In 1818, when living with her father on the Wakulla River near the San Marcos de Apalache fort (modern St. Marks, Florida), she saved the life of a U.S. soldier, Duncan McCrimmon (sometimes misspelled McKrimmon[1]: 81 ).
[1]: 82 This incident received much attention in the U.S. press, and was cited as an influential example of how the Indians were not all "savages" as was their customary portrayal.
[1]: 97 She along with others of her father's town were then ordered to walk to Fort Gadsden and from there back to the Creek nation in Alabama.
[1]: 135 Many years later, Lieutenant Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock was sent in 1842 by the U.S. government "to investigate reports of frauds committed on the newly arrived emigrants" (to the Indian Territory).
[1]: 137 Finding her in great poverty, with only three surviving of her eight children, and "dressed something like a white woman",[1]: 137 he wrote to Secretary of War J. C. Spencer asking that she be given a pension by the U.S.
The pension monies due her at the time of her death were to have been paid to an Indian agent to benefit her children.