Sehoy II or Sehoy Marchand (b. c. 1722) was a Muscogee Creek Wind Clan woman who was part of the Sehoy matrilineage. She and her family are known for their intermarriages with white traders, with the children inheriting their tribal identities from the mother's side.
She was born around 1722, the daughter of Sehoy I of the Wind Clan and a French officer, Marchand, who commanded at Fort Toulouse. [1] (Some have argued that she was instead a 'full-blooded' indigenous American.) [2] She was half-sister to Muscogean Chief Red Shoes II through her mother Sehoy's marriage to Red Shoes I. [1]
Sehoy married Scottish trader Lachlan McGillivray about 1745. In 1851, Albert J. Pickett wrote that they met at Hickory Ground a few miles from Fort Toulouse, married according to Creek forms, and settled at Little Tallassee. He said, 'The Indian tradition ran that, while pregnant with her first child, she repeatedly dreamed of piles of manuscripts, ink and paper, and heaps of books...', foreshadowing her son Alexander's career. [3]
Lachlan took advantage of Sehoy's influential connections in the Creek nation to extend his commerce. Their children were Alexander McGillivray (b. 1750), Sophia Durant, and Jeannette/Jennet, who married Le Clerc Milfort, as well as two who died in childhood. Lachlan departed the country in 1757. [4]
Sehoy II also had other marriages, to Scottish trader Malcolm McPherson and, according to family tradition, to an unnamed chief of the Tawasa or Tuckabatchee. [5] Her children by these marriages were Sehoy III, Elizabeth, and Malcolm McPherson II, who predeceased his sisters so that they inherited his property. [6] Sehoy II's marriage to McPherson is sometimes placed before and sometimes after her marriage to Lachlan. [7] [4]
Sehoy II's death date is unknown, but her daughter Sehoy III's move to live with the Moniac family at eight may suggest that Sehoy II had died by then. She was buried 'on the river bluff there near the Indian Mound in Montgomery. [8]
The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek or just Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy, are a group of related Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands in the United States. Their historical homelands are in what now comprises southern Tennessee, much of Alabama, western Georgia and parts of northern Florida.
The Creek War was a regional conflict between opposing Native American factions, European powers, and the United States during the early 19th century. The Creek War began as a conflict within the tribes of the Muscogee, but the United States quickly became involved. British traders and Spanish colonial officials in Florida supplied the Red Sticks with weapons and equipment due to their shared interest in preventing the expansion of the United States into regions under their control.
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon, Georgia, United States preserves traces of over ten millennia of culture from the Native Americans of the Southeastern Woodlands. Its chief remains are major earthworks built before 1000 CE by the South Appalachian Mississippian culture These include the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches. They represented highly skilled engineering techniques and soil knowledge, and the organization of many laborers. The site has evidence of "12,000 years of continuous human habitation." The 3,336-acre (13.50 km2) park is located on the east bank of the Ocmulgee River. Macon, Georgia developed around the site after the United States built Fort Benjamin Hawkins nearby in 1806 to support trading with Native Americans.
Alexander McGillivray, also known as Hoboi-Hili-Miko, was a Muscogee (Creek) leader. The son of a Muscogee mother and a Scottish father, he was literate and educated, and understood the "white" European world and merchandise trading well. These gave him prestige, especially with European Americans, who were glad to finally find a Creek leader they could talk to and deal with. He used his role as link between the two worlds to his advantage, not always fairly, and became the richest Creek of his time.
William Weatherford, also known after his death as Red Eagle, was a Creek chief of the Upper Creek towns who led many of the Red Sticks actions in the Creek War (1813–1814) against Lower Creek towns and against allied forces of the United States.
Lachlan McGillivray was a prosperous fur trader and planter in colonial Georgia with interests that extended from Savannah to what is now central Alabama. He was the father of Alexander McGillivray and the great-uncle of William McIntosh and William Weatherford, three of the most powerful and historically important Native American chiefs among the Creek of the Southeast.
