Apr 14, 2015 - Sale 2380

Sale 2380 - Lot 11

Price Realized: $ 1,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(AMERICAN INDIANS.) Hobbs, Edward D. Letter concerning Creek Indian prisoners in the Creek War. Letter Signed as keeper of Nashville Public Jail to newly appointed Secretary of War James Monroe. 4 pages, 10 x 8 inches, on 2 sheets; short separations at folds, minor toning. Nashville, TN, 31 October 1814

Additional Details

A letter concerning American Indian prisoners captured in the Tennessee campaign of the Creek War, an ancillary conflict to the War of 1812. Hobbs was entrusted with "the safe keeping, subsistence &c of the Creek Indian prisoners committed to my custody as Jailor . . . by the late Major Lemuel P. Montgomery of the 39th Infantry." Hobbs complains that "so troublesome and inconvenient were they to me, that I more than once requested Major Montgomery to provide for their safe keeping . . . in some other way, for that I was very tired of . . . providing provisions, fuel, cooking, keeping their room clean, in locking them up every night, providing a house for them in daytime to keep them healthy, watching them &c." Major Montgomery had agreed to pay 25 cents per prisoner per day, but had failed to put their agreement into writing before his March 1814 combat death, leaving Hobbs to petition for compensation.