State of Muskogee
| State of Muskogee | ||||||||||||
| Unrecognized state | ||||||||||||
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| Capital | Mikasuke (near Tallahassee) | |||||||||||
| Languages | English, Muskogean languages | |||||||||||
| Government | Republic | |||||||||||
| Director General | William Augustus Bowles | |||||||||||
| History | ||||||||||||
| • | Independence declared | 1799 | ||||||||||
| • | Capture of William Boyles | May 24, 1803 | ||||||||||
| Population | ||||||||||||
| • | 1799 est. | 50,000-60,000 | ||||||||||
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Flag of the State of Muskogee
The State of Muskogee was a proclaimed sovereign nation located in Florida, founded in 1799 and led by William Augustus Bowles, a Loyalist veteran of the American Revolutionary War who lived among the Muscogee, and envisioned uniting the American Indians of the Southeast into a single nation that could resist the expansion of the United States. Bowles enjoyed the support of the Miccosukee (Seminole) and several bands of Muscogee, and envisioned his state as eventually growing to encompass the Cherokee, Upper and Lower Creeks, Choctaw and Chickasaw.
Born into a Maryland Loyalist family, William Bowles was commissioned in the Maryland Loyalist Battalion at age 14 with the rank of Ensign. This rank, roughly equivalent to the modern rank of 2nd Lieutenant, is often confused with the naval rank used today, and thus has led to rumors of his having been an officer in the Royal Navy at 15. Bowles was sent with the 1st Battalion of Maryland Loyalist as part of a provincial garrison stationed at Pensacola, where he was stripped of his rank for insubordination. (Please note that according to the article William Augustus Bowles, it states that he joined the British Battalion at the age of 13.) He fled north, living among the Muscogee of the Tallapoosa and Appalachicola, becoming fluent in the language, taking Cherokee and Hitchiti Muscogee wives and becoming heir to a Muscogee chiefdom. He led a band of Lower Creek warriors at the Battle of Pensacola in 1781, a period when he developed a lifelong enmity with the Upper Creek chief Alexander McGillivray. After the war, he relocated to the Bahamas, where he was courted by Governor Lord Dunmore, who sought to break the monopoly of Panton, Leslie & Co. over the Indian fur-trade, and allowed him to return to the Muscogee as an agent of a rival company. During this period, he developed his idea of an American Indian state. He failed to capture Panton's St. Johns store, and became a fugitive from Spanish authorities, spending the next few years between Nova Scotia, the Bahamas, England, and the villages along the lower Chattahoochee River basin, where he gained support for a free state of Muskogee, assuring the Lower Creeks and Seminoles of British support.
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Wikipedia