An ambitious political leader, lawyer and renowned orator, John Ridge was also a wealthy planter. This portrait was painted by Charles Bird King in 1826 when Ridge was in Washington serving as secretary for a Creek treaty delegation. It was during this trip that Ridge penned his letter to Albert Gallatin. “John Ridge, A Cherokee,” drawn, printed and colored by J. T. Bowen’s Lithographic Establishment, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1838, on page 176, History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs: Embellished with One Hundred and Twenty Portraits from the Indian Gallery in the Department of War, at Washington, Vol.II, by Thomas L. McKenney, Esq. and James Hall (Philadelphia, 1842). Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
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Sophie White, “Trading Looks Race, Religion and Dress in French America,” Commonplace: the journal of early American life, accessed September 30, 2019, https://commonplace.online/article/trading-looks-race-religion-dress-french-america/
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