Florence Fields Killen papers

Florence Fields Killen (1918-1999) was the daughter of John Leslie and Ester Olive (West) Fields and a descendant of Richard Fields, a Cherokee Chief in East Texas. She married James C. Killen (1916-1979), and the couple had a daughter, Kay L. Killen, and a son, Scott W. Killen. Although Killen began researching the history of the Fields family and the Cherokees in Texas for a book in the