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Ignacio invited Creek tribes to Spanish meeting

Source: Invention of the Creek Nation #95

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Three days later Juan Ignacio, Florida’s most useful Uchise Indian ally, reported to Toro and set out from San Marcos on February 22 carrying Toro’s invitation to the various towns in the Creek nation. It should be noted that Juan Ignacio’s arrival was not simply a fortuitous stroke of luck but a calculated ploy on the part of Florida and Cuban officials to tap into the network of communication established several years before. Governor Guemes y Horcasitas, not incidentally, had met Juan Ignacio previously in Cuba and believed him to be a “skillful man of trust”; he specifically instructed Toro to use Ignacio as a messenger upon his arrival in Apalachee. [Note 91: Del Toro diary entry for February 18, 1738, Worth Collection, reel 4, no. 1. On Juan Ignacio, see Guemes y Horcasitas to the King, January 18, 1738, AGI-SD 2592, Worth Collection, reel 3, no. 42]

Predictably, the first to heed Toro’s invitation to San Marcos were well known Spanish partisans with ties to Juan Ignacio, including Chocate of Coweta, Chislacaliche, and Quilate of Apalachicola, whom the delegates recognized as the “head of all present” at the gathering. In the coming weeks Juan Ignacio successfully convinced more than 140 Creeks to venture to Fort San Marcos to receive gifts and hear Toro speak, culminating in a grand conference held on April 14, the largest of any Spanish-Creek meeting in the 1730s.