He eventually built a large complex using African slave labor, including mills, and raised a considerable quantity of cattle and hogs.

When the College (which he never graduated from) temporarily closed due to the outbreak of war, Hawkins was commissioned a Colonel and served for several years on George Washington's staff as his main interpreter of French.

January 1, 1789, was set as the date for the assembling of the commissioners for running the Creek line in conformity to the treaties at New York and Coleraine.

Though about sixteen families of Georgians were found on the Creek lands in the area known as Wofford's Settlement, McHenry was told "...I am happy in being able to assure you that there was no diversity of opinion among us, and that the line was closed in perfect harmony.

[7] In 1796, Washington appointed Benjamin Hawkins as General Superintendent of Indian Affairs, dealing with all tribes south of the Ohio River.

Hawkins expanded his operation to include more than 1,000 head of cattle and a large number of hogs, and raised "immense crops" of corn and other provisions.

His personal hard work and open-handed generosity won him such respect that reports say that he never lost an animal to Indian raiders.

A group of Creek rebels, known as Red Sticks, were working to revive traditional ways and halt encroachment by European Americans.

[12] General Andrew Jackson led the defeat of the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, in present-day Alabama.

Hawkins was unable to attend negotiations of the Treaty of Fort Jackson in August 1814, which required the Creeks to cede most of their territory and give up their way of life.

Hawkins later organized "friendly" Creek warriors to oppose a British force on the Apalachicola River that threatened to rally the scattered Red Sticks and reignite the war on the Georgia frontier.

Near the end of his life, he formally married Lavinia Downs in a European-American ceremony, making their children legitimate in United States society.

[citation needed] It has massive earthwork mounds built nearly 1,000 years ago as expressions of the religious and political world of the Mississippian culture, the ancestors to the Creek.

[13]: 27–28 It was Hawkins who first used the term negro fort to refer to the British Post on the Apalachicola River, at that time in Spanish Florida.

[citation needed] They had a total of six daughters: Georgia, Muscogee, Cherokee, Carolina, Virginia, and Jeffersonia, and one son, James Madison Hawkins.

In 1812, thinking he was on his death bed, Hawkins remarried his wife Susan Lavinia Downs to make sure their children were legitimate in U.S.