Hagerty, Rebecca McIntosh Hawkins

In 1860, Rebecca McIntosh Hawkins Hagerty, age 45, was apparently the only woman among 45 planters in Texas owning more than 100 slaves. She may well have also been the only one who was three-quarters Creek Indian.

Born March 15, 1815, in the Lower Creek Indian nation in Georgia, Rebecca McIntosh was the daughter of William M. McIntosh, half-Scottish Chief of the Lower Division of Creeks, and his second wife, Susannah Ree, full-blooded Creek. In 1825, when Rebecca was 10 years old, William McIntosh signed a treaty agreeing to sell a large part of the Creek lands in Georgia in exchange for a "permanent" home west of the Mississippi. he was promptly murdered by a band from the Upper Creek nation who resented the loss of the tribal lands and their own forced removal. In the following year, Rebecca's older half-brother, Chillicothe McIntosh, led the Creeks out of Georgia and into the Indian Nation to the west. Her father's half-brother, Roley McIntosh, later assumed the role of Chief of the Lower Creeks and governed until his retirement in 1859.

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