Muskogee Creek leader Opothle Yoholo.
Chief Opothle Yahola was a Muscogee Creek Indian leader who was noted as a diplomatic chief and a brilliant orator. He was a Speaker of the Upper Creek Council who supported traditional Creek culture.
Opothle Yahola was born in about 1780 at Tuckabatchee, the Creek capital of the Upper Creek Towns, in present-day Elmore County, Alabama. His father was Davy Cornell, a mixed-blood Creek, and his mother was a full-blood Creek of the Tuckabatchee. His name means child, good, whooper, or good speaker. It could also be translated as “good shouting child.”
While Yahola was of European and Creek ancestry, he was born to a Creek mother, was considered part of her clan and the tribe by birth, and was reared as Creek. The Creek matrilineal kinship system of property holding and descent, as well as the mother’s family and clan, determined the status of her children. Her brothers were traditionally more critical in rearing the children than the biological father.
Creek Indians.
The Upper Creeks comprised the majority of the nation.
Under pressure from European Americans, Lower Creek leaders made treaties with the state of Georgia to cede former hunting lands in 1790, 1802, and 1804. The Lower Creek had long interacted more with European Americans, who had come as traders and settlers since the colonial period. The Creek had already lost use of the land for hunting because of settler encroachment. They began to adopt more farming practices to survive. Under pressure from Georgia and its settlers, they also had more relationships with Benjamin Hawkins, the U.S. Indian agent of the Southeast.
The tensions between the Upper Creek and Lower Creek bands broke out into violence in 1812 in what was at first a civil war. The Red Sticks of the Upper Creek wanted to revive traditional culture and religion and resisted assimilation and the land cessions. Opothle Yahola is believed to have allied with the British against the U.S. forces as early as the War of 1812.
Although known as a diplomatic chief and traditionalist, he was among the Red Sticks in the Creek War of 1813-1814. This ended with defeat by General Andrew Jackson, who commanded a large allied force, including Lower Creek, at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. After the defeat, Opothle Yahola swore his allegiance to the Federal government.
Creek War.
He became noteworthy around 1820 as the speaker for the council of the Upper Creek people, primarily full-bloods who held to their traditional culture. He later became a “diplomatic chief.”
The Lower Creeks, however, adopted the lifestyles of the area’s white settlers. Adding to this divisiveness, a number of the Lower Creeks looked with favor upon the exchange of their eastern homeland for land west of the Mississippi River.
William McIntosh by Thomas L. McKenney
In 1825, William McIntosh and several Lower Creek chiefs signed the second Treaty of Indian Springs with the U.S., giving up most of the remaining Creek lands in Georgia for payment and removal to lands west of the Mississippi River. By then, McIntosh and others of the Treaty Party believed that removal was inevitable, given the increasing numbers of European-American settlers entering their region, and they wanted to get the best deal possible for the Creek Nation.
Alarmed by the land cessions made by chiefs of the Lower Towns without tribal consensus, the National Council of the Creek Confederacy enacted a law that made further land cessions by tribal members a capital offense. However, the National Council did not give up on trying to resist the encroachment of the United States. It passed a death sentence, supported by Opothle Yahola, against McIntosh and other signatories of the 1825 Treaty. Chief Menawa led 200 warriors to attack McIntosh at his plantation. They killed him and another signatory chief and burned down McIntosh’s mansion on April 30, 1825.
The Creek elders realized they would need experienced negotiators to present their case to Federal authorities. While Opothle Yahola was a persuasive speaker, he was not fluent in English. They turned to the Cherokee for assistance. Major Ridge, a Cherokee leader, recommended that the Creek retain his son, John Ridge, and David Vann to travel with Opothle Yahola and help prepare his negotiating positions. The Creek National Council, led by Opothle Yahola, went to Washington, D.C., to protest the illegality of the 1825 treaty, saying its signatories did not have the consensus of the council. President John Quincy Adams was sympathetic, and the U.S. government and the chiefs made a new treaty with more favorable terms, the Treaty of Washington, in 1826.
Indian Removal Act Map
When the Alabama legislature also acted to abolish tribal governments and extend state laws over the Creek people, Opothle Yahola appealed to the administration of President Andrew Jackson. But Jackson had already signed the 1830 Indian Removal Act and wanted the Creek and other tribes to move west and extinguish their land titles in the east. Given no relief, the Upper Creek signed the Treaty of Cusseta on March 24, 1832, which divided Creek lands into individual allotments. They could either sell their allotments and receive funds to move to Indian Territory or stay in Alabama as state and U.S. citizens and submit to the state laws. This soon led to the exodus of the remainder of the tribe to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma.
In 1834, Opothle Yahola traveled to Nacogdoches, Texas, to try to purchase communal land for his people. After he had paid landowners $20,000, pressure from both the Mexican and American governments forced Opothle Yahola to abandon the idea.
In 1836, Yahola, commissioned as a colonel by the U.S. government, led 1,500 warriors against the remaining rebellious Lower Creek, who had allied with Seminole in Florida in fighting European-American occupation.
Albert Pike, Confederate Commissioner to Indian Territory.
The U.S. Army rounded up the remaining Creek and other Southeast Indian peoples and forced their emigration to Indian Territory on what was known as the “Trail of Tears.”
Afterward, Opothle Yahola led 8,000 people from Alabama to lands north of the Canadian River in the Indian Territory, to the Unassigned Lands. Over time, they began to specialize in stock raising and grain production, as neither the land nor the climate suited for subsistence farming.
Yahola became a wealthy trader and owned a 2,000-acre cotton plantation near North Fork Town, about three miles east of present Eufaula in McIntosh County. As did other Creek and members of the Five Civilized Tribes, he purchased and held enslaved African Americans as workers for his plantation. In other adaptations to European-American culture, Opothle Yahola joined the Freemasons and accepted Christianity, becoming a Baptist.
Because the Texas and California roads intersected there, the community prospered as a trade center. During the California Gold Rush of 1849, North Fork Town served as a rendezvous for travelers headed west along the California Road. Forty-niners purchased supplies, horses, and mules from local merchants.
When the Civil War began, Albert Pike, an Arkansas attorney and politician and later a general, was named Confederate Commissioner to Indian Territory. He began raising several American Indian regiments for the Confederacy and negotiated alliance treaties with the Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw at North Fork Town in July 1861. The Lower Creek and some of the other Southeastern tribes, who had specialized in cotton production, held numerous slaves and had more cultural contact with white settlers. They supported the Confederacy, which promised them an Indian-controlled state if they won the war. The settlement served as a Confederate supply base during the Civil War.
However, Opothle Yahola and his band of Creek Indians remained loyal to the federal government. They believed the Southern populations in Georgia and Alabama had forced their removal. Those Creek with African ancestry resented the restrictions of proposed “black codes” and became more affiliated with the Union.
Refugees of enslaved African Americans, free people of color, Chickasaw, and Seminole Indians began gathering at Opothle Yahola’s plantation. They hoped to remain neutral in the conflict between the North and South. On August 15, 1861, Opothle Yahola and tribal Chief Micco Hutko contacted President Abraham Lincoln to request help for the loyalists. On September 10, they received a positive response, saying that the United States government would assist them. The letter directed Opothle Yahola to move his people to Fort Row in Wilson County, Kansas, where they would receive asylum and aid. Believing Federal promises of assistance, Opothle Yahola led his band, including Seminole under Halleck Tustenuggee, toward Kansas.
Colonel Douglas H. Cooper
On November 15, Confederate Colonel Douglas H. Cooper, a former U.S. Indian Agent, led 1,400 men, including pro-Confederate Indians, northward, intending to either convince Opothle Yahola and his followers to support the Confederacy or to “drive him and his party from the country.”
This led to the Battle of Round Mountain on November 19, where the Creek drove back the Confederates to Fort Gibson. On December 9, the Creek suffered a loss at the Battle of Chusto-Talasah. On December 26, Opothle Yahola and his band suffered a crushing defeat. Most of the Creek had only the clothes on their backs and lacked proper footwear and shelter, as they had left quickly. Opothle Yahola lost an estimated 2,000 of his 9,000 followers from the battles, disease, and bitter winter blizzards during their ill-fated trek to Fort Row.
Upon their arrival at the fort, the soldiers could not get extra supplies and lacked adequate medical support for the refugees. The Creek were forced to move to Fort Belmont, but conditions were still deplorable. Many Creek died that winter, including Opothle Yahola’s daughter.
Conditions for the Creek in Kansas continued to be very harsh. Opothle Yahola died in the Creek refugee camp near the Sac and Fox Agency at Quenemo in Osage County, Kansas, on March 22, 1863. He was buried beside his daughter near Fort Belmont in Woodson County, Kansas.
Their journey became known as the Trail of Blood on Ice.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, December 2024.
Also See:
Sources:
Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History
Kansas Genweb
National Park Service
Wikipedia