Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

Early on when I started researching and writing about history a passage in Fannie Mae Davis’ book, Douglas County, Georgia: From Indian Trail to Interstate 20 caught my eye. She wrote, “The first known white visitor was Indian agent, Benjamin Hawkins, who had visited the site of Hurricane Creek in 1796 and 1798 and described the destruction of a powerful hurricane or tornado.”

I’ve seen this same passage used again and again in various written histories of Douglas County including The Heritage of Douglas County by the  and within an online history written by Joe Baggett seen here.

I thought the idea was intriguing because we could pinpoint the first known white visitor to our area. Of course, since Davis and Baggett are no longer with us I’m not able to determine what resource was used to determine this. They didn’t cite their work regarding Benjamin Hawkins, so I decided to do a little more digging.

There is most certainly a Hurricane Creek located in Douglas County. It crosses Post Rd., Bill Arp Rd. (Highway 5) and Old Five Notch Rd. before spilling into the Chattahoochee River. The section of the creek from Mt. Zion Rd. to Highway Five is well known to white water enthusiasts and is described as a 2.52 miles long class IV(V) section of whitewater by American Whitewater.

So, how does a creek located so far inland end up with a name like Hurricane Creek?

In the book, Placenames of Georgia by John H. Goff, Frances Lee Utley and Marion R. Hemperley they discuss how the word hurricane  was used to name places all across the South. They say: 

When the English colonist began settling the lower Southeast, they experienced vicious wind storms that on occasion appeared from nowhere during the warm months to devastate settlements and smash swaths through great forests. These newcomers, with an upper temperate zone background knew about storms, gales, lightning, and rain, but they were unfamiliar with the new type of storm and lacked a name for it. This led them to use the Spanish-Indian designation, which had already become known to Englishmen. And interestingly enough, they applied the expression to inland blows even though the original designation stemmed from tropical spawned tempests that periodically visited coastal margins.

Kenneth Krakow’s Georgia Place Names states, “Streams by (the name Hurricane) are fairly well distributed in Georgia, mostly in an east-west band across the state, through an area most frequented by (storms).”

Based on this information and the mention of Hurricane Creek provided by Davis and Baggett I immediately decided Benjamin Hawkins crossed the creek on his journey across Douglas County lands. Obviously, there might have been some evidence that a “hurricane” had occurred there such as torn up ground or downed trees.

At this point my digging turned towards Benjamin Hawkins. 

Hawkins, born in 1754 got his start by volunteering with the Continental Army during the American Revolution. He served on George Washington’s staff as his main French interpreter. If you know anything concerning the Revolution you realize what a key position Hawkins held since French assistance was vital to the Continental Army’s success.

Hawkins served as a delegate to the Continental Congress during the time the U.S. Constitution was ratified, served in the Senate representing North Carolina and sat in on some negotiations with the Creek Indians brokering several key treaties.  

President George Washington appointed Benjamin Hawkins as General Superintendent of Indian Affairs in 1796. Hawkins had authorization to deal with all tribes south of the Ohio River. He took his job very seriously and immediately set out on a journey through Indian held territory to learn as much as he could about the tribes. 

Merritt B. Pound wrote in Benjamin Hawkins: Indian Agent, “More than anyone else (Benjamin Hawkins was) responsible for the policy of Indian relations between the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and the end of the War of 1812.”  The entire work by Pounds can be found here. Nine volumes of his journals now belong to the Historical Society of Georgia under the title The Letters of Benjamin Hawkins.

During his journey, Hawkins recorded his observations noting topography, details concerning Indian agriculture, wildlife and Indian customs. Hawkins was a brave man. He set out with a few supplies and his horse. He usually picked up interpreters and guides along the way. He had no idea how he would be received from place to place, and he was total dependent upon the people of the Upper Creeks, Lower Creeks and the Cherokee Nation for “sheleter, refreshment, information and guidance.”

Pounds advises, “One of the principal objectives of his journey was to ascertain the attitude of Natives toward the government’s plan to help them learn to adapt the white man’s culture–Hawkins worked to lessen the constant tension between the frontier states and the Indian nations and to increase agriculture in order to settle Native Americans to the land.” 

The last few words in Pounds statement–increase agriculture in order to settle Native American land–are bothersome to me. At the time of he was appointed as Indian Agent, the deerskin trade was failing not just for the Creeks but for other groups of southern Indians not to mention they were under pressure to hand their lands over to cotton planters. One of the solutions the U.S. government promoted and Benjamin Hawkins supported was to train Indian men and women regarding ranching, farming, and cottage industries such as cloth making. The training would in turn assimilate the people as American citizens, and the hope was Native Americans would willingly dissolve their national sovereignty and simply hand over their territories to the U.S. government.

Unfortunately, an important fact was largely ignored yet it was staring government leaders and settlers in the face. The Native Americans who inhabited southern states during the early 1800s had been farmers for centuries. Several Indian families had already begun to ranch on their own.  

Another factor that seemed to be overlooked was assimilation had been taking place since so many Cherokees and Creeks lived as many of their white neighbors did. Apparently the assimilation wasn’t going as fast as the U.S. government wanted hence the hopes for an education program.

Getting back to the notion Benjamin Hawkins travelled across Douglas County and helped to name our Hurricane Creek –   

I can’t find any proof that Hawkins was ever here. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t here, but he was very meticulous regarding documenting his travels. I decided to read through his writings and map out his journey. I used Hawkins journal entries provided by Merritt B. Pounds who I already linked to above. I have provided a copy of the map published within the book in my pictures with this column. The dotted line clearly shows the travels of Benjamin Hawkins and unfortunately he was never here. Through his travels when he crossed the Chattahoochee River it was far downstream from Douglas County at Phenix City, Alabama or as it was referred to in those days–Coweta Tallahassee.  

Hawkins Viatory is extremely important historically because it records one of the first known journeys through the Chattahoochee River Valley including present-day Harris and Troup Counties. In fact, it is near where the Harris-Troup line exists today that Hawkins records the land had experienced some sort of hurricane because it was evident some type of weather event had destroyed trees in not one place along his route but five different places, and it appeared they had occurred at different times due to new growth or the absence thereof.

Pounds states he, “continued through a neighborhood devoted to hurricanes” then through “Ocfuskoochee Talauhassee” an Ocfuskenena” an Indian town that had been burned by white settlers. Ocfuskoochee Talauhassee is Chattahoochee Old Town near Franklin, Georgia while the town that had been burned is now located under the waters of West Point Lake.

 At this link you can find The Collected Works of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796-1806 with an introduction by Thomas Foster which also provides a detailed overview of Hawkins journeys. Not only are Letters of Benjamin Hawkins included but two other works of Hawkins are also published–A Viatory or Journal of Distances and Observations and A Sketch of the Creek Country in the Years 1798 and 1799.   

More than likely our Hurricane Creek in Douglas County was named by Indians or settlers in the area, who noted some sort of significant storm damage, but the name was not given by Benjamin Hawkins and his own records do not indicate he ever crossed our county.

Hawkins eventually settled in present-day Crawford County near Roberta, Georgia where he had what has been described as five-mile square compound on both sides of the Flint River known as the Creek Agency Reserve. The homestead’s exact location is lost to history, but the place was located on the Lower Creek Trading Path which means it was also along the Old Federal Road connecting Washington D.C. and New Orleans.

Hawkins lived there with his Creek wife, their seven children and dozens of slaves. By 1807, Moravian missionaries along with the slaves used the 8,004 acres as a type of model plantation to teach Creek Indians agriculture, husbandry, and home industry.

All that remains is the grave of Benjamin Hawkins seen here. 

Plans to forcibly assimilate the Creeks and the Cherokee failed, of course. A full scale war was underway by 1813. Have you ever heard the saying, “The good Lord willing and the Creeks don’t rise”? You generally hear someone say this around times of flooding or when making reference to a busy schedule.  

Actually, this saying has something to do with the Creek Indians. My article from 2009, at History Is Elementary touches on this a little while this site gives Benjamin Hawkins credit for the saying.

Gee, is it just me or does Hawkins seem to get the credit for everything?