Pleasant Porter (September 26, 1840 – September 3, 1907, Creek) was an American Indian statesman and the last elected Principal Chief of the Creek Nation, serving from 1899 until his death.
He had served with the Confederacy in the 1st Creek Mounted Volunteers, as superintendent of schools in the Creek Nation (1870), and as commander of the Creek Light Horsemen (1883). He was elected several times as the Creek delegate (non-voting status) to the United States Congress. In 1905 he was President of the Sequoyah Constitutional Convention, an effort by Native American tribes to acquire statehood for the Indian Territory. Congress did not approve their proposal, instead passing legislation to extinguish their land rights and make their territory part of the new state of Oklahoma in 1907.
Early life
Pleasant Porter was born on September 26, 1840, to Benjamin Edward Porter and Phoebe Perryman (Creek). She and her mother were of mixed-race, with some European ancestry in her grandfather's line; she was the daughter of Lydia Perryman and Tah-lo-pee Tust-a-nuk-kee, a town chief. (Her mother Lydia was a daughter of Chief Perryman and his wife.) Porter was considered born into his mother's Bird Clan, as the Creek had a matrilineal kinship system. Children took their social status from their mother's family and clan.
He was born in the Creek Nation, Indian Territory, in what is now Wagoner County, Oklahoma. His Creek name was Talof Harjo, which means "Crazy Bear" in English.
His paternal grandfather, John Snodgrass Porter, had founded a family ranch here. He had fought with Andrew Jackson against the Creek in Georgia after the massacre at Fort Mims. To minimize further bloodshed, Captain Porter volunteered to mediate between the Creek leaders and white army. Grateful for his efforts, the Creek adopted him as an honorary member of the tribe.
When Principal Chief Samuel Checote convened a National Creek Council in October 1871, nearly 300 Sands followers marched on the capital and dispersed the meeting. Pleasant Porter, commanding a group of Creek horsemen, together with a group of Federal agents, put down the short-lived rebellion without loss of life. Porter convinced the Sands followers to lay down their arms and go home.
Under the terms of the Dawes Act, the Creek Nation had to agree to an allotment of former tribal lands to individual households, in an effort to force adaptation to European-American styles of farming and property ownership. Porter headed another Creek commission to negotiate the terms with Federal officials. Agreement was announced September 27, 1897, and incorporated as part of the Curtis Act, passed by Congress in June 1898. The US insisted that any land remaining after allotment would be considered "surplus" and made available for sale to non-Indians. Although the agreement was rejected by the Creek in an election on November 1, 1898, the Dawes Commission began to register tribal members for the process of allotment.
Family life
After the Civil War, Porter restored the family plantation. He also went into business as a merchant and rancher.
Death
Porter, accompanied by Judge John R. Thomas and M. L. Mott, Creek Nation attorney, boarded a train on September 2, 1907, to attend to legal business in Missouri. They had to stop over in Vinita, I. T. to change trains. Porter complained of feeling unwell, had a stroke sometime that night, lapsed into a coma and died on the morning of September 3, 1907.