Milly Francis

Milly Francis (c. 1803–1848), daughter of Creek leader Josiah Francis (Francis the Prophet), was born near what is today Montgomery, Alabama, about 1803. Her name is sometimes thought to be an Anglicization of the Creek name "Malee", but the most recent thinking is that "Milly" was her birth name. She was a member of the Red Stick faction of the Creek tribe.

Rescue of Duncan McCrimmon In 1818, when living with her father on the Wakulla River near the San Marcos de Apalache fort (modern St. Marks, Florida), she saved the life of a U.S. soldier, Duncan McCrimmon (sometimes misspelled McKrimmon).

This too received wide publicity; she was called "the Creek Pocahontas". She was arguably, after Sacagawea, the most famous Native American woman of the nineteenth century. Census records show that hundreds of baby girls were named for her. She was to receive a pension of $96 per year, retroactive to September 1843, and a medal, the cost of which was not to exceed $20. Milly did not even hear of this until just before her death in poverty in 1848 (of "consumption" though presumably on the grounds of Bacone College, where her cabin was. There is a monument to her there, and historical markers at the site of Fort Gadsden, today Prospect Bluff Historic Sites, and at San Marcos de Apalache Historic State Park.