Delegation of Cherokee and Mvskoke

In 1790, after the American Revolutionary War, a delegation of five Cherokee and Mvskoke leaders arrived in London under the charge of the British-born, self styled “Commander in Chief” of the Creek and Cherokee Nations, William Augustus Bowles. Bowles’s motivation in bringing this unofficial, and unauthorised delegation were deeply tied up with his vision of an “American Indian state” and part of ongoing debate following the war about the resettlement of Britain’s Indigenous allies. Portraits of two of the Native men were made while they were in England. One of themhangs in the Hunterian.

Stephanie Pratt, American Indians in British Art, 1700-1840, 105-6; Thrush, Indigenous London, 95