The diplomats met—Willett and McGillivray. Willett was polite, courtly of address, skillful of speech, resourceful, but wary. McGillivray was suave, excessive in politeness, equivocal of speech, deceitful, ostensibly generous, though as treacherous as a serpent. Both were able. Each had had much to do with men and affairs, but the motives of the two were as wide as the poles. In the assembled council, Willett showed that he was at home. Under the guise of excessive politeness, the two played against each other for advantage with the skill of trained fencers. There was a mastery of self-confidence that equally possessed both. Each spoke in a measured, cautious way. With mutual distrustfulness, each vied with the other in courtesy of tone. Objections were met and verbal blows were parried with a degree of politeness that approached the obsequious. It was Greek meeting Greek. The widest discretion was Willett’s in arranging for the proposed council in New York, where the Indian chiefs were invited by the “great President” to meet him.

With the mastery of a skilled disputant, Colonel Willett addressed the assembled chiefs, including, of course, Colonel McGillivray. The pith of his speech was that “our great chief, George Washington,” had sent him to convey to them a message of cordial affection, and to invite them to his great council house in New York, where he wished to sign with his own hand, along with Colonel McGillivray, a treaty of peace and of alliance. He assured them of the high regard entertained for them by “our great chief,” who did not want their lands, but wished to see them happy, contented, and protected. He further assured them that Washington would make a treaty “as strong as the hills and as lasting as the rivers.” His tone of address and assurance of sincerity greatly pleased the assembly.

The result of the meeting, which lasted for hours, was that a deputation of chiefs, together with Colonel McGillivray, would accompany Willett on horseback to New York. Arrangements for transporting the baggage on horses were made, and the day appointed for the departure. Accordingly, Colonels Willett and McGillivray, a nephew of Colonel McGillivray, and a body of Indian chiefs filed out of Little Tallassee, near Wetumpka, on the morning of June 1, 1790, for the distant capital. Along the way the party was reinforced by other chiefs on horseback, who were in wait for the arrival of Willett and McGillivray. At Stone Mountain, Georgia, the two great chiefs of the Cowetas and Cussetas joined the party. Onward the procession moved, exciting much interest, and in certain quarters, not a little sensation. On reaching the home of General Andrew Pickens, on the Seneca River, in South Carolina, they were received with the utmost cordiality by this distinguished gentleman, who arranged for more comfortable means of travel. Here the party fell in with the Tallassee king, Chinnobe, the “great Natchez warrior,” and others. Henceforth the Indians rode in wagons, excepting the four who were the bodyguard of Colonel McGillivray, who accompanied him on horseback, while Colonel Willett rode alone in a sulky. At Richmond and at Fredericksburg the party halted to rest, at which places much consideration was shown to Colonel McGillivray. Distinguished honor was shown the entire party at Philadelphia, where they were entertained for three days. Boarding a sloop at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, they were finally landed in New York.

Now began a series of demonstrations that lasted through a number of days. The sachems of Tammany Hall turned out in full regalia, met the deputation at the water’s edge in lower New York, which was at that time about all there was of the city, marched up Wall Street, then the principal thoroughfare of the city, past the federal building, where congress was in session, then to the home of the President, with that pomp and ceremony of which Washington was very fond. Each member of the deputation was presented to the President, while the eyes of the enchanted chiefs fairly glittered with delight as they unceremoniously gazed on the scenes about them in the mansion of the President. Washington could not outdo Colonel McGillivray in conventionality in the exchange of greeting. Both were men of splendid physique, McGillivray being just six feet high, with broad shoulders, well proportioned, and as straight as a flagstaff. From the home of the President the procession filed to the office of the secretary of war, thence to the mansion of Governor Clinton, all of which being over, they were marched for entertainment to the principal hostelry of the city, the City Tavern, where a banquet was spread for the unique deputation, when the functions of the first day were closed.

Other notable attentions charmed the visiting chiefs, whose elation over the novel scenes in which they were the principal sharers was equaled alone by the concern of Colonel McGillivray regarding what all this might mean for him. The chiefs of the wilds were easily beguiled by these profuse attentions, but not so the wily McGillivray. With sedulous care he kept the chiefs well under his thumb, lest they might fall into other hands, by means of which they might be alienated from himself.

After some days, negotiations were entered on between McGillivray and the Indian chiefs, on the one hand, and Henry Knox, the chosen representative of the government, on the other. With cautious vigilance on the part of both Knox and McGillivray, each step in the proceeding was taken. Knox knew his man, and McGillivray knew what he wished, and all else was made subservient to that purpose. McGillivray was as free in the ply of his art in the metropolis, as he was beneath the native oaks of his tribe on the distant Coosa. Nothing daunted him, and with dexterity he employed his art as the situation was gone into. A sensational episode occurred in connection with the proceedings. Washington learned that the Spanish of Florida and of Louisiana, having heard of the departure on this mission of McGillivray and his chiefs, had dispatched a secret agent with a bag of Spanish gold, by ship to New York, to bribe the chiefs and prevent a treaty. McGillivray wore their uniform, bore a commission as colonel in their army, and was their agent, but their confidence in him was naught, hence the mission of the agent. This agent was detected on his arrival, and was shadowed by an officer from the moment he touched the soil of the city. The agent was never able to reach the Indians. With consummate skill the contest continued from day to day, McGillivray determined to force the initiative in the offer to be made, before he would agree to commit himself. He was a plausible enigma to the statesmen at New York, whom he forced to show their hands before he would agree to disclose his purposes and wishes.