Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 475
to represent his country in the highest and noblest spheres of useful
ness, should have found employment for his talents in a wilderness,
among savage tribes. But whilst he was still a member of the Conti
nental Congress, he had shown a peculiar fitness, a rare aptitude, for
Indian negotiations; and in this connection let it be said that it required
no ordinary gifts to meet the demands of such a service and to render
justice alike to the white man and to the Indian. Nor was the life to
which Colonel Hawking was called as Indian agent without its far-reach
ing effect upon his country's political fortunes. At the close of the
Revolution, the adjustment of relations with the various Indian tribes
became a matter of the greatest interest; and Congress appointed Colonel
Hawking one of the commissioners plenipotentiary to open friendly
relations with the four great southern tribes, the Creeks, the Cherokees,
the Choctaws, and the Chickasaws. With the last three tribes the com
missioners succeeded in negotiating satisfactory treaties, whereby they
placed themselves under the protection of the United States Govern
ment and gave to Congress the sole power of regulating trade with them.
The attempt to conciliate the Creeks, however, failed, due to entangle
ment with Spain by virtue of the treaty of Pensacola and to difficulties
with Georgia. Finally, however, in the treaty of New York, in 1790,
by a master stroke of Washington, the Creeks put themselves in like
relation to the Government.
Thus it became a matter of the utmost importance to cultivate these
Indians. Washington fixed his eyes on the long-known and well-tried
North Carolina senator as the fittest man to take charge of the well ad
vanced work of conciliation and to crown it by becoming the permanent
agent. His family—one of the most influential and numerous in the
state—opposed his accepting this appointment. Every inducement on
the part of friends and relatives was brought to bear upon him in vain.
He recognized in the appointment an imperative call of duty; and, like
the great Hebrew law-giver, he put behind him the allurements of
wealth and power and turned his face toward the wilderness. Nor was
it his own flesh and blood whom he undertook to lead but an alien race
of hostile savages. He looked upon the work as his mission. He gave
to it the best there was in him. He not only accepted the appointment
but he made its life-long duties a labor of love and a source of high
moral and intellectual enjoyment.
His master-stroke was the treaty of Coleraine, negotiated in 1796.
It was the much-needed supplement to the treaty of New York and it
laid the basis for happy and harmonious relations. He studied the
country and the people and accomplished himself in all knowledge per
taining to both; and here the advantages of early education bore fruit.
He surrounded himself with books; and, in his self-decreed, official exile,
he labored with his pen, telling posterity of the people among whom he
lived. Most of his manuscripts perished in the burning of his home
after his death; but enough were rescued to attest the importance of
the work, and these have been confided to the Georgia Historical Society,
in Savannah. Says Colonel Chappell: "The interest which they once
excited has long since become extinct, with the melancholy fortunes