Mary Musgrove Bosomworth (1700-1765), sometimes called the "Empress of the Creek Nation," played a vital role in the founding of Georgia in colonial America. The daughter of a Creek Indian mother and a white father, Mary (whose Creek name is Cousaponokeesa) was a shrewd negotiator and a successful trader. As an interpreter for James Edward Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia Colony, she helped maintain alliances between the Creek nation and the British at a time when British, French, and Spanish interests in the region were often in conflict.

Mary Musgrove Bosomworth was born in 1700 at Coweta Town on the Ockmulgee River, in what later became part of the state of Georgia. She was born to the Creek Indian (Muscogean) tribe known as the Wind Clan. Her father was an English-born trader from South Carolina and her mother was a Creek princess, whose brother led an unsuccessful effort to...