Sehoy II

Sehoy II or Sehoy Marchand (b. c. 1722) was a Muscogee Creek Wind Clan woman who was part of the Sehoy matrilineage. She and her family are known for their intermarriages with white traders, with the children inheriting their tribal identities from the mother's side.  

Town Creek Indian Mound is supposedly Sehoy II's burial place.

Family

She was born around 1722, the daughter of Sehoy I of the Wind Clan and a French officer, Marchand, who commanded at Fort Toulouse.^[1] (Some have argued that she was instead a 'full-blooded' indigenous American.)^[2] She was half-sister to Muscogean Chief Red Shoes II through her mother Sehoy's marriage to Red Shoes I.^[1]

Lachlan McGillivray

Sehoy married Scottish trader Lachlan McGillivray about 1745. In 1851, Albert J. Pickett wrote that they met at Hickory Ground a few miles from Fort Toulouse, married according to Creek forms, and settled at Little Tallassee. He said, 'The Indian tradition ran that, while pregnant with her first child, she repeatedly dreamed of piles of manuscripts, ink and paper, and heaps of books...', foreshadowing her son Alexander's career.^[3]

Lachlan took advantage of Sehoy's influential connections in the Creek nation to extend his commerce. Their children were Alexander McGillivray (b. 1750), Sophia Durant, and Jeannette/Jennet, who married Le Clerc Milfort, as well as two who died in childhood. Lachlan departed the country in 1757.^[4]

Other marriages and children

Sehoy II also had other marriages, to Scottish trader Malcolm McPherson and, according to family tradition, to an unnamed chief of the Tawasa or Tuckabatchee.^[5] Her children by these marriages were Sehoy III, Elizabeth, and Malcolm McPherson II, who predeceased his sisters so that they inherited his property.^[6] Sehoy II's marriage to McPherson is sometimes placed before and sometimes after her marriage to Lachlan.^[7][4]

Death

Sehoy II's death date is unknown, but her daughter Sehoy III's move to live with the Moniac family at eight may suggest that Sehoy II had died by then. She was buried 'on the river bluff there near the Indian Mound in Montgomery.^[8]

References

1. Langley, Linda (2005). "The Tribal Identity of Alexander McGillivray: A Review of the Historical and Ethnographic Data". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 46 (2): 231–239. ISSN 0024-6816. JSTOR 4234109.
2. Wright, Amos J. (2007-02-28). The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders: On the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815. NewSouth Books. p. 185. ISBN 978-1-60306-014-1.
3. Pickett, Albert James; Owen, Thomas McAdory (1896). History of Alabama and incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the earliest period. Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. Sheffield, Ala., Republished by R.C. Randolph. p. 343.
4. Waselkov, Gregory A. (2009-05-19). A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813–1814. University of Alabama Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-8173-5573-9.
5. L. J. Newcomb Comings (1928-08-01). A Brief History of Baldwin County. p. 26.
6. Wright, Miller Shores (2020). ""A Man's Children Have No Claim to His Property": Creek Matrilineal Property Relations and Gendered Conflict at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century". Native South. 13 (1): 158–189. doi:10.1353/nso.2020.0005. ISSN 2152-4025. S2CID 241736741.
7. Wright, Amos J. (2007-02-28). The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders: On the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815. NewSouth Books. p. 193. ISBN 978-1-60306-014-1.
8. Wright, Amos J. (2007-02-28). The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders: On the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815. NewSouth Books. p. 186. ISBN 978-1-60306-014-1.