[353] Motey, or Moty, Kennard is occasionally spoken of, in the records, as the principal chief of the entire Creek Nation. The tribe was, however, very sharply divided into the Lower and the Upper Creeks. Their differences had been accentuated by the unpleasant and even dishonorable and tragic circumstances of their removal from Georgia and Alabama. The Lower Creeks represented the faction that had stood back of William McIntosh and that had consented to the fraudulent treaty of Indian Springs, the Upper Creeks were the dissenters [Abel, History of Indian Consolidation, chapters vi and vii; Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, 56-57].
[354] Letter from Greenwood to the Delegation, February 4, 1861 [Indian Office, Letter Book, no. 65, pp. 140-141].
[355] Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1861. Note that as early as March 18, 1861, Secretary Smith had ordered the suspension of the issuance of all requisitions to ordinary disbursing officers in the seceding states. This order probably affected indirectly even the Indian Territory [Smith to commissioner of Indian affairs, March 18, 1861, Miscellaneous Files, 1858-1863].
[356] Governor Thomas O. Moore of Louisiana to President Davis, May 31, 1861 [Official Records, first ser., vol. iii, 588].
[357] See letter of W. S. Robertson to the Secretary of the Interior [General Files, Southern Superintendency, 1859-1862, R1664].
[358] See statement of the “Loyal” Creek Delegation at the Fort Smith Council, September, 1865 [Land Files, Indian Talks, Councils, etc., 1865-1866, Box 4; Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1865, pp. 328-329].
[359] Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la was nevertheless a very prominent man among the Upper Creeks and had been prominent even before the exodus from Georgia and Alabama. At all events he was sufficiently prominent to protest with others against the transportation contracts that had been made by the War Department [Lewis Cass to Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la and other Creek chiefs, dated Tuckabatchytown, Alabama, January 27, 1836]. Again in 1838, Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la headed a party of protest, that time against the selling of certain Creek lands left unsold at the time of emigration [Creek Reservation Papers, 25].
Opoeth-le-yo-ho-la seems to have been one of the assassins of William McIntosh; that is, if the subjoined statement of Acting-superintendent William Armstrong is to be trusted:
Choctaw Agency August 31, 1836
C. A. Harris Esqr, Comr of Ind Affairs,