Albert James Pickett was a planter and lawyer in Autauga County, Alabama. He is known as Alabama's first historian, having published a two-volume history of the state in 1851.
William McIntosh, also commonly known as Tustunnuggee Hutke, was one of the most prominent chiefs of the Creek Nation between the turn of the 19th-century and his execution in 1825. He was a chief of Coweta town and commander of a mounted police force. He became a large-scale planter, built and managed a successful inn, and operated a commercial ferry business.
The trans-Atlantic trade in deerskins was a significant commercial activity in Colonial America that was greatly influenced, and at least partially dominated, by Scottish traders and their firms. This trade, primarily in deerskins but also in beaver and other animal pelts, was carried on with Native American tribes and is usually referred to as the Indian Trade. The Indian trade was conducted largely to fill the high European and later colonial demand for deerskins and other animal pelts trapped by Indians in return for European trade goods. These pelts were shipped to Europe and used in the leather-making industry. The trade had been developing since the seventeenth century and Scottish traders played an important part in its advance.
Tugaloo was a Cherokee town located on the Tugaloo River, at the mouth of Toccoa Creek. It was south of Toccoa and Travelers Rest State Historic Site in present-day Stephens County, Georgia. Cultures of ancient indigenous peoples had occupied this area, and those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture built a platform mound and village here. It was an administrative and ceremonial center for them.
Jean Baptiste Louis DeCourtel Marchand, aka Captain Francois Marchand de Courcelles, was an eighteenth century French officer that served in the French colonies in America, and died after a second tour or duty ending in 1734. Marchand fathered two children with Sehoy, a daughter of the matrilineal Wind Clan of the Creek Nation, during his time in Alabama: Chief Red Shoes and Sehoy II Marchand (1722-1785), herself mother of Sehoy III McPherson and Creek Chief Alexander McGillivray. Moreover William Weatherford, the notorious Red Eagle, and his half-brother the mestizo Charles Weatherford were the sons of Sehoy III.
Joseph Bailly was a fur trader and a member of an important French Canadian family that included his uncle, Charles-François Bailly de Messein.
Red Shoes was a Muskogean leader of the Tuskegee people in the 18th century. He primarily lived in modern Alabama near Tuskegee at the forks of the Alabama River, but his influence extended well into modern Mississippi.
Fort Toulouse and Fort Jackson are two forts that shared the same site at the fork of the Coosa River and the Tallapoosa River, near Wetumpka, Alabama.
Lachlan McIntosh was a Scottish American military and political leader during the American Revolution and the early United States. In a 1777 duel, he fatally shot Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence ten months earlier.
William Panton was the head of a group of five Scottish merchants who in 1783 founded the powerful and influential trading firm of Panton, Leslie & Company at St. Augustine, then the capital of British East Florida. They formed a partnership to trade with the Indians of Florida and the Spanish borderlands on the southern frontier of the British colonies. By 1795 the company had established a monopoly on trade with the Indian tribes of what is now the southeastern United States, sanctioned by successive governors of Spanish Florida.
Sophia Durant was a Koasati Native American plantation owner, who served as the speaker, interpreter, and translator for her brother, Alexander McGillivray, a leader in the Muscogee Confederacy.
Sehoy, or Sehoy I, was an 18th-century matriarch of the Muscogee Confederacy and a member of the Wind clan.
Fort Okfuskee was the name of two separate forts built by Great Britain in what is now Tallapoosa County, Alabama. The first fort was built to ensure British trade with the Creek Indians after the French constructed Fort Toulouse. The fort was abandoned a little over a decade after construction after facing difficulties in being supplied. A second Fort Okfuskee was built a year later, but was abandoned in less than a year due to lack of colonial support.
Sehoy III, also called Sehoy Weatherford was a Muscogee Creek trader who was part of the Sehoy matrilineage. Through her two marriages to white traders she was the mother of sons who were involved in the Creek War and the Red Sticks.