viding promised supplies and farming equip-
ment. As sickness and death mounted,
Manuelito and other chiefs repeatedly begged
the Indian agency for relief. When this was not
forthcoming, he accompanied a deputation to
Washington, D.C., to demand redress. The In-
dians conferred with Gen. William Tecumseh
Sherman, who, after hearing their tale of woe,
agreed to move them elsewhere. Manuelito
and the rest then vehemently objected to an-
other forced march, and at length Sherman
grudgingly allowed the Navajos to return to
their homeland in 1868. When Barboncito died
in 1871, Manuelito succeeded him as the
tribe’s main spokesman. In this capacity he
fought for better conditions for his people,
also advocating European-style education so
that Navajos might better adapt to their new
world. Unfortunately, both of his surviving
sons died of disease while attending boarding
school back east; grief-stricken, the aged chief
took to alcohol. He died, old and dispirited, in
1893, widely regarded as the most influential
Navajo leader of his generation.
Bibliography
Bailey, Garrick, and Roberta Bailey.A History of the
Navajos: The Reservation Years.Santa Fe, NM:
School of American Research Press, 1986; Bailey,
Lynn R. The Long Walk: A History of the Navajo
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1964; Dunlay, Thomas W.Kit Carson and the Indi-
ans.Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000;
Frink, Maurice. Fort Defiance and the Navajos.
Boulder: Pruett Press, 1968; Hoffman, Virginia.
Navajo Biographies.Rough Rock, AZ: Dine, 1974;
Jones, Oakah L. “The Origins of the Navajo Indian
Police.”Arizona and the West8 (1966): 225–238;
Kelly, Lawrence C. Navajo Roundup: Selected Corre-
spondence of Kit Carson’s Expedition Against the
Navajo, 1863–1865.Boulder: Pruett, 1970; Kessell,
John L. “General Sherman and the Navajo Treaty of
1868: A Basic and Expedient Misunderstanding.”
Western Historical Quarterly12 (1981): 251–272;
McNitt, Frank. Navajo Wars: Military Campaigns,
Slave Raids, and Reprisals.Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1972; Moore, William H.
Chiefs, Agents, and Soldiers: Conflict on the Navajo
Frontier, 1866–1882.Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1994; Roberts, David. “The Long
Walk to the Bosque Redondo.” Smithsonian 28, no.
9 (1997): 46–52, 54, 56–57; Thompson, Gerald.The
Army and the Navajos.Tucson: University of Ari-
zona Press, 1976; Trafzer, Clifford E., and Richard D.
Scheverman. The Kit Carson Campaign: The Last
Great Navajo War.Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1982.MCGILLIVRAY, ALEXANDER
McGillivray, Alexander
(ca. 1759–February 17, 1793)
Creek Head Chief
T
he urbane McGillivray was the most in-
fluential Creek leader of the eighteenth
century, a powerbroker throughout the
Gulf Coast region. Rather than confront the
new United States in a war he would lose, the
chief employed tact and diplomacy to pre-
serve Creek Indian sovereignty.
Alexander McGillivray was born in Little
Tassie Village near Montgomery, Alabama,
around 1759. His father was Lachlan
McGillivray, a noted Scottish Indian trader;
his mother was Sehoy Marchand, a half-
French, half-Creek woman related to the in-
fluential Wind clan. His Creek name was