Person:Alexander McKee (4)

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Colonel Alexander McKee (ca. 1735 – 15 January 1799) was an agent in the British Indian Department during the French and Indian War, the American Revolutionary War, and the Northwest Indian War.

His father Thomas was an Irish immigrant and his mother Mary was from a North Carolina settler's family who had been captured and adopted by the Shawnee tribe. It was through his mother's tutelage that Alexander learned the customs and language of the Indians and came to develop a lifetime relationship with the Ohio Indian tribes.

Initially, McKee began working with traders who did business with the Indians of the Ohio Country. Soon, he was able to establish his own trading business. Because of his good relations with the Ohio tribes, Indian agent George Croghan enlisted McKee in the service of the Crown's Indian Department. Around 1764, he settled in what is now McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, and built a substantial house. George Washington visited him there in 1770, and mentions this in his diary. McKee continued in the service of Pennsylvania for some time after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, but following mistreatment by the settlers, he left the Americans in favor of the British at Detroit. It was during this transition that he established his well known association with Matthew Elliott and the Girty brothers: Simon, James, and George.

During the next 25 years, Alexander McKee would lead in the efforts of promoting the alliance of the Indians to the British most especially with the Shawnee tribe, but also with the majority of the Northwest Indian tribes. He died in Canada in 1799 and was mourned and greatly honored by the Northwest tribes, which included Tecumseh.

His son Thomas McKee was a Canadian soldier and political figure.

The borough of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, is named after Alexander McKee.

1.   Nelson, Larry L. A Man of Distinction Among Them: Alexander McKee and British-Indian Affairs Along the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754-1799. (Ohio, USA: Kent State University Press).

   "Half Shawnee^N1 and fathered by a white trader, McKee played a pivotal go-between role in Great Lakes Indian affairs for nearly fifty years."

2.   Researchers vary, his mother may have been born a Shawnee or she was an adopted captive of the Shawnee.