Kenton Harper, Regulations Concerning the Granting of Licenses to Trade with the Indians, Broadside 

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Jun 13, 2014 - Jun 14, 2014

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• Lot Description
  2pp, approx. 7.75 x 10 in., printed instructions from the War Department about the granting of licenses, and examples of their form, as approved in Nov. 1847. The regulations lay out basic principles, such as "Licenses to trade with the Indians, will be granted only to citizens of the United States, of unexceptional character, and who are fit persons to be in Indian Country." It goes on to outline what information is needed to obtain a license, how it may be renewed (they were only issued for one year), and that it can be revoked at any time if the agent finds evidence that laws or regulations governing trade with Indians has been transgressed.
  
  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

  Folds as expected. Some toning on rear blank page (outer folds).
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