PREFACE.
The inducement to write this book was to supply, in a slight measure, the want of any particular history of British rule in West Florida. With that inducement, however, the effort would not have been made but for the sources of original information existing in the Archives of the Dominion of Canada, as well as others, pointed out to me by Dr. William Kingsford of Ottawa, author of the ‘History of Canada;’ to whom I take this occasion of making my acknowledgments.
An account of British rule necessitated one of Spanish colonial annals, both before and after it.
If any apology be necessary for the space devoted to the Creeks, it will be found in the considerations that for twenty years the body of the nation was within the limits of British West Florida; that their relations with the British, formed during that period, influenced their conduct towards the United States until after the War of 1812; and above all, that the life of Alexander McGillivray forms a part of the history of West Florida, both under British and Spanish rule.
The prominence given to Pensacola is due to its having been the capital of both British and Spanish West Florida, and therefore the centre of provincial influence.