, then returned to his mother’s tribe in Alabama where he quickly rose to chief of the United Creeks, and the Seminoles and Chicamaugas as well. He also became a colonel in the British Army, in return for inciting his tribesmen to harass settlers in Georgia and Tennessee.
After the war ended and the British left, McGillivray accepted a similar role with the Spanish in Florida. President Washington sent for him, hoping to placate him and stop the depredations along the frontier.