possibly on the site of the former Fort Toulouse. He prospered and invested his trading and plantation profits in businesses on the Atlantic coasts of Georgia, eventually settling in Savannah, Georgia, as a man of considerable wealth. In a will drafted in 1767, long before his death, he planned the disposition of a plantation on Hutchinson Island, Georgia, a plantation known as Vale Royal upriver from Savannah, and cash bequests totaling more than £2,500, implying that he was in possession of that amount of currency, as well as numerous bequests of slaves and other valuable chattel. McGillivray was an accomplished Indian trader and Adair praised his skill in negotiating with the Creek to stay neutral during the French and Indian Wars (1760-1761). Marriage and family Though there is no record of McGillivray having married in the Scottish Presbyterian tradition, he took as a consort a high-status Creek woman named Sehoy Marchand. Their marriage was recognized by the Creek. Early biographers claimed Sehoy Marchand was the daughter of a French officer at Fort Toulouse named Jean-Baptiste Marchand. Her mother was also named Sehoy, and she was a high-status woman of the Koasati (alternative spelling: Coushatta), of the Wind Clan. Hers was a politically powerful family of the Upper Creek nation, which had matrilineal system of descent and property. Sehoy's immediate family included several important chiefs. The marriage was a strategic alliance for her family as well as for the ambitious trader; she could protect her children within the tribe. Albert Pickett and other biographers portrayed Sehoy as a beautiful black-eyed Indian princess, with whom McGillivray was instantly lovestruck. Historical and circumstantial evidence suggest the marriage may have been strategic for both sides, as he gained by being allied with a high-status family of Creek, and Sehoy and her family had benefits from a connected European-American trader. They had three children: Alexander, Sophia and Jean (also spelled Jeanne) McGillivray (the latter named after Lachlan's sister). The children lived most of the time with their mother in the Creek tribe and learned its language and ways, although the father sent Alexander to a European-American school in Charleston and Augusta. Many Native American chiefs supported such alliances; European traders, who were men of capital, also sought the alliances of marriage into tribes to strengthen their relationships. Though the Creek tribes treated marriage as a serious institution and had strong taboos against infidelity (especially by