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. They allowed him to settle on Creek land in Russell County, Alabama. When the federal government began urging Indian Removal to west of the Mississippi River, John Porter moved with the first group of Lower Creek, who went to Indian Territory in the 1820s. There, he settled on the north bank of the Arkansas River. He developed a plantation based on the labor of enslaved African Americans. As John Porter was dying in 1847, family members gathered around his deathbed. His grandson Pleasant was seven. According to historian John Meserve, Porter put his hand on the boy's head and