Garangula Speech, Creek Nation, 1748

In this solemn and important council, rising up before the wisdom and experience of so many venerable Sachems, and having the eyes of so many heroic chieftains upon me, I feel myself struck with that awful dissidence, which I believe would be felt by any one of my years, who had not relinquished all the modesty of his nature.

Nothing, O ye Creeks! could enable me to bear the fixed attention of this illustrious assembly, or give to my youth the power of an unembarrassed utterance, but the animating conviction, that there is not one heart among us, that does not glow for the dignity, the glory, the happiness of his country.  And in those principles, how inferior forever my abilities may otherwise be, I cannot, without violating my own consciousness, yield to any one the superiority.

Fathers, Friends, and Countrymen, We are met to deliberate upon what? upon no less a subject, Than whether we shall, or shall not be a people? On the one hand, we are at war with a nation of our own colour, brave, active, and sagacious.  They bear us unquenchable hatred, and threaten us with all that prudence ought to fear and valour be excited to repel.  On the other hand, we are surrounded and courted by three* powerful nations, of colour, laws, and manners, different from our own.  Courted, I say; for though each is rival to the other, yet it is to be feared none of them mean our prosperity.

I do not stand up, O countrymen! to propose the plans of war, or to direct the sage experience of this assembly in the regulation of our alliances: your wisdom renders this unnecessary from me.

My intention is to open to your view a subject not less worthy your deliberate notice; and though equally glaring, though equally involving your existence and happiness, yet, from the bewitching tyranny of custom, and the delusion of self-love, if it has not escaped general observation, it has eluded public censure, and been screened from the animadversions of our national council.

I perceive the eye of this august assembly dwells upon me.  Oh! may every heart be unveiled from its prejudices, and receive, with patriot candour, the disinterested, the pious, the filial obedience I owe to my country, when I step forth to be the accuser of my brethren, not of treachery, not of cowardice, not of deficiency in the noblest of all passions, the love of the public. These, I glory in boasting, are incompatible with the character of a Creek!

The traitor, or rather the tyrant, I arraign before you, O Creeks! is no native of our soil; but rather a lurking miscreant, an emissary of the evil principle of darkness.  'Tis that pernicious liquid, which our pretended white friends artfully introduced, and so plentifully pour in among us.

Oh Countrymen! I will spare myself the ungrateful task of repeating, and you the pain of recollecting, those shameful broils, those unmanly riots, and those brutal extravagances, which the unbounded use of this liquor has so frequently produced among us.  I must, however, beg leave to assert, and submit to your impartiality my arguments to support this assertion, that our prevailing love, our intemperate use, of this liquid, will be productive of consequences the most destructive to the welfare and glory of the public, and the felicity of every individual offender.  It perverts the ends of society, and unfits us for all those distinguishing and exquisite feelings, which are the cordials of life, and the, noblest privileges of humanity.

I have already declined the mortification which a detail of facts would raise in every breast, when unpossessed by this demon.  Permit me then, in general, only to appeal to public experience, for the many violations of civil order, the indecent, the irrational perversions of character, which these inflammatory draughts have introduced amongst us.  'Tis true, these are past, and may they never be repeated.  But tremble, O ye Creeks! When I thunder, in your ears this denunciation; that if the cup of perdition continues to rule among us with sway so intemperate, Ye will cease to be a nation! Ye will have neither heads to direct, nor hands to protect you.

While this diabolical juice under-mines all the powers of your bodies and minds, with inoffensive zeal the warrior's enfeebled arm will draw the bow, or launch the spear, in the day of battle.  In the day of council, when national safety stands suspended on the lips of the hoary sachem, he will shake his head with uncollected spirits, and drivel the babblings of a second childhood.

Think not, O ye Creeks ! that I presume to amuse or affright you with an imaginary picture.  Is it not evident, (alas, it is too fatally so!) that we find the vigour of our youth abating ; our numbers decreasing ; our ripened manhood a premature victim to disease, to sickness, to death; and our venerable sachems a solitary scanty number?

Does not that desertion of all our reasonable powers, which we feel when under the dominion of that deformed monster, that barbarian madness, wherewith this liquid inspires us, prove beyond doubt that it impairs all our intelletual faculties, pulls down reason from her throne, disslipates every ray of the divinity within us, and sinks us below the brutes?

I hope I need not make it a question to any in this assembly, whether he would prefer the intemperate use of this liquor, to clear perceptions, found judgment, and a mind exulting in its own reflections.  However great may be the force of habit, how insinuating soever the influence of example, and how so ever unequal we may sometimes find ourselves to this insidious enemy; I persuade myself, and perceive by your countenances, O Creeks! there is none before whom I stand, so shameless, so lost to the weakest impulses of humanity, and the very whisperings of reason, as not to acknowledge the benefits of such a choice.

Fathers and Brethren,
I must yet crave your patience, while I suggest to you, that this intoxication of ourselves disqualifies us from acting up to our proper characters in social life, and debars us from all the soothing, softening, endearing joys of domestic bliss.

