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Indian Wars Letter Opothle to Major Jessup, 1836

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A two page manuscript document signed by Native Americans of the Creek tribe.
1. Apothle Yoholo, Chief of Upper Creeks
2. Little Doctor or Nehathlucco Hopoie
3. Tuckabatchee Micco later Chief of Creeks
4. Mad Blue
A letter to Major Jessup detailing a request by Opothle to have a new officer in charge of his men, one that they already knew, so as to give them confidence in the Indian War in Florida. Signed by the above principal Native Americans who were or were to become chiefs. Each marked the document with an 'X' and then the name of each clearly penned by the document's drafter. These native American's were employed by the US government as scouts and 'soldiers' against the Seminoles in the second Seminole Wars in Florida. Written from Tallassee, (first called Talisi by the Creek Indians), Alabama in 1836. Major Jessup was sent by President Jackson first to deal with the Creek tribe in Georgia and Alabama and later to command all of the US troops in Florida during the second Seminole Wars.

Letter Size: H. 8" x L. 5.25"
Frame Size: H. 11.5" x L.16" x D.5"
Weight: 1lb 10oz
Condition: very good, some age spotting to paper, framed and ready for display.

American Indian Wars is the name used in the United States to describe a series of conflicts between American settlers or the federal government and the native peoples of North America before and after the American Revolutionary War. The wars resulted from the arrival of European colonizers who continuously sought to expand their territory, pushing the indigenous populations westwards. The wars were spurred by ideologies such as Manifest Destiny, which held that the United States was destined to expand from coast to coast on the American continent, and which resulted in the policy of Indian removal, by which indigenous peoples were removed from the areas where Europeans were settling, either forcefully or by means of voluntary exchange of territory through treaties.
Opothle Yoholo (ca. 1798?-1863) was a chief of the Tuckabatchee Creeks and served as a leader of the Upper Creek towns during some of most critical events in Creek Indian and American history. He was a supporter of Shawnee leader Tecumseh, who rallied the Creeks to take up arms against the U.S. military in the Creek War of 1813-14, and he fought land speculators and squatters on Creek lands in the war's aftermath. Opothle Yoholo strongly opposed the removal of his people in the 1830s and tried unsuccessfully to keep control of the Creeks' ancestral land in Alabama and Georgia.
With his town now deep in debt, Opothle Yoholo agreed to remove to present-day Oklahoma in 1835, but the move was delayed by the beginning of the Second Creek War in 1836. At the request of the federal government, Opothle Yoholo sent a number of young men from his town to fight against the Lower Creeks in Alabama and later the Seminoles in Florida. Opothle Yoholo and his followers finally emigrated west in 1836. Under the charge of Lieutenant Matthew W. Bateman, the group left Alabama from Tallassee in early September 1836. They marched through Tuscaloosa to Memphis, Tennessee, where they boarded a steamboat to Arkansas and then walked the rest of the way to what was then called Indian Territory. There were 2,318 Creeks in Opothle Yoholo's detachment, of which 78 died. Opothle Yoholo and the rest of the Creek survivors finally settled on land along the Canadian and Little rivers in present-day Oklahoma.

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