The Treaty of New York

After the war, Willett returned to his native New York City where he quickly became one of the leaders of the newly established post-Revolution government. In 1784 he was appointed Sheriff of the City of New York, in which capacity he was in charge of restoring order and police functions, and also redistributing forfeited Loyalist lands. (In 1787, he took part in suppressing Shays’ Rebellion).

The City’s policy of redistributing land belonging to Loyalists soon met considerable opposition from former Tories, represented by lawyers such as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. They claimed that the Treaty of Paris which had ended the war guaranteed that the rights of Loyalists to their pre-war property, thus nullifying New York’s laws that called for the forfeiture of all land belonging to those who had sided with the British during the Revolution. Ultimately the U.S. Constitution would uphold these Tories’ claims in its clause that stated the “No State shall impair the Obligation of Contract.”

It was for this reason that Willett would become a staunch Anti-federalist and ally of George Clinton who unsuccessfully opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. When the Federalist, led by Alexander Hamilton, his father-in-law Philip Schuyler, and John Jay, became ascendant in New York City politics, Willett lost some of his political power. He joined with the Tammany Society, originally a patriotic civic association which became the center of the Anti-Federalist opposition in the City’s politics.

The Tammany Society was primarily a group of disaffected Revolutionary War veterans who sometimes dressed in Native American outfits and held July 4th celebrations. They were opposed to the increasingly aristocratic Federalists who they viewed as betraying the ideals of the Revolution. The Tammany Society was said to be named after Chief Tammany of the Delaware, who supposedly had signed the peace treaty in 1683 with William Penn that established the City of Philadelphia. Chief Tammany (Tamanend) who was said to have believed in democratic ideals and peaceful and cooperative relations between Native People and Europeans.

After the formation of the Federal Government in 1789, New York City was briefly the nation’s capital (which as part of the deal forming the Constitution was later moved to Philadelphia and Washington DC). At the time, the federal government (then headquartered in what today is Fraunces Tavern) had a number of significant problems, not the least of which was its relationship with the Muscogee Creek, who had controlled most of what is today South Tennessee, Alabama, Western Georgia, and parts of Northern Florida.

Although all territory east of the Mississippi had been ceded over to the United States in the Treaty of Paris, the very powerful Muscogee had allied with the British. After conflicts with white settlers on their territory, Georgia officials insisted that the federal government send troops to protect white settlers and remove the Muscogee. George Washington and his Secretary of War Henry Knox believed the federal government did not have the capability of doing this and from their point of view a better solution would be to reach an accommodation.

After a delegation in 1789 led by General Benjamin Lincoln failed to achieve this goal, Washington and Knox reached across the aisle to Marinus Willett. Even though Willett was a stanch Anti-Federalist, he had a reputation for having dealt with Native People at the end of the Revolutionary War, and Washington reportedly thought highly of his service during the War.

Willett, who was about 50 at the time, accepted the assignment and gathered an experienced guide to undertake the mission to the Creek. He met with Alexander McGivillray (1750 – 1793, also known as Hoboi-Hili-Miko), son of a Muscogee mother and a Scottish father, an influential and controversial Muscogee Creek leader.

Willett informed McGivillray that he had come as the special representative of George Washington and that they should understand that the American government wanted peace and not war. He reportedly said that contrary to what they may have heard, the Americans were a peaceful people. Unlike the British who had in effect sold the Muscogee out in the Treaty of Paris, they could trust them to live with the Muscogee in peace for the mutual benefit of both groups.

Willett invited McGivillray to visit the American capital in New York to see how the people lived and perhaps meet with Washington. This proved persuasive and shortly thereafter a delegation of 27 Muscogee Creek traveled to New York. They reportedly received a warm reception in cities such as Baltimore and Philadelphia. In New York City, the Tammany Society members were allegedly out in force to greet them in their best Native attire, and there were a number of dinners and receptions in which the Society members assured them of their great interest and respect for their customs and traditions.

As skepticism and hostility began to fade a treaty was negotiated by Willett and his Tammany Society compatriots that secured rights to the ancestral lands of the “Upper, Middle and Lower Creek and Seminole composing the Creek nation of Indians,” but also allowed white settlers to enter and live in their territory.

The Muscogee Creek men also ceded a large area of their hunting grounds to the Oconee River, and agreed to surrender runaway slaves to Federal authorities (McGillivray had a plantation with as many as 60 enslaved people). The United States granted the Creek the right to deal with non-Indian trespassers, but were required to turn over non-Indians who committed crimes on Muscogee lands to white authorities. Secretly, McGillivray was rewarded with a commission as a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army, including an annual salary of $1,500, and he was allowed to import goods through the port of Pensacola, then still ruled by the Spanish, without paying American import duties. He also received $100,000 as compensation lands that had been seized from his father.

This treaty, known as the Treaty of New York, was a significant triumph for the new United States – Washington and Knox were delighted.

Legend has it that at a final meeting of the Muscogee leaders and Tammany Society, McGillivray raised his glass and said:

“I see you gentlemen call yourselves the Tammany Society. I assume you know it was Chief Tammany of the Delawares who in 1683 signed the peace treaty with William Penn that formed the basis for the Pennsylvania colony and the City of Philadelphia. Chief Tammany firmly believed in peace between native Americans and white men and that if Native Americans and white men could work together in peace and respect their cities could be among the most important and wealthy in the world. It was for this reason that the City of Philadelphia became the most important city in the Colonies, more so than other colonies in which there were wars between our peoples. Although perhaps these principles have not always been followed, it was Chief Tammany’s dream that one day there would be a City in which the government and people would more closely adhere to his vision and that such a City would one day be the largest, wealthiest and most important and powerful in the world.”

With raised glasses they toasted to Chief Tammany’s dream.

Of course the Treaty of New York was broken some years later by the State of Georgia and ultimately the Muscogee Creek were driven from their land along the trail of tears by Andrew Jackson’s enforcement of the Indian Removal Act.

In New York City, the Tammany Society however grew in political influence and importance. In the elections of 1800 led by celebrity candidates such as General Horatio Gates and Governor George Clinton (with political strategist Aaron Burr), they defeated the Federalists led by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and Phillip Schuyler, and supported the election of President Thomas Jefferson, forming the modern Democratic Party in the city. Marinus Willett would decline George Washington’s request for a commission to lead the American Army against the Native People in Ohio, preferring to stay in New York City as Sheriff.  It’s said he opposed the use military force to drive Native Americans from their land in the Ohio valley.

In 1807, Willett was elected Mayor of the city of New York. In 1814 at the age of 74 in a stirring speech from the steps of New York’s newly constructed City Hall he would rally the New York militias against a prospective British invasion. He died in 1831 at the age of 91.  His funeral at Trinity Church included an estimated 10,000 mourners, one of the largest in the city’s history.

The Tammany Society and the Democratic Party would be a major force in New York politics for the next 160 years. It was sometimes stained with corruption, but its bedrock insistence on upholding Chief Tammany’s vision (real or imagined) of democratic ideals and supporting the immigrant poor and the full participation of all ethnic groups in New York politics would frequently lead it to electoral victory.