By the 1820s the Cherokee and Creek Nations were regularly sending delegations to Washington, D.C, to protest against white settlement on their lands.  Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas Lorraine McKenney was sympathetic to their claims, but knew he could do little to stop the settlers.  Desperate to document a vanishing way of life, McKenney commissioned the artist Charles Bird King to paint portraits of the visiting delegations. 

McKenney was fired by President Andrew Jackson in 1830.  After his dismissal, McKenney had the portraits copied and published in a three-volume History of the Indian Tribes of North America.  Most of the original paintings by King burned in a fire in 1865.  MESDA is fortunate to own one of the few surviving portraits, Mistipee, Yoholo-Micco’s Son.

To learn more about the painting of Mistipee, Yoholo-Miccos's Son, see the MESDA.org Collections pages