Josiah Francis

Parents and early life Francis was the son of a Muscogee Creek mother and a father of European descent. Since Muscogee Creeks were matrilineal and matrilocal, Francis inherited his clan from his mother and was a citizen of the Muscogee Confederacy. Francis and others like him became military leaders, passionate defenders of the Creek cause, apparently to demonstrate their legitimacy to the full-blooded Creek. Francis refused to wear white men's clothing during his visit to New Orleans. a South Carolina frontier blacksmith and silversmith. He "lived among the Alabama and Coushatta people near the point where the Cousa and Tallapoosa Rivers joined to form the Alabama", and aunt of David Moniac, the first Native American to graduate from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. David's father and Hannah's half-brother was "the prosperous and well-known Creek businessman Samuel Moniac. She was a relative of Muscogee leader Alexander McGillivray," His greatest success was among the Creeks, to whom he may have been linked through one or both of his parents. (His tribal origins are not known with certainty.) His credibility was enhanced by the New Madrid earthquakes and the Great Comet of 1811. He "hated the white man and his culture." He particularly disapproved of the husbandry of domestic animals, to the point of slaughtering his own (and burning his house) when he decided, about 1812, to give up the ways of whites. without a clear victor. In late July 1813, Francis accompanied Peter McQueen and over 300 other Red Sticks to Pensacola to ask the Spanish for weapons. On their return, their party was attacked in the Battle of Burnt Corn. Francis, who was called later "the principal instigator of this Creek war", It was built by the British after their defeats at the Battle of New Orleans and the Battle of Pensacola (1814) and intended as a base for operations against the southern United States. There were so many Creek refugees there ("virtually the entire surviving population of Redsticks" ) that famine was a real concern; the British were unprepared for that number of refugees. No food was available for purchase, and crops couldn't be raised without months of delay. Food had to be brought in from other British posts.

Trip to England When Colonel Edward Nicolls, the commander at Prospect Bluff, was returning to England after the end of the War of 1812 in February 1815, he took Francis with him, as Francis insisted on (and Nicolls discouraged). Before leaving, Francis disposed of the eight enslaved people he had, likely the same eight his daughter later claimed. The purpose was to get British agreement to the Treaty of Nicolls' Outpost, which Nicolls, on his initiative and without authorization (in fact, the British knew nothing of it until Nicolls and Francis arrived in England A listing of crown expenditures on Francis's behalf reveals that besides his son, he was accompanied by a servant and an interpreter. (This conflicts with reports elsewhere that Francis was fluent in English and Spanish, upon traveling to London on August 14, 1815, His shoulder bag is in the British Museum. Also in the British Museum are "a long hunting shirt of deer skin, moccasins, leggings and a belt". His daughter witnessed his hanging and later turned down McCrimmon's offer of marriage, possibly as a result of the capture.