William Weatherford
William Weatherford was not adopted into the Creek tribe which largely raised him. He was born into it, the son of a local Scot’s trader named Charles Weatherford and a Creek daughter of a powerful chieftain. The Creeks were a matrilineal society, with women responsible for the upbringing of children and thus held in high esteem as they were responsible for the preservation of Creek society. William interacted with both the local residents of European descent, to whom he was known as Billy, and with the Creeks who called him Red Eagle.
As Red Eagle, he became leading war chief of the Creeks in his own right, and one of the protagonists of the Creek war with the United States, a theater of the War of 1812. The Creeks had by then largely been split into two factions, one assimilated into the American culture (called the lower Creeks), the other opposing the lower Creeks and their American allies, called Red Sticks. Red Eagle associated with and was a leader of the Red Sticks.
At Ft. Mims the Red Sticks massacred the lower Creeks and American settlers and militia. Later they were attacked in their fortified encampment by American troops at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, where Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston both led American troops (Houston was a young lieutenant and suffered grisly wounds) and the Creeks were routed. Red Eagle fled to Florida with the Seminole for a time, before surrendering to Jackson at Fort Jackson, under the name William Weatherford.
Jackson recognized the obvious usefulness of Weatherford/Red Eagle to both sides, and compelled him to help negotiate the treaty which ended the Creek War, and which retained a portion of the Creek lands. Weatherford was allowed to retire to his own lands, which he did, with his third wife and children. All of his marriages had been interracial.
For the rest of his life, Red Eagle lived as William Weatherford, working a plantation which grew tobacco, cotton, and other crops, in what became Mississippi. He maintained a correspondence with Andrew Jackson, whom he visited at the Hermitage, where they discussed their mutual interests in race horses and slaves. There is ample evidence that they expressed their views regarding the proper nutrition for both. Weatherford died in 1824, five years before Jackson became president.
Keep Reading:
New England Historical Society – Eunice Williams, The Unredeemed Captive
Medium – Nine Years a Captive — the Story of Herman Lehmann
History Collection – The Little Known History of American Indians during the Civil War