MACGILLIVRAY

MACGILLIVRAY, ALEXANDER, a chieftain of the Creek or Muscogee Indians, born on the Coosa river near the present site of Wetumpka about 1740, died in Pensacola, Feb. 17, 1793. His father, Lachlan McGillivray, was a Scotchman of good family, who ran away from home when a boy, came to America, and acquired a large fortune by trade with the southern tribes of Indians. His mother was Sehoy Marchand, the half-breed daughter of a French officer who was murdered in 1722, in a mutiny of his own soldiers, while commanding Fort Toulouse, on the Coosa river. Alexander received a good education in Charleston, and was noted as a boy for his fondness for books and literature. His father had intended to educate him for commercial life, and at one time he was placed in a counting-house in Savannah; but having no taste for trade, he returned, on arriving at manhood, to his Muscogee relatives. Here he soon rose to a high position among the united tribes of Creeks and Seminoles, and at the breaking out of the American revolution was their recognized head. During the war of the revolution the McGillivrays, father and son, were zealous adherents of the royal cause, and the former held the rank of a colonel in the British service. He left the country with the British when they evacuated Savannah, and his estates were confiscated. After the war, Alexander McGillivray, in behalf of the Muscogee confederacy, entered into an alliance with Spain, of which government he was made a commissary, with the rank and pay of colonel. The trade of the Creeks, under his influence, was directed to Pensacola, and for several years he baffled the most persevering efforts of the governments of the United States and Georgia to open an intercourse with the Creeks, and obtain a cession of certain disputed lands lying on the Oconee. At length, in 1790, he was induced by Washington to visit New York, where he was received with high honors, and where he eventually signed a treaty yielding the disputed territory. In return for this concession, beside a pecuniary equivalent to the Creeks, McGillivray by a secret article was rewarded with the appointment of agent for the United States, together with the rank and pay of brigadier-general in the army. The proviVOL. XI.-1

MACGREGOR

sions of this treaty were not acceptable to the Creeks; it diminished the influence of the chief, and he either was or affected to be unable to prevail upon them fully to comply with it. Meantime, however, he continued to retain his chieftainship, and at the same time actually succeeded in obtaining an increase of salary and of authority from the Spanish government. Although engaged in several military expeditions, in concert with the British, during the revolutionary war, he was less distinguished for military talent than for his skill in controlling the wild chieftains under his command, and the adroitness and ability of his conduct in dealing with the agents of more civilized governments. His hospitality and generosity were almost princely. His deportment was that of a polished gentleman; and his published correspondence affords evidence of his intelligence and education, as well as of his skill as a politician. He was a brother-in-law of the famous Le Clerc Milfort, and an uncle of William Weatherford.

MACGILLIVRAY, WILLIAM, a Scottish naturalist, born in the isle of Harris in 1796, died in Aberdeen, Sept. 5, 1852. In 1823 he was appointed assistant professor of natural history in the university of Edinburgh, and subsequently conservator of the museum of the royal college of surgeons. In 1841 he was made professor of natural history in Marischal college, Aberdeen, which office he held till his death. The most popular of his works are: "History of British Birds," "History of British Quadrupeds," and a treatise on "The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland." The queen purchased his MSS. of the "Natural History of Dee-side and Braemar," on account of its being specially illustrative of the vicinity of her highland residence at Balmoral, and caused it to be printed in 1856, and copies of it to be sent to all the societies of natural history throughout her dominions.

MACGREGOR, JOHN, a British statistician and politician, born at Stornoway, Ross-shire, in 1797, died in Boulogne, April 23, 1857. At an early age he was placed in a commercial house in Canada, which gave him opportunities for collecting the particulars of the resources of the country embodied in his work entitled