By Stephen Hammock
Crawford and Taylor Counties are fortunate in having the remnants of the Creek Agency on either side of the Flint River in western Middle Georgia. The entire region was also blessed to have a man of Benjamin Hawkins' stature and integrity as Indian Agent (more precisely General Superintendant of Indian Affairs for all Tribes South of the Ohio River). He served in this capacity from 1796 to his untimely death in 1816. Fort Hawkins, the U.S. Army's Southeastern Command from 1806-1819, was named for him.
Interestingly, there is only one contemporary portrait that may depict Hawkins, though a handful of posthumous illustrations and busts do survive. The image above shows a plaster bust (with imitation bronze paint) of him that stands in the Fort Hawkins Visitors Center. On the back of this bust is the date 1959 and the name of the artist, Bryant Baker. Baker probably based this on his marble bust of Hawkins in the Georgia Capitol Museum in Atlanta, which is dated "circa 1957."
Going back in time a little further, we find that Samuel Ashe's Biographical Dictionary of North Carolina (Volume 5, 1906) has an entry on native son Hawkins by Stephen B. Weeks. As far as we can tell, this publication is the source of the famous "Cyclops Portrait" of Hawkins, though it may be older than this. This image seems to be based on John Trumbull's 1826 painting General George Washington Resigning His Commission.
Trumbull's painting depicts Hawkins seated just behind the man sitting in front of and to the left of George Washington, who is the focal point of the piece. Here we see the same profile view as in the "Cyclops Portrait" but from farther away. The painting is on one wall in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. This pose is probably because of the unfortunate accident that damaged his left eye while he was a young man at Princeton.
Finally, our review of images of Hawkins reaches back to the earliest known image, and the only one painted during his lifetime. Though popularly known as "Benjamin Hawkins and the Creek Indians" or "Benjamin Hawkins Trading with the Creek Indians," the painting is actually called The Plan of Civilization, and its artist is unknown, according to the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina, where it resides. It is thought to date to circa A.D. 1800 - when he was indeed living on the Creek Agency (in modern Crawford County) attempting to implement his civilization plan - but not all art historians agree that it depicts Benjamin Hawkins and the Creek Agency! There was indeed what amounted to a plantation there, but a village or town is depicted in the background and nothing like this ever existed at the old Agency, the site of which is still located in a rural area today. The Creek Agency, which today has been broken up among numerous landowners, is still awaiting a proper archaeological survey with modern methodologies based on all we have learned about from the historical record in the last 200 years.
Benjamin Hawkins was a fascinating and important figure during the early years of the American Republic. It is a bit surprising that no comparison of the depictions of him has apparently been written thus far. Filling gaps like this is exactly what the Middle Georgia Preservation Alliance seeks to do - though an art historian would have written much more intelligently on this topic than an archaeologist & historian. Stay tuned for more historical blogs from the MGPA in the future!
References
Ashe, Samuel A. (ed.)
Biographical History of North Carolina from Colonial Times to the Present. Greensboro, North Carolina: Charles. L. Van Noppen, 1906. Volume V.
Foster, H. Thomas, II (ed.)
The Collected Works of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796-1810. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003.
Hawkins, John D.
A Biographical Sketch and Incidents of the Life and Services of the Late Col. Benjamin Hawkins Superintendent of All the Indians South of the Ohio River by his Nephew John D. Hawkins of Franklin County, North Carolina, 1848. Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, 1848.
Henri, Florette
The Southern Indians and Benjamin Hawkins, 1796-1816. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.
Pound, Merritt
Benjamin Hawkins: Indian Agent. Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1951.
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