The Anaconda Standard

Fort Hawkins Now a Barn
From the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph,

A few days ago Ben I. Jones converted the old fort built in 1806 at Fort Hawkins into a barn. Although the old log structure has stood the storm of shot and shell, and has been exposed to all the varying changes of weather since that early period, not an unsound timber is to be seen in it to-day. The logs of which it is constructed are as solid and sound as they were at first.

The fort was made of Georgia heart pine, and to-day it would burn like rosin if a match were struck to a ragged end.

The structure was built as a government trading post or factory, where deer skins were purchased from the Indians. During the Creek war, from 1812 to 1814, it was a rendezvous and distributing point for the United States soldiers, and Major Phil Cook was in command. Anticipating the dangers from the torch of the treacherous red man, the whites built the fort on a high stone foundation, the floor of the wooden structure extending beyond the rock walls. Portholes were made in the extended floor so as to shoot Indians who might try to scale the walls to set fire to the woodwork.

During the famous Creek war incited by Tecumseh and his brother, who was known as the Prophet, this building was in the center of the territory attacked. Tecumseh was one of the most eloquent of Indians, and when the war was begun between Great Britain and

The United States he communicated with the tribes from Florida to Canada, advising them that then was the time to reclaim their lands from the whites. He read in an eastern paper that a comet would appear in the sky at a given time. So he notified the Indians that when his arrow appeared in the heavens it would be a sign for them to attack the whites. Old Fort Hawkins perhaps was more vigorously attacked in pursuance of this order than was any other in the country.

The fort received its name from Hon. Benjamin Hawkins, a senator from North Carolina, who had been appointed a commissioner to Georgia to draw up a treaty with the Creek Indians.