Page 3 - Coosaponakeesa’s Publication Practice
I Mary the wife of the within named Tho.s [Thomas] Bosomworth do declare, that I have freely and without any compulsion, signed, Sealed & delivered, the within Instrument of writing passed between the said Thomas Bosomworth and me the said Mary on the one part, and his excellency Henry Ellis Esq.r [Esquire] of the other part, and I do declare and renounce all title or claim of Dower that I might claim or be intitled to, after the Death of my said Husband to or out of the Lands or Heredatiments2 hereby conveyed In Witness where of I have here unto set my hand & Seal the day & year first within written
Mary Bosomworth [mark]
These succinct lines are the only moment of the multi-page manuscript in which Coosaponakeesa speaks in the first person and without her husband, yet this moment also effectually silences her voice. Note that Coosaponakeesa begins this testament by identifying herself as “Mary the wife . . . of Tho.sBosomworth.” Her self-identification mirrors other moments in the manuscript, which repeatedly refers to Thomas Bosomworth and “Mary his wife.” Bosomworth, her third husband, was an Englishman and lapsed Anglican minister who had arrived in Georgia in 1741. He was reviled by colonial leaders as an opportunist. The indenture attaches Coosaponakeesa’s identity to her husband’s in a clear effort to place her under coverture, the English common law principle whereby wives were assumed to be covered by their husbands legally, economically, and politically. Their identities were extensions of their husbands’, which is one reason why Coosaponakeesa’s name reverts to her English married one. After her adoption of the indenture’s coverture rhetoric, Coosaponakeesa then accedes to the agreement and also “renounce[s] all title or claim of Dower” that she might otherwise have made upon the death of her husband. Like coverture and taking the last name of one’s husband, dower is a British legal principle, not a Creek one. In the Native Southeast, Indigenous communities were typically matrilineal and matriarchal, with inheritances and genealogies accorded through women’s lineages. A Creek widow would not need to assert her dower rights to house and land because such property was hers and her clan’s in the first place. By renouncing such prerogatives, Coosaponakeesa also implicitly consents to English common law; British rather than Creek principles govern her legal identity. This testament implies, therefore, just like the indenture as a whole, that her ties to the coastal islands are covered by and due to her partnership and relationship with her husband, not vice versa.
In subsuming Coosaponakeesa’s identity to her husband’s, the indenture disciplines and hides the literacies that resulted in this agreement. For almost fifteen years, Coosaponakeesa had been petitioning Georgian leaders for money, for recognition of her island property rights, and for appreciation of her status as diplomat and agent of the Creek nation. She had been accompanying her petitions with memorials, or narrative documents laying out the facts and justifications; three of those memorials have been included on this site as supplementary texts. Her rights and status, moreover, were the result of Creek leaders appreciating her (not her husband) as a Creek woman and leader whose contributions had been of signal importance to her nation. They affirmed this decision orally and in signed documents. Thus, in actuality, the validity and power of her claims were instead attributable to her Creek maternal inheritance, her service to the Creek Confederacy, and to various documents wherein Creek leaders averred that they ceded these islands to her. Governor Ellis was acquiescing to her active campaign, not the merit of her husband’s entitlements.