Sophia Durant

rdf:langString Sophia Durant

rdf:langString Sophia Durant

rdf:langString Sophia Durant

rdf:langString Little Tallassee, Muscogee Confederacy

rdf:langString Wright

rdf:langString Langley

rdf:langString Pickett

rdf:langString Wright

rdf:langString Frank

rdf:langString Bartram

rdf:langString Waselkov

rdf:langString Sophia McGillivray

rdf:langString ca. 1813/1831

rdf:langString Plantation owner, businesswoman, and diplomat

rdf:langString Sophia Durand

rdf:langString Sophia Durant (ca. 1752 – ca. 1813/1831) was a Koasati Native American plantation owner, who served as the speaker, interpreter, and translator for her brother, Alexander McGillivray, a leader in the Muscogee Confederacy. Durant was born to a mixed-race Native mother and Scottish father in the mid-18th century on Muscogee Confederacy lands in what is now Elmore County, Alabama. Taught reading and writing, she influenced the political and economic development of her people. After managing with her husband, probably a mixed-race Black/Native man, her father's estates in Savannah, Georgia, for three or four years, Durant returned to Muscogee territory and established the first cattle plantation in the Tensaw District of the nation. She also managed communal lands as part of her matriarchal inheritance at Hickory Ground and operated as a middleman between Anglo and Native traders. Although she was one of the largest slaveholders in the nation, she often treated her slaves as part of her extended family and was lenient in their work requirements, sharing communally with them. Durant had 11 children, although only seven or eight grew to adulthood. Three of them joined the Red Stick's faction during the Creek Civil War. In the 1813 Fort Mims massacre, her husband was killed and she was captured. Taken to Econochaca, a Red Stick settlement, she was freed by American troops after the Battle of Holy Ground and died before 1831. Because she is one of the few Native women mentioned by name in the 18th-century record, modern historians have been able to broaden the understanding of gender and the contributions of Native women in the political and economic development of her era. Her relationships with her people in bondage have also added to the study of slave societies and their complexity.

rdf:langString Sophia Durand

rdf:langString Sophia McGillivray