Recently while teaching a chapter on the Age of Jackson, a question was asked about Andrew Jackson’s Native American son Lyncoya. I was determined to find out more information about this individual, and why a president who is associated with the Indian Relocation Act of 1830, and the Cherokee Trail of Tears, adopted a native child. The origin of this story is traced to Jackson’s war on the Creek Nation.
Andrew Jackson was a general before he became president. During the War of 1812, he became a hero with the defeat of the British during the Battle of New Orleans. However, he is also equally well known for his war on the Creek Nation. It would ultimately result in their destruction. An early battle was a devastating attack on the Red Stick Creeks at the Creek town of Tallushatchee.
According to Battlefield Trust, “about 1,000 Red Sticks attacked Fort Mims, northeast of Mobile and killed all the inhabitants. The event sent shockwaves through the Alabama and Mississippi Territories along with Georgia and Tennessee.” The source of the Creek War was encroachment of white settlers on to Creek lands. What to do about the issue divided the nation into two factions. The Red Sticks favored pushing the settlers off their lands. After the Red Sticks attacked, the Governor of Tennessee called out his commander of the militia Major General Andrew Jackson.
The Creek town of Tallushatchee was attacked by Jackson’s troops on November 3, 1813. The attack was led by Colonel John Coffee who was a cavalry officer. Jackson’s troops massacred most of the town. According to the History of Alabama Encyclopedia, 186 men, women, and children were killed in what has been termed a massacre. When soldiers were walking over the remnants of the Creek town, they found a small child clinging to his dead mother. The child was offered to the surviving women of the town. Severely wounded, the women refused to accept the orphan of their tribe. We next turn to Andrew Jackson’s papers.
Jackson mentions Lyncoya, the child found clinging to his dead mother, in December 1813. In his letter to his wife Rachel Jackson dated on December 29, 1813, from Fort Strother, he asked if Major Whyte[sic] of Gallatine had delivered Lyncoya to Andrew Jackson Jr. He writes in the same letter, perhaps his reason for adopting the child, that he felt “unusual sympathy” for the baby. The child losing both his parents was not lost on Jackson who suffered the same fate, but not under the same circumstances. He mentions the loss of his parents at a young age in the same letter. Lyncoya arrived at the plantation called the Hermitage in May 1813.
Lyncoya was not an enslaved person. In his letter to Rachel, he asked that the child be kept in the main house. He also asked that his son Andrew treat him well. According to the National Park Service, “Lyncoya’s status in the Jackson household remains murky. Like many young Creeks taken as captives by white army officers, he was intended to be a “pett” or childhood companion for a young family member.” Jackson did intend on sending Lyncoya to West Point, but the child refused. Instead he apprenticed as a saddle maker in Nashville. Jackson also gave Lyncoya a basic education. Lyncoya remained at the Hermitage until he died at the young age of 16. It is believed he died of Consumption. He was buried in the family cemetery on the property.
Andrew Jackson is a complicated figure in American History. His adoption of Lyncoya complicates this view of Jackson. After all his policies towards Southeastern tribes was nothing short of brutal. Lyncoya was orphaned because of Jackson’s brutal polices as a Major General and still later President of the United States.
History Made Seamless 
Leave a comment