Hawkins worked for two years in Georgia with the Creek people as an Indian agent under his uncle, Benjamin Hawkins, US Supervisor of Southeast Indian tribes. After that, he returned to North Carolina to practice law. In 1801, he was assigned by Gov. James Turner to settle a dispute and arrange a settlement with those Tuscarora Indians remaining in Bertie County, North Carolina. (The great majority of the tribe had migrated to New York state by 1722, where they settled with the Oneida people of the Iroquois Confederacy.)