Mary Musgrove – An American Creek Woman Between Worlds
Tauheed Ahmad Nawaz
Coosaponakeesa, also known as Mary Musgrove, was born around 1700 in a Creek town in Coweta Town along the Ockmulgee River. She was the daughter of Edward Griffin, a trader out of Charles Town, and a Yamacraw Creek mother. Fathers were not regarded as blood relatives in Creek society; they were only related through marriage and the rules of kinship. In the aftermath of her mother’s death, her grandmother took custody of her at the age of three.
Her uncle was the most prominent Coweta chief, Brims. Her family moved to Pon Pon, a village on the Edisto River in South Carolina when she was a young girl. After converting to Christianity, Mary Musgrove learned to read and write English. Her goal was to make her life a fusion of cultures and to fight for her own rights in both.
The Creeks and colonists of Georgia lived in harmony with Musgrove, a woman of English and Creek ancestry. As a matrilineal leader in Creek society, Musgrove held a unique position. European settlers called the Muskogee people Creek. The woman was born into a powerful clan, perhaps the Wind clan, and as such exercised authority over other Creeks.
Mary Musgrove A Creek Woman Between Worlds. Photo Credit – GBP
She married John Musgrove, a prominent member of the Carolina Commission on Indian Trade, to keep the peace between the Creeks and the commission. As a trader between Creeks and Georgians, Mary Musgrove established herself in Pon Pon by the 1730s. Despite having three sons by the 1730s, none of them lived to adulthood
Musgrove negotiated talks between Oglethorpe and the Creeks when Oglethorpe established the Georgia colony on Creek lands. Along with Georgians, she recruited Creek warriors against the Spanish, served in diplomacy, and provided Georgian settlers with beef, corn, peas, and potatoes raised by Creek women. A trading post was to be built along the Altamaha River in Georgia by Musgrove in the late 1730s at the request of Oglethorpe. Mount Venture, her post, soon became a meeting place for intertribal diplomacy.
In addition to providing vital goods to colonists and Creeks, Mount Venture was where war parties departed to fend off the Spanish. The spring of 1737 marked Mary’s marriage to Jacob Matthews, a young English indentured servant after the death of her first husband, whom she had once employed as an indentured servant. Oglethorpe had supervised Musgrove’s accumulation of wealth and property in Georgia.
In 1742, Mary became a widow again. In July 1744, Mary Musgrove Matthews married the Reverend Thomas Bosomworth. Rather than focusing on his ministerial duties, Bosomworth helped Mary with her many ventures. As a link between Creek and Georgian leadership, she welcomed the most important Creek chiefs to her home. Fort Toulouse was built by the French on the Alabama River among the Creeks, causing the Georgians to fear an alliance between the Creeks and the French that would threaten their colony’s stability. There were three groups of people: the Creeks, the French, and the Georgians, and Musgrove stood between them.
In order to keep the peace, she again entered into negotiations when Georgian power shifted toward Savannah. In order to preserve good relations with the English, Musgrove persuaded the Creeks to avenge the death of a Creek warrior named Acorn Whistler outside of Charleston.
Savannah was the destination of two Creek chiefs, Malatchi and Musgrove, who arrived in 1749 for gifts and to assert their ownership of St. Catherines Island, off the coast of Georgia. Neither Malatchi nor Musgrove were taken into consideration by the British. She became enraged at this, proclaiming herself “queen of the Creeks.”
Several Creeks and the British were alienated by her outburst. The Georgian government granted Musgrove a land grant on St. Catherines Island for services she provided to Oglethorpe as an Indian agent in the 1830s. She lived out her days petitioning the government for back pay and goods. During the colonial period in the Southeast, few boundaries and barriers separated Indians from colonists, and Mary Musgrove was one woman who easily straddled the worlds of Creeks and Georgians. It was in the summer of 1765 that Mary Musgrove Matthews Bosomworth passed away.
