Though they sometimes burnt their prisoners or violated captive women, they generally were more merciful than the northern tribes.[25]

But their political and military systems could not compare with those of the Algonquins, still less with those of the Iroquois.  Their confederacy was of the loosest kind.  There was no central authority.  Every town acted just as it pleased, making war or peace with the other towns, or with whites, Choctaws, or Cherokees.  In each there was a nominal head for peace and war, the high chief and the head warrior; the former was supposed to be supreme, and was elected for life from some one powerful family—­as, for instance, the families having for their totems the wind or the eagle.  But these chiefs had little control, and could not do much more than influence or advise their subjects; they were dependent on the will of the majority.  Each town was a little hotbed of party spirit; the inhabitants divided on almost every question.  If the head-chief was for peace, but the war-chief nevertheless went on the war-path, there was no way of restraining him.  It was said that never, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, had half the nation “taken the war talk” at the same time.[26] As a consequence, war parties of Creeks were generally merely small bands of marauders, in search of scalps and plunder.  In proportion to its numbers, the nation never, until 1813, undertook such formidable military enterprises as were undertaken by the Wyandots, Shawnees, and Delawares; and, though very formidable individual fighters, even in this respect it may be questioned if the Creeks equalled the prowess of their northern kinsmen.

Yet when the Revolutionary war broke out the Creeks were under a chieftain whose consummate craft and utterly selfish but cool and masterly diplomacy enabled them for a generation to hold their own better than any other native race against the restless Americans.  This was the half-breed Alexander McGillivray, perhaps the most gifted man who was ever born on the soil of Alabama.[27]

His father was a Scotch trader, Lachlan McGillivray by name, who came when a boy to Charleston, then the head-quarters of the commerce carried on by the British with the southern Indians.  On visiting the traders’ quarter of the town, the young Scot was strongly attracted by the sight of the weather-beaten packers, with their gaudy, half-Indian finery, their hundreds of pack-horses, their curious pack-saddles, and their bales of merchandise.  Taking service with them, he was soon helping to drive a pack-train along one of the narrow trails that crossed the lonely pine wilderness.  To strong, coarse spirits, that were both shrewd and daring, and willing to balance the great risks incident to their mode of life 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.