Not long after the paroled prisoners arrived in New York, the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown virtually ended armed conflict in the war. But it would be two more years until a formal treaty was signed. In the meantime Long Island was packed with idle British soldiers who needed to be fed. The paroled prisoners were put to work scouring the Long Island countryside for food, draft animals, firewood and other supplies to help sustain these troops.

During this period Bowles spent a good deal of time acting in stage productions, often in the starring role, sometimes as a female (this honor fell to ensigns, the lowest officer rank). He was court-martialed for taking scalps while dressed as an Indian in Pensacola, but was exonerated based on the testimony of his many admiring compadres. He also fought a duel during this period.

When it was clear in 1783 that the United States would get to keep its colonies and that the presence of the British army on American soil would no longer be tolerated, a mad scramble to get out of the country ensued. Soon-to-be ex-British soldiers had a few places to choose from, but none was really appealing. Many of William’s fellow Marylanders, no longer welcome in Frederick, chose to sail north to Nova Scotia, where they soon founded the city of Halifax. Native Brits went home to England. A few took their chances in more far-flung places within the Empire, such as Bermuda. William Bowles packed his books and his various costumes and joined a troupe of actors who had decided to try their luck in Nassau, on tiny New Providence Island in the Bahamas.

Nassau was an isolated, sleepy town in 1783. The inhabitants who lived there prior to the American Revolution, mostly fishermen and scavengers of shipwrecks, known as salvors, were intent on maintaining their current occupations. They came to be known in Bahaman politics as the “Old Settlers” to distinguish them from the “New Settlers” who brought African slaves and plantation agriculture from the American South. Friction between the two political factions became quite heated as the islands filled up with exiled Tories.

Bowles was given 500 acres of land on the nearby island of Eleuthera in exchange for his service to the Crown. There he was expected to settle down and produce crops to sustain himself. Nothing could have been more repugnant to the ambitious young Bowles, now 19 and eager for adventure.

The next several years of William’s life are hard to trace with precision. He was usually in the Bahamas, but often in Georgia or with his Indian families near the forks of the Apalachicola. He is known to have painted portraits for cash in Savannah, and is thought to have frequented the seat of government in Augusta, probably serving as a spy for the Creeks as the Georgia Assembly conceived schemes to deprive the Indians of their ancestral lands.

By 1785 William Bowles, by birth an upper-class Englishman, was nearly always dressed as an Indian. The tribe that had adopted him as one of their own had conferred upon him a rank of distinction. He was not one to let that fact go unnoticed.

“Frequently he wore a knee-length hunting jacket and buckskin leggings, but on formal occasions, since after his return he was made a chief, he donned his cloth turban with an ostrich feather plume, a half-moon silver gorget hanging from his neck, and a white man’s shirt and breeches. At his side was a ceremonial silver pipe tomahawk signifying he was a war chief.” (Wright 24-25)

What the Georgians were up to was ever on the minds of the Creeks. They were pushing further west into Indian country, encroaching on traditional hunting grounds. The land they were pushing into, which today makes up much of the states of Alabama and Mississippi, was claimed by both the United States and Spain. And Spain, as you remember, possessed Florida, which at that time stretched all the way to the mouth of the Mississippi at New Orleans.

It was in everyone’s best interest to keep the Indians happy. American settlers needed docile, friendly Indians as neighbors if they hoped to live in peace on the frontier. The Spanish needed to maintain a healthy alliance with the tribes so they would continue to serve as a buffer against American encroachment. If the Georgians pushed their settlements all the way to the Mississippi it would be nearly impossible for the Spanish to control trade on that river. And whoever controlled the Mississippi controlled the vast interior of the continent.

Waiting in the wings, poised to take advantage of any opportunity to get back in the game, were the British — still smarting from defeat by the colonials, but firmly in control of Canada, much of the Caribbean, and closely allied with many tribes on American soil.

For their part the Indians wanted desperately to continue their way of life and to have access to the resources that had always been available to them. They understandably had a difficult time distinguishing between white, English-speaking Americans and white, English-speaking Britons. The outcome of the Revolution was of little consequence to them, as long as they had access to their traditional deerhunting grounds and a convenient place to trade the deerskins for manufactured goods.

In the two decades preceding the American Revolution Great Britain had indirectly transformed the economy of the southeastern Indians by becoming their sole source of now indispensible goods. British-American traders had penetrated deep into Indian country, often marrying Creek women, fathering children, and installing their own mixed-blood sons as representatives, or factors, in the villages. The livelihood of Creek men, and also of Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee men across the South, had become inexorably linked to their ability to obtain deerskins to trade with the British in exchange for cloth, tools, iron pots, rum and weapons. The southeastern Indians, once sedentary farmers and subsistence hunters, had been transformed, in the course of a single generation, into large-scale commercial hunters.

When the United States kicked the Tories out of the country after the American Revolution they inadvertently expelled their leading Indian experts. The same thing happened when Galvez took over the Floridas in 1781. The individuals who had controlled the lucrative Indian trade were now exiles in Halifax, London or Nassau. It didn’t take long for the Spanish governors of East and West Florida to realize they were not up to the task of supplying the Indians the way their British predecessors had. So in 1783 the Spanish swallowed their pride and awarded an exclusive contract to the British firm of Panton, Leslie and Company to supply the southern Indians on behalf of His Catholic Majesty, Carlos III.

Charles III

William Panton had been in the Indian trade since arriving in South Carolina from Scotland in the early 1760s. He started as a clerk in Charleston and by the late 1770s, having been expelled from the Carolinas because of his Loyalist sympathies, was in St. Augustine running the Indian trade for Governor Tonyn of East Florida. Pushed off the continent altogether when Florida was lost to the Spanish, he and his partners, including John Forbes, John Leslie, Charles McLatchy and William Alexander, became influential members of the New Settler faction in Nassau.

Panton, Leslie and Company was launched in 1783 and went to work for the Spanish government. By the mid-1780s the firm had connections throughout the disputed no-man’s land west of the Chattahoochee, including resident factors in every major Indian village.

William Panton was wildly successful as an Indian trader; it has been claimed he was North America’s first millionaire. But the road to that success was very bumpy. One of his larger obstacles was William Augustus Bowles, who was determined to get a piece of Panton’s trade for himself. But Bowles would not stop there. The Indian trade was only a means to an end. Bowles was determined to become the greatest Indian leader in history, to push the Spaniards back into the sea, and to take the Floridas back as a gift to King George.

He spent most of the year 1780 with his adoptive tribe, but not all of it. Either because of a temporary falling out with the tribe, disillusionment with the Indian way of life, or just for a change of scenery, Bowles spent some time during the warm months fishing and hunting alone on Pensacola Bay, his transportation a crude boat he fashioned out of an abandoned barrel and a piece of cloth.  At some point he secured room and board from a baker in Pensacola in exchange for his assistance baking bread.  He returned to the wilderness after an argument with the proprietor over his work habits.

In the meantime the political climate in British West Florida was turning stormy. Spain had allied itself with France against the British in the summer of 1779.  By the end of the year the energetic Louisiana governor, Bernardo de Galvez, had taken the British posts of Fort Bute and Baton Rouge.  And during the following spring, while William Bowles was planting a crop near the Chattahoochee River to consummate his first marriage, Galvez’ troops took the port city of Mobile.  There was nothing left standing in his way now.  Pensacola was next.

Major General John Campbell was desperate.  As commander of all West Florida troops he has spent the last two years trying to obtain the matériel needed to simply maintain a presence on the coast, and arguing with the colonial governor, Peter Chester, over who should be giving orders to the volunteer militia.  A secret communique addressed to Campbell from the King himself, demanding the capture of New Orleans from the Spanish, was intercepted by the enemy, tipping off Galvez about British designs.  It was this letter that set Galvez on a course to re-conquer the Floridas.

With few troops at his disposal, Pensacola fortifications not yet in the condition he would like them to be, and Galvez’ fleet expected at any moment, General Campbell appealed to the Indians for help.  Motivated by a real fear that the deerskin trade with their British neighbors would wither if the Spanish gained control of Gulf ports, Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw war parties began arriving from the hinterlands.  At the head of one of these war parties, dressed in a long Creek hunting jacket, was former ensign William Augustus Bowles.

The long-anticipated attack from the west took much longer than expected.  In the meantime morale had to be maintained among a thousand Indians in addition to the regular troops.  In mid-winter Campbell sent a force of a few hundred to Mobile to surprise and perhaps even capture the Spanish garrison there.  It was a long shot, but at least it would keep the men on their toes and help preserve the dwindling rum supply by giving them a mission.

The surprise attack was an utter failure.  All of the Hessian officers in charge of the attack were killed and the soldiers returned to Pensacola defeated.  Bowles had been one of the last to leave the scene, firing point blank into the Spanish fort until a cannonball shattered the tree he had been crouching behind.  His impressive conduct at Mobile and obvious leadership skills were enough to convince Campbell to reinstate him as an ensign in his Maryland regiment.

When Galvez finally arrived in March of 1781 he approached his task cautiously. The town itself was quickly overrun, but the British defenders were able to hold the Spaniards at bay because they controlled the heights.  Just north of town on a small hill was the recently reinforced Fort George.  Here the British hunkered down and awaited Galvez’ next move.  Beyond Fort George were two slightly taller hills.  On these Campbell had constructed smaller forts, or redoubts, to guard Fort George itself.  On the loftiest of the three hills stood the Queen’s Redoubt, a seemingly impregnable bastion bristling with artillery that also contained the British powder magazine.

On the morning of May 8, 1781, the six-week siege of Pensacola ended when a rogue shell from a Spanish gun penetrated the magazine in the Queen’s Redoubt in exactly the right spot.  The explosion was horrendous, completely destroying the building and blowing 85 soldiers to pieces.  Bowles, who had been standing only a few yards away, somehow walked away unharmed.

In the space of a few minutes Spanish troops occupied the position and began laying fire on Fort George below.  Within a few hours General Campbell raised the white flag, and West Florida was once again a Spanish colony.

Not long after, Bowles sailed past Morro Castle into Havana Harbor as a prisoner of the Spanish, the vision of his fellow Marylanders being blown to bits still fresh in his mind.  The events at Pensacola would mark the beginning of a deep hatred for the Spanish that would eventually turn into a personal war waged around the world.

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William Bowles was born in the British colony of Maryland in the 1760s.  Several members of his father’s family were involved in the bookselling business back in London, and William grew up reading and quoting the classics, in literature, drama, science; but he was especially fond of the great political philosophers of the Enlightenment – Voltaire, Rousseau and Locke – whose writings gave impetus to the American and French revolutions.

But unlike many of his educated contemporaries in the American colonies, his immersion in revolutionary ideas did not lead to his joining the cause. His father was a staunch Loyalist, a fierce defender of the Mother Country and the King.  The influence of the father’s politics on the son would take on an extreme expression in the years to come.

Just as influential to young William as the books his father supplied him were the stories told by some of his neighbors in the town of Frederick – dramatic tales of bloodthirsty Indians and French scoundrels.  William was born only a year after the end of the Seven Years’ War, a conflict between Britain and France which was referred to in the colonies as the French and Indian War.

It is said that William’s father was tarred and feathered for his loyalty to the old regime.  If you’ve ever seen the miniseries John Adams, based on the biography by David McCullough, you know that tarring and feathering is no laughing matter.  Soon after this incident, William’s family moved out of Frederick to a farm on the western Maryland frontier. Bitter over the treatment of his family by the upstart rebels, William, age 14, presented himself for service to His Majesty at the great city of Philadelphia, a recent British acquisition.

While Washington and his armies endured some of the harshest winter weather in Pennsylvania history, General Howe’s Philadelphia troops enjoyed the best the city had to offer.  Bowles and his cohorts discovered that the young Marylander had a flair for the dramatic.  He became a star of the stage, excelling especially in the role of the hero.  His artistry extended also to visual media.  In later years he would paint portraits to supplement his acting income.

In 1778 Bowles first saw the Caribbean Sea, as part of a flotilla of British regulars sent to Jamaica to await further orders from the Crown.  By December Ensign Bowles and his troop of Maryland Loyalists were in Pensacola, the capital of West Florida and an important way-station in the growing deerskin trade with the southern Indians.

The troops were sent to Pensacola to defend the small garrison from a Spanish attack from the west.  Although Spain had not yet entered the war being waged between Britain and her wayward colonies, she did control the mouth of the Mississippi, arguably the greatest prize in any struggle over territory in this part of the world. During the hot summer of 1779, as a great number of Bowles’s companions lay sick and dying from yellow fever and malaria, Spain and Great Britain were each devising secret plans to attack the other on the Gulf Coast.  The British needed Louisiana in order to control transportation on the great river; Spain wanted to take Florida back from the British, who had won it in a treaty negotiation at the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763.

It was also in 1779 that William Augustus Bowles lost patience with a superior officer, was stripped of his commission without a court martial for insubordination, befriended a passing Indian pack train, and disappeared into the wild interior to become a Creek warrior.

The rest of his short career is even more bizarre.  The whole “pirate” thing is especially controversial to those of us on the Gulf Coast.  But that’ll have to wait till the next post.