Ellicott encounters“Indian Willy”
and the Mad Dog Seminole Chief
by Joseph Gatins
© 2011 moccasinbadlandsreview.blogspot.com
The Story of Georgia’s Boundaries: A Meeting of History and Geography, by William J. Morton, M.D, J.D., Georgia History Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 2009.
The Journal of Andrew Ellicott, Late Commissioner on Behalf of the United States During Part of the Year 1796, 1797, 1798, 1799 and part of the year 1800 for Determining the Boundary Between the United States and the Possessions of His Catholic Majesty in America: Occasional Remarks of Situation, Soil, River, National Productions and Diseases of the Different Counties on the Ohio, Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico, with Six Maps Comprehending the Ohio, the Mississippi from the Mouth of the Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico, the whole of West Florida and part of East Florida, to which is added An Appendix, by Andrew Ellicott, W. Fry, Philadelphia, 1803 and 1814.
Andrew Ellicott, the bold and accurate surveyor of early American boundary lines, needs little introduction for residents of north Georgia or neighboring Western North Carolina and South Carolina’s Upcountry. Ellicott’s Rock still stands today in the easternmost eddies of the Wild and Scenic Chattooga River as the geographic meeting point for all three states.
Perhaps less-well known is that Ellicott also surveyed and mapped Georgia’s southernmost boundary with Florida at a time when that territory was still claimed by Spain, and left a 151-page book report, The Journal of Andrew Ellicott, that is as good a read as any of the reports from the Bartram father-and-son team.
Ellicott and his team of surveyors and soldiers not only left highly detailed astronomical and boundary descriptions of a still very much wild southern frontier, but also had an eye for describing the rich slice of humanity he met during his travels.
“Early in the morning of the 17th, we received a message from Indian Willy (a person of property) who resides on the Chattahoocha a few miles above the mouth of the Flint River,” Ellicott wrote, “to the following effect:
“Gentlemen, I have sent my Negro to inform you that about twenty Indians lay near my place last night. They intend mischief; many more are behind; they say they are Choctkaws, but this is not true. Be on your guard and remember I have nothing to do with it. My Negro goes at midnight.”
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| One of Ellicott's maps, depicting Spain's then boundary with the United States of America. |
Earlier in his travels, near Pensacola, Ellicott reported meeting with “Mad Dog Chief,” who at the time was “the speaker of the [Seminole] nation.” Later, as he rounded the Florida Keys and repaired to Cumberland Island and St. Simons, the surveyor made note of the flora and fauna encountered on the trek, as well as the early depredations made to the landscape.
“Some of the [Florida] Keys or Islands were formerly very well timbered, with valuable kinds, such a lignum vitae, fustick and ironwood, but have been cut off by the inhabitants of the Bahamas Islands,” the journal reported. Elsewhere, Ellicott generally described Florida’s East Coast as serving “as dens and hiding places for the privateers and picaroons of the Bahamas Islands, by which this trade of both nations has suffered immeasurably in spoliations.” [Fustic is the antiquated name for a large tropical American mulberry, or yellowwood (Chlorophora tinctoria or Maclura tinctoria), that was once prized for making yellow dye.]
The regret today is that the equally rich journal penned when he conducted the survey for Georgia’s northeasternmost boundary at the 35th parallel no longer exists.
As William J. Morton puts it in his own very informative, 183-page book, The Story of Georgia’s Boundaries, “it appears that Ellicott never was paid for his work and one can conclude that the reason this particular journal, of all the voluminous records of his which survived, cannot be found is that he probably destroyed it.”
Morton describes Ellicott, a third-generation American who served as a major in the Revolutionary War, as a “self-taught mathematician, astronomer, and clockmaker – skills which aided him as a surveyor.”
His four-year survey of the United States – Spanish border “is one of the most amazing yet largely untold stories in American history,” according to Morton, who is now currently completing a sequel, a separate biography of Ellicott. The contemporary author, based in Atlanta, boasts impressive credentials as both a urological surgeon and attorney. His wide interests, as wide as Ellicott’s in his day, include history, astronomy, ornithology and photography and he holds licenses as a private pilot and U.S. Coast Guard captain.
Morton’s book presents as a carefully documented and footnoted volume that could just as well serve as an excellent primer of early American and Georgia history and European settlement, beginning in 1732, with King George’s granting of a Charter to the Georgia Trustees. That early boundary extended only to the land mass between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers and then directly westward from both rivers’ headwaters all the way to the Pacific Ocean! And it was still wild territory when Ellicott traversed it about 65 years later. His descriptions of alligators in and near Okeefenokee Swamp jump off the page: “The Alligator appear to abound plentifully in marsh, the smell of which is sometimes perceptible to a considerable distance, when they are wounded or killed.”
At the same time, Ellicott said of himself, “I am an indifferent botanist, I am constrained to be very limited on that subject,” and referred readers to the travels of William Bartram in the same regional a quarter-century previously and whose own reports “contain much valuable botanical knowledge to which it is justly entitled.”
But Ellicott still had an eye for the rich biodiversity encountered on his trek. In between the remains of many remnant Mississippian Indian mounds, he found impressively large and “impenetrable” canebrakes, “probably [to] be destroyed by the cattle, hogs and fire. Its general height is from 20 to 36 feet though I have met with it on the slopes of several hills 42 feet high.” In the semi-tropics of West Florida, he found what he termed “long moss,” (i.e., Spanish moss).“[It] is a very useful article and answers as well for beds and mattresses as craped horse hair, and it is nearly as elastic, and almost incorruptible,” Ellicott said.
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| Morton @ Ellicott's Rock |
A similar care for detail characterized Ellicott’s survey work, according to Morton. “Modern techniques have shown all of Ellicott’s surveys to be almost perfect,” the author says, whereas other, later surveyors had a hard time accurately marking and finding the 35th parallel (which was supposed to be Georgia’s northern boundary). These subsequent mistakes led to any number of boundary disputes well detailed in the Morton volume.
Both books should be required reading of all interested in Georgia’s natural and political history.
Editor’s note: Morton’s boundary book is available at the customary outlets in hard- and soft-cover as well as an e-book. An archival copy of Ellicott’s journal is available for review at the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia in Athens – but call first (706-542-7123), as the collections are being moved to a new location. Digital copies of the Ellicott journal and maps also can be reviewed online through the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, and other university digital archives.
Photo credits: Ellicott map reproduced with permission of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.
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