Kenton Harper, Letter from Chickasaw Tribal Leaders Welcoming Harper, May 19, 1851 

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• Lot Description
  Chickasaw Delegation LS to Kenton Harper, US Agent for the Chickasaws, Washington, D.C., 1p., May 19, 1851.
  
  A superb letter to Harper from three Chickasaw delegates visiting Washington, D.C., reading:
  
  We are now making preparation to leave for our homes this evening, and would be happy to have the opportunity to accompany you into our Country & introduce you to our friends and acquaintances... We would be pleased to have you become acquainted with our tried friend, Hon. Jacob Thompson of Miss., who will be in Memphis about that time.
  
  The men who signed this letter are three noteworthy figures in Chickasaw diplomacy during the years they struggled for autonomy. Dougherty "Winchester" Colbert (b. 1810) was a key Chickasaw diplomat of the period and active in organization of the Chickasaw nation in 1856. He was elected the nation's second governor in 1858-1860 and served for a second period during the Civil War (1862-1866). Colbert was also a signatory to the agreement aligning Chickasaws with Confederate forces.
  
  Second, Sampson Folsom (1820-1872), sometimes called a "mixed blood Choctaw," was a Chickasaw by marriage into the Colbert family. Folsom was active in politics in both the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations and he helped draft the Chickasaw Constitution. He commanded a Confederate Choctaw Cavalry regiment during the Civil War. Folsom, along with Edmund Pickens, was particularly noted for his key role in dissolving formal ties to the Choctaws.
  
  Finally, Jackson Frazier (1815-1856), was a principal chief of the Chickasaws and was one of several men behind the establishment of the Chickasaw Intelligencer in 1854, the short-lived weekly newspaper.
  

  
  

  Kenton Harper was the sort of remarkable man that the 19th century produced in seeming abundance. Born the son of newspaperman in Chambersburg, PA, in 1801, Harper was working as a printer in town when he made the decision to purchase his own newspaper in Staunton, VA, and to relocate there in 1823. By any reckoning, it was a good career move. An ambitious young man, he parlayed his success in publishing into social power, winning election to the state legislature and as mayor of Staunton, and reaping the rewards with patronage appointments from friends in the capitol. He fulfilled his military duty as well, first in the Mexican American War and then in the Confederacy Army, rather than Union, during the Civil War. Having carried a Major Generals' commission in the pre-war militia, Harper was appointed Brigadier General in the Virginia Provisional Army and was given command of the 5th Virginia Infantry, with the rank of Colonel in the Confederate States Army, which became one of the stalwart regiments in the famed Stonewall Brigade. Kenton barely outlived the war. A book entitled Kenton Harper of Virginia: Editor, Citizen, Soldier, by Thomas Tabb Jeffries, III, (Augusta Co. Historical Society) was just published in 2013 and provides an invaluable look at Harper's numerous accomplishments as a political leader, editor, soldier, and Indian agent.  
  
  Smart, ambitious, and well conscious of his political connections, Harper was also a conscientious man when it came to fulfilling his patronage roles, and in that regard, one appointment stands out above the others. In 1851-1852, Harper played a brief, but fascinating part in the development of the Chickasaw Nation, accepting an appointment as agent to the tribe. One of the Five Civilized Tribes of the southeast, the Chickasaws were a vibrant tribe occupying lands centered on current-day northern Mississippi, but with the expansion of white settlers in the first decades of the 19th century, they were subject to a brutal ethnic cleansing sparked by the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Following the Choctaw (1831), Seminoles (1832), and Creeks (1834), the Chickasaws were forced to relocate westward in 1837, following the Trail of Tears. 
  
  Unlike the other civilized tribes, the Chickasaw received some financial compensation for the lands they were forced to surrender east of the Mississippi, and at the Treaty of Doaksville in 1837, they agreed to lease the western portion of the Choctaw land in Oklahoma and settle there. Placed administratively under the Choctaw for purposes of the US government and granted representation on the Choctaw Council, the Chickasaws soon felt the need to regain their cultural independence and political sovereignty. Their leadership began developing their own constitution at a council held at Boiling Springs in 1846, expanding the document in 1846 and amending it further in 1849 and 1851, all while engaged in a complex bit of diplomacy with federal authorities and Choctaw alike to secure their independence. The new Chickasaw nation formally ratified their new constitution in August 1856. 
  
  Lots 535-540 relate to the legacy of Kenton Harper and the negotiations that led to the formation of the modern Chickasaw nation.
  

   

  Condition

  Good condition on characteristic blue paper of the period, minor soiling on verso of the folds.
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