In response to violent altercations with both the Pawnee and the Comanche, the Creek Nation proposed in early March 1845 to call a council of “deputations from all the Indian Tribes on this frontier as well as those of the wandering tribes of the distant Prairies.” It is possible that word of this council, which was to convene in May, had reached Jonathan Dunham by this date, but it is not clear why Dunham would have thought the council was to take place in June. From other sources it is clear that Dunham knew the council was to take place somewhere in southern Indian Territory rather than the better-known Council Bluffs along the Missouri River in present-day Iowa. (James Logan, Creek Agency, Indian Territory, to T. Hartley Crawford, Washington DC, 3 Mar. 1845, U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Letters Received by the Office of Indian Affairs, reel 227; Pierce M. Butler, “Notes Taken at the ‘Grand Council’ in the Creek Nation,” 12–16 May 1845, in William Armstrong, “Choctaw Agency,” to T. Hartley Crawford, Washington DC, 8 June 1845, in U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Letters Received by the Office of Indian Affairs, reel 923; “The Indian Council,” Cherokee Advocate [Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation], 22 May 1845, [4]; Jonathan Dunham, Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, to Brigham Young, Nauvoo, IL, 31 May 1845, Brigham Young Office Files, CHL.)

U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Letters Received by the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824–81. National Archives Microfilm Publications, microcopy M234. 962 reels. Washington DC: National Archives, 1959.

Cherokee Advocate. Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation. 1844–1906.

Brigham Young Office Files, 1832–1878. CHL. CR 1234 1.