Sophia Durant
Sophia Durant (c. 1752 – c. 1813/1831) was a Koasati Native American plantation owner who served as the speaker, interpreter, and translator for her brother, Alexander McGillivray, a leader in the Muscogee Confederacy.
Durant was born to a mixed-race Native mother and Scottish father in the mid-18th century on Muscogee Confederacy lands in what is now Elmore County, Alabama.
After managing with her husband, probably a mixed-race Black/Native man, her father's estates in Savannah, Georgia, for three or four years, Durant returned to Muscogee territory and established the first cattle plantation in the Tensaw District of the nation.
She also managed communal lands as part of her matriarchal inheritance at Hickory Ground and operated as a middleman between Anglo and Native traders.
[25] Because Alexander had difficulty with the varying Native dialects or because of a diplomatic practice common at the time, he often relied on Sophia as his speaker, interpreter, and translator.
[20] That year, the Durants established a cattle plantation between the Alabama and Escambia Rivers with Alexander south of Little Tallasee in the Tensaw district with forty enslaved people.
[43] The community that developed around their cattle plantation included various families linked to the matrilineage of Sehoy Marchand through birth or marriage, such as Bailey, Cornells, Durant, Francis, McGirth, McPherson, Milfort, Moniac, Stiggins, Tate, and Weatherford.
Most of these intermarried with other mixed-race European-Native families,[44] for example, Sehoy III married Adam Tate,[45] and then later Charles Weatherford, of mixed Scottish and Native descent.
[46] In 1784, Alexander secured Spanish protection for the Muscogee, signing a treaty at Pensacola which dampened Georgia's encroachment on Creek claims to three million acres of land.
The treaty also promised a trading monopoly for the British firm of Panton, Leslie & Company with the Creeks and appointed McGillivray as a representative to the Spanish government with an annual salary.
For example, when their brother Malcolm McPherson died in 1799, Chief Singer wrote Sophia and Sehoy, who was married to Charles Weatherford, asking their permission to raise his nephews.
They allowed him to manage McPherson's estate for a while, but eventually, Sehoy Weatherford, Sophia, and Jeanette took all the cattle and enslaved people belonging to the matrilineage.
[66] When Alexander died, Sophia had his body removed from Pensacola and buried on his property at Choctaw Bluff in what is now Clarke County, Alabama.
[67] Sophia and Benjamin paid their debts by renting out or selling the people they enslaved and showed little interest in farming to create an agricultural surplus that could be sold.
[72][73] Sophia developed personal relationships with her slaves and allowed them a liberal measure of autonomy, such as letting them travel alone to conduct business and throwing an annual Christmas celebration for them.
[34][74] The adoption of the Constitution of the United States in 1789 established that the exclusive right to negotiate with Native peoples was vested in the federal government.
[26][79] In Albert J. Pickett's version, Native people threatened white settlers in the Tensaw District and Sophia, who was at her plantations there rode for four days with a slave woman to persuade an assembly of headmen at Hickory Ground to abandon their attack plans.
[26] In author Mary Ann Wells' version,[80] Augustus Bowles, a Maryland adventurer who had ambitions to create a Muscogee state which he could use for own interests by controlling trade,[81] called a meeting at Tuckabatchee to get the headmen to agree to oust Alexander and support him as their representative.
[79] During the War of 1812, a movement within the Native American populations sought a return to traditional customs and lifestyles, rejecting the Euro-American "civilization" process.
[82] The Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa advocated a revitalization of Native cultures through purification and militancy against Americans encroaching on indigenous lands.
[95] Sophia's son Sandy moved to Apalachicola, Florida, during the hostilities, and in November 1813, his brother John wrote to him of Betsy's desire to join him there.
[102][108][107] Her daughter Mary married Muslushobie, also known as Pitcher, and had a son named Co-cha-my (Ward Coachman), who was raised by his uncle Lachlan after his parents' death.
[117] Professors Miller Shores Wright and Harvey Jackson III point to the importance of Durant and her sisters in the economy of the Muscogee.