There is not within the whole compass of nature, so prevailing, so lasting a propensity, as that of associating and communicating our sentiments to each other.  And there is not a more incontestable truth than this, that benignity of heart, the calm possession of ourselves, and the undisturbed exercise of our thinking faculties, are absolutely necessary to constitute the eligible and worthy companion.  How opposite to these characters intoxication renders us, is so manifest to your own experience, so obvious to the least reflection, that it would be both impertinence and insolence to enlarge farther upon it, before the candour and wisdom of this assembly.

And now, O ye Creeks! If the cries of your country, if the pulse of glory, if all that forms the hero, and exalts the man, has not swelled your breasts, with a patriot indignation against the immoderate use of this liquor; if these motives are in sufficient to produce such resolutions as may be effectual, there are yet other ties of humanity, tender, dear, and persuading.  Think on what we owe to our children and to the gentler sex.

With regard to our children, besides affecting their health, enervating all their powers, and endangering the very existence of our nation, by the unbounded use of these pernicious draughts, think how it must affect their tenderness, to see the man that gave them being, thus sunk into the most brutal state, in danger of being suffocated by his own intemperance, and standing in need of their infant arm to support his staggering steps, or'raife his feeble head, while he vomits forth the foul debauch!

O Warriors! O Countrymen!
How despicable must such a practice render us even in the eyes of our own children!  Will it not gradually deprive us of all authority in the families which we ought to govern and protect? What a waste of time does it create, which might otherwise be spent round the blazing hearth, in the most tender offices? It perverts the great designs of nature, and murders all those precious moments, in which the warrior should recount, ro his wondering offspring, his own great actions and those of his ancestors. By these means the tender bosom has often caught the patriot-flame, and an illustrious succession of sachems and warriors were formed among us, from generation to generation, before our glory was eclipsed by the introduction of this destructive liquid.

O Creeks!
You all remember the great Garangula, who is now gone to our fathers, and from whole loins I immediately sprang.  You know how often he has led forth our warriors to conquest, while his name sounded like thunder, and flashed terror upon our foes.  You will then pardon the necessary vanity, If I presumeto remind you how pioufly he ad-hered to. our original fimplicity of life. Oft has he fatd, that if he did not fly from this cup of perdition, his name would never be founded from hill to hill, by the tongue of poi= terity ; and I can affirm that, if he had waited his time in fuch prac-tices, my bofom would never have been fired to glory,' by the oft-re-peated story of our family-virtues and atchievments ; nor should I have dared, on this occafion, fondly to emulate them, by railing my un-pra&ifed voice, in the cause of my country, before fuch a venerable af-fembly of chiefs and warriors.

But farther, besides what we owe to our children, let us think on that delicate regulation of conduct, that soul-ennobling love, which it is at once the happiness and honour of manhood to manifest towards the gentler sex.  By the love of this sex I do not mean mere desire of them.  Those amiable creatures are designed not only to gratify our passions, but to excite and fix all the kind and sociable affections.  They were not meant to be the slaves of our arbitrary wills, in our brutal moments, but the sweet companions of our most reasonable hours, and exalted enjoyments.  Heaven has endowed them with that peculiar warmth of affection, that disinterested friendship of heart, that melting sympathy of soul, that entertaining sprightliness of imagination, joined with all the sentimental abilities of mind, that tend to humanize the rough nature, open the reserved heart, and polish the rugged temper, which would otherwise make men the dread and abhorrence of each other.

Thus were women formed to allay the fatigues of life, and reward the dangers we encounter for them.  These are their endowments, these, their charms.  Hither, nature, reason, virtue call, and shall they call in vain?  Shall an unnatural, an unreasonable, a vicious perversity of taste be preferred to those heaven born joys of life? Will you treat the Sovereign principle of good with a thankless insensibility, and offer libations to the spirit of all evil?  Will any Creek henceforth dare to approach those lovely creatures with unhallowed lips, breathing the noisome smell of this diabolical juice, or roll into their downy embrace in a state inferior to the brutes, losing all that rapturous intercourse of live and friendship, all those most exalted of human pleasures, which they, they only, are formed capable of communicating to us?

Oh no! Fathers, Warriors, and Countrymen!
Let me conjure you by an these softer ties, and inexpressible endearments; let me conjure you too, as you yet hope to behold the TREE of PEACE raise its far-seen top to the sun, and spread its odorous branches, watered by the dew of heaven, over all your abodes, while you rejoice unmolested under its shade and as you yet with to behold the nations round about you, boundwith the sacred CHAIN of CONCORD, every hand maintaining a link. By all these ties, by all theft hopes, I conjure you, O Creeks! Hence, forward let the cup of moderation be the crown of your festivities. Save your country; maintain and elevate her glory.  Transmit to your posterity health, freedom, and honour. Break not the great chain of nature; but let an honest, rational, and delicate intercourse of the sexes be the plan of social joy.  Let each domestic bliss wreathe the garland of connubial life.  Let truth and friendship sanctify the lover's wish, and secure to the brave, the wife, and the temperate man, a felicity worthy his choice, and worthy his protection. But, perhaps, my unpracticed youth has gone too far. If so, O Fathers and Brethren, impute it to an honest zeal and love, for the commonwealth and honour of the illustrious and ancient nation of Creeks.

Onughkallydawwy Garangula Copac.