the Savannah River, which were well stocked
with negroes, and stores filled with merchandise in both Savannah and
Augusta. When Lachlan McGillivray's son Alexander reached the age of
fourteen, he was carried to Savannah and placed at school, and in a few
years was made a clerk in a counting-house at Savannah.

But the humdrum business of buying, selling, and adding up long rows of
tiresome figures, did not please him, and so he neglected his duties to
read books, mainly histories. His father, taking the advice of friends,
placed young Alexander under the tutorship of a clergyman in Charleston,
where the lad learned Latin and Greek, and in that way became well
grounded in what our dear old grandfathers called polite literature. But
one day word came to the young man that the chiefs of the Creek nation,
who were getting into trouble with the people of Georgia, were waiting
for the moment when he, as a descendant of the tribe of The Wind, should
return and take charge of the affairs of the nation. So he departed
suddenly from Charleston, and turned his horse's head toward the
wilderness.

[Illustration: McGillavray joins the Indians 208]

On his way to the Creek nation, he fell in with Leclerc Mil-fort, an
adventurous Frenchman, who afterwards wrote a book of travels, and
was made a general of brigade by Napoleon. Milfort married one of
McGillivray's sisters, was made Tustenug-gee (or grand war chief), and
was the right-hand man of his powerful brother-in-law. The first that
was heard of McGillivray after he left Charleston, he was presiding at
a grand national council of the Creeks at the town of Coweta on the
Chattahoochee. When Alexander arrived among the Creeks, Colonel Tait of
the British army was stationed on the Coosa, and he used all his tact
and influence to prevail upon the young man to take the side of the
English in the war that was then going on between the Colonies and
the mother country. To this end Colonel Tait pursued McGillivray with
attentions, loaded him with favors, and finally caused him to be given
the rank and pay of a colonel in the army. The result was that the great
chief was throughout the war devoted to the cause of the British.
This would have been natural in any event, for his father was a stanch
Royalist. During the war, McGillivray frequently acted in concert with
the notorious Daniel McGirth, sometimes leading his Indians in person;
but his main dependence was on his brother-in-law Milfo