William Augustus Bowles, born in 1763, was a Creek leader and 
adventurer who helped drive the Spanish from Florida.  At the age of 
sixteen, he ran away from his Maryland Loyalist regiment to join the 
Creeks in Pensacola, but he returned a few  months later with 
several Creek warriors.  After the Revolution, he went to the 
Bahamas.  There the British supplied him and the Creeks with arms 
in 1788.  The next year, he went to London to petition King GeorgeIII 
with a plan to invade Mexico, but failed to gain support.  He returned 
to the Lower Creeks in 1799 after several more exploits and issued a 
proclamation on October 31, expelling all U.S. and Spanish agents 
from the imaginary "state of Muskogee."  In 1800, with a force of 
Lower Creeks and Seminoles, he captured the Spanish fort at St. 
Marks, but in 1803 the Upper Creeks turned him over to the Spanish.  
He was sent to Havana where he died in prison in 1805.