Major David Tate MONIAC

  General Notes:

NOTES:
His great great grandparents were Captain Jean Baptiste Louis DeCourtel Marchand, French commander of Fort Toulouse in Alabama; and Sehoy I, Indian princess of the prestigious Wind Clan (Hutalgalgi), the highest ranking tribe of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

His great granduncle was Red Shoes (Muskogean Chief) who became an Indian Chief of the prestigious Wind Clan (Hutalgalgi) of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

His maternal uncle was famed Chief "Red Eagle" of the Wind Clan (Hutalgalgi), the highest ranking tribe of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

His half granduncle was Alexander McGillivray who became Chief of the Upper Creek (Muscogee) Indians, one of the most powerful and historically important Native American chiefs among the Creek of the Southeast.

Major David Moniac was an American military officer and in 1822 the first Native American graduate of the United States Military Academy. A Creek with some Scots ancestry, who was related to major Creek leaders on both sides of his family, Moniac was the first cadet to West Point from the new state of Alabama. Moniac resigned his commission in 1822 to manage his clan's property in Alabama, where he developed a cotton plantation.

In 1816, he was appointed to the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, under a provision of a US treaty in 1791 which called for the education of a limited number of Creek children at government expense. He moved to Washington, DC for training by an Irish tutor, and entered West Point on September 18, 1817. He graduated on July 1, 1822, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 6th Infantry Regiment. He resigned this commission six months later and returned to Alabama to assist his family. He married Mary Powell, a cousin of Osceola, the leader of the Florida Seminoles.

In 1836, the US Government raised a regiment of Creeks from Alabama to fight the Seminoles in Florida during the Second Seminole War. He was commissioned as a Captain on August 17, 1836 \endash the only Native American to be commissioned. The Creek regiment joined the main Army of Keith Call, governor of Florida, on October 19th, and he was promoted to Major. In an engagement on the Withlacoochee River in the Wahoo Swamp (see Battle of Wahoo Swamp), he initiated an assault against the Seminoles, but was struck fatally by a musket ball.

In the 1990s, his remains were transferred from a local cemetery to the newly established Florida National Cemetery for military veterans, a few miles away.

  Research Notes:

-- Biography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Moniac)
-- Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wahoo_Swamp)
-- Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Seminole_War)
-- Find A Grave, Memorial # 1004559

David married Mary Dalphine Polly POWELL, daughter of Rev. William Theophilus POWELL and Rachel Ruth CENTER. (Mary Dalphine Polly POWELL was born in 1810 in Baldwin County, Alabama and died on 15 Apr 1857 in Wayne County, Tennessee.)