A southern portrait by another kind of artist

His portrait sits before me, the determined brown eyes gazing off into eternity. It is a handsome, mustachioed face, embellished with paint, capped by an elaborately wrapped red turban. Enormous incised silver bobs dangle from his ears. The coat, cinched at the waist by a red and yellow beaded belt, is deep indigo with lighter blue stripes. Someone has taken the time to carefully trim the shoulder seams and front opening of the coat with fringe – his wife no doubt. She is the most likely weaver of the sash as well. An ascot hints at the wealth and stylish adaptation of European fashion by this Native American man. Nahetluc Hopie, the man in this exotic garb, does not speak directly to me through the documentary record. But his powerful, strong visage speaks volumes about the state of the Creek people in the early nineteenth century. For this man, who in 1825 was speaking truth to power, was a member of a delegation of Creek men who traveled to Washington, DC to protest the Treaty of Indian Springs. ¹ Under that notorious treaty, William McIntosh, a much more famous Creek chief, illegally ceded all the Creeks’ Georgia land as well as portions of territory claimed by the state of Alabama to the United States.