Portrait of Tooanahowi (?-1744)

This simple, quickly-drawn profile represents the youngest member of the small group of Creek Indians who accompanied Georgia founder James Oglethorpe to London in order to meet with the fledgling colony's Board of Trustees in 1734. Touanohoui's command of the English language delighted the Board and, back in Georgia, he served as one of the colony's ablest translators. In fact, Oglethorpe called him "the best interpreter we have."
Tooanahowi also supported the British militarily, ultimately dying in their cause in his early twenties in an engagement against a group of Yamasee Indians fighting on behalf of the Spanish. A far more distressing aspect of this young man's biography---and of broader European-Native relations---derives from his habituation to alcohol which, Methodist minister John Wesley admitted, "our English had taught him." [see note 1].
Colonial Williamsburg's sketch of the then fifteen-year-old boy is ascribed to Jonathan Richardson, Sr. (1667-1745), then considered one of London's most fashionable portraitists. Tooanahowialso appears in two paintings done in London by Willem Verelst, one, a depiction of the Board's Common Council meeting with eight of the Indians, the other a double portrait showing Tooanahowi with his great-uncle, the acknowledged leader of the traveling group, Tomachichi. (Verelst's large group portrait is at Winterthur; the double portrait is unlocated and today is known only by John Faber's engraving after it, an imprint of which is owned by Colonial Williamsburg).
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