Between the Civil War and statehood, one of the most influential men in Indian Territory was Pleasant Porter, respectfully referred to as General Porter during the time he lived in Muskogee.

Porter was born in Indian Territory in 1840 on his family’s plantation located along the Arkansas River. The Porter farm sat roughly halfway between the Presbyterian missions at Koweta and Tullahassee and near the present town of Porter that was named for him.

Porter’s father was a white man named Benjamin Porter; his mother was Creek. Pleasant grew up in a bilingual home, comfortable with both Anglo and Indian cultures. He was fluent in the language of both his parents.

He attended school at Tullahassee Mission during a childhood filled with mishaps. He nearly died after eating a poisonous plant, was bitten by a water moccasin and was thrown from a wagon and broke his leg in three places.

Porter reached adulthood at the outset of the Civil War. He enlisted in the First Creek Regiment in 1861 after the Creeks had signed a treaty with the South. During the war, Porter was wounded three times, once being shot in the head.

After the war ended, he returned to the family homestead to find it devastated by the war. Responsible now for his widowed mother and younger siblings, Porter rebuilt their log home from trees he felled himself. He gradually fenced his property with a split rail fence and began to develop a cattle herd.

Through the years, Porter increased his cattle and land holdings and made a fortune in leasing grazing land to Texas cattlemen who herded their beeves up the Texas Road to fatten on the prairie. With his partner, Clarence W. Turner, Porter at one time owned most of the land that now makes up west Muskogee.

Porter also became involved in Creek politics, serving in different capacities. In 1867, he was the superintendent of schools for the Creek Nation. With the KATY Railroad completed to Muskogee in 1872, Porter began frequent trips to Washington to lobby Congress on behalf of his tribe. That same year, he married Mary Ellen Keys, the daughter of the chief justice of the Cherokee Nation.

His military experience made him a natural choice to lead the Creek National Army on more than one occasion when political unrest stirred up conflict among the Creeks. It was his service during the "Green Peach War" in 1882 that earned him the title general.

Porter was elected principal chief of the Creek Nation in 1899 and re-elected to a second term in 1903. By this time, the position had little real power as the Dawes Commission, and the Curtis Act had stripped the Indian tribes of much of their sovereignty.

But Porter used his position as chief to pull together the Sequoyah State Convention, held in Muskogee in 1905. Serving as president of the convention, Porter worked with other Indian Territory leaders to create the State of Sequoyah. Congress rejected Indian Territory’s bid to become a state, instead requiring that it join with Oklahoma Territory for statehood.

Pleasant Porter did not live to see his beloved Indian Territory come to statehood as Oklahoma. He died of a stroke in September of 1907, the same month that territorial voters approved the Oklahoma constitution. He is buried in the Porter Cemetery near Leonard.