Battle of New Orleans.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Benjamin Hawkins (The Hawkins Line)-- Part 1

From Wikipedia.

The Hawkins Line was mentioned in the last post as the  dividing line between Creek Indian land and American settlers.

I looked up this line and found it to have been named after Benjamin Hawkins.

Born 1754, died June 6, 1816.  American planter, statesman and U.S. Indian agent.

Delegate to the Continental Congress and U.S. senator from North Carolina.  Appointed by George Washington as General Superintendent for Indian Affairs and served in that post from 1796 to his death.  As such, he was in charge of Native American tribes south of the Ohio River and he was the principal agent to the Creek Indians.

He established the Creek Agency and lived at his plantation in Georgia, in present-day Crawford County.  He learned to speak the Muscogee language and was adopted into the tribe.  Some say his wife, Lavinia Downs, was a Creek woman.

In 1786, he and fellow Indian agents Andrew Pickens and Joseph Martin concluded a treaty with the Choctows which set the boundaries of their land.

In 1789, he worked out a similar line for the Creeks which became known as the Hawkins Line.

--Brock-Perry

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