Final installment of a two part series on Indian/White relationships along the Gulf Coast prior to the establishment of the state of Alabama.

Trade with the Indian nations of the Old Southwest was a lucrative business for the tradesmen and a life altering experience for the Indians of the region.

Panton, Leslie & Company made the most of the situation from their Pensacola office trading with the residents of the region, which most certainly included the Creek Indian Nation. Indeed, the company traded not only with the Creeks, but also with the Chickasaw, Choctaws, Cherokees, and the Seminoles of Florida.

By 1800 the trade deficit incurred by the Native Americans topped $200,000. It was at that time that the company urged the Indians to sell their lands to pay off their massive debt. In all, Panton, Leslie & Company forced the tribes to cede to them more than three million acres in both Mississippi and Alabama.

The company was formed in 1783 primarily from the efforts of founder William Panton. Panton, a Scottish immigrant, was born around 1745 and made the move to North America in 1765. He soon became a member of a Savannah based trading company known as the Moore and Panton Company. In 1775 Panton was placed in the position of British Governor of East Florida and given the title as official trader with the Creek Nation. As the American Revolution raged, Panton maintained his loyalty to the English Crown. Consequently he and his partners lost their property to confiscation in Georgia and South Carolina. He moved his operation to Florida, where he managed to remain solvent until forming another company with partners William Alexander, Charles McLatchey and John Leslie.

The Spanish gained control of eastern and western Florida at the conclusion of the American Revolution based on their relationship with the Americans during that conflict. As a result the Spanish government granted Panton’s company a monopoly in their territory of western Florida to trade with the Indians in the region.

For the next several years, the company developed an extensive trading relationship with the Indians in the region, taking in some 250,000 deerskins annually. These deerskins were traded for a number of items such as tools, weapons, ammunition, and daily use items that were imported from Europe.

The tensions that developed between the Indians and the Americans prior to the Creek War (1813-14) were exacerbated by the trade of arms to the Creeks even as the American government sought to halt this trade. It was in Pensacola, the headquarters of Panton, Leslie & Company, that the Red Stick Creeks obtained arms and ammunition that directly led to a confrontation at Burnt Corn.

Subsequently that event carried over to the massacre at For Mims that became the rallying cry for the Creek War. And even though the desire of the Red Stick faction of the Creek Nation was to remove itself from European influence and return them to a state more in harmony with nature, they understood the need for modern weaponry in their quest. So the vicious circle was set. The Indians could not force the issue on whites who came in greater numbers to their territory without modern weapons, and they could not shun the modern conveniences that they had become so accustomed to in their trade relations.

In essence the exchange that was fostered by the deerskin trade brought the Indians the modern tools they desired, even as it destroyed their way of life. For a short while both the Indians and the traders profited from the system. In the end, however, both saw the demise of their worlds due to the trade. The Creeks of the Old Southwest lost their traditional homes as they were moved to the Oklahoma Territory and Panton, Leslie & Company and others like them faded away as the trade environment changed in the early 1830s.