When the British made peace, McGillivray exchanged his British uniform for a Spanish one and went on with the war.

In later days, when he had forced Congress to pay him for his father's confiscated property and had made peace, he wore the uniform of an American Brigadier General; but he did not keep the peace, never having intended to keep it.

It was not until he had seen the Spanish plots collapse and had realized that the Americans were to dominate the land, that the White Leader ceased from war and urged the youths of his tribe to adopt American civilization.
Spent from hate and wasted with dissipation, he retired at last to the spot where Lachlan had set up his first Creek home.

Here he lived his few remaining days in a house which he built on the site of the old ruined cabin about which still stood the little grove of apple trees his father had planted.

He died at the age of fifty of a fever contracted while he was on a business errand in Pensacola.