Tag Archives: McIntosh Reserve

McIntosh Mounting Stone, 1810s-1820s, Carroll County

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This mounting block is perhaps the most important surviving contemporary relic of Lockchau Talofau [Acorn Bluff] , Chief McIntosh’s property along the Chattahoochee. A tablet near the stone notes: Hewn from West Georgia Limestone, the McIntosh Stone represents a significant time in the state’s history, as well as that of Carroll County. Chief William H. McIntosh of the Lower Creek tribe had the stone carved to help guests mount horses and board carriages here at Lockchau Talofau- or Acorn Bluff- his home on the Chattahoochee River.

The stone remained on this site from the time of McIntosh’s death in 1825 until 1916, when Carroll County Times editor J. J. Thomasson conceived the idea of relocating it to the campus of the Fourth District Agricultural and Mechanical School- today the University of West Georgia.

Seeing the stone’s historical significance as a local and Native American artifact, Thomasson lobbied Preston S. Arkwright, president of Georgia Railway and Power Company [now known as Georgia Power], which owned the land at the time, for permission to move it. Arkwright agreed.

In the summer of 1916, Thomasson enlisted the help of J. H. Melson, president of the Fourth District A. & M. The two men, along with several others, retrieved the stone in a horse-drawn wagon. According to the book From A & M to State University: A History of the State University of West Georgia, the stone became the cornerstone of Adamson Hall, a new women’s dormitory. It later was moved to a prominent area along Front Campus Drive from where it inspired West Georgia College’s logo that was used in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 2017, the University agreed to loan the stone to the county for display here at McIntosh Reserve.

Grave of Tustunnuggee Hutkee, Carroll County

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William H. McIntosh, Jr., was born circa 1778 in Coweta, a Lower Creek town in present-day Alabama, to Captain William McIntosh, a Scotsman of Savannah, and Senoya, a Creek of the Wind Clan. He spoke the languages of both his parents and was also known as Tustunnuggee Hutkee “White Warrior“. [There are numerous spellings of Tustunnuggee Hutkee.] The McIntosh family was prominent in early Georgia, and William, Jr., was a first cousin of Governor George Troup. Such connections helped ensure his rise to prominence within tribal and state politics. His loyalty was to the United States above all, at the expense of his own Native American relations. McIntosh married three women: Susannah Coe, a Creek; Peggy, a Cherokee; and Eliza Grierson, a mixed-race Cherokee.

M’Intosh, a Creek Chief by Charles Bird King in History of the Indian Tribes of North America…McKenney & Hall, Philadelphia, 1838, Public domain.

Chief McIntosh’s support of General Andrew Jackson in the Creek Indian War and the First Seminole War began a long period of tension between McIntosh and tribal leaders. His signing of the Treaty of Indian Springs in 1825, which called for the removal of virtually all Creeks from their ancestral lands, precipitated his assassination by a group of Upper Creek Law Menders. On 30 April 1825 Chief Menawa and 200 warriors led a surprise early morning attack on Lochau Talofau, setting fires around the dwellings and subsequently shooting and stabbing to death McIntosh and Coweta Chief Etomme Tustunnuggee. Ironically, McIntosh had himself supported a provision to the Code of 1818 in which the National Creek Council imposed a sentence of death to those who took ancestral lands without full tribal consent.

His burial stone, placed in 1921 by the Daughters of the American Revolution on the grounds of his plantation, Lochau Talofau, is now accompanied by a standard military-issued headstone, denoting his position and military service. Chief McIntosh achieved the rank of Brigadier General during the Creek Indian War. The birth date of 1775 listed on the headstone is an estimate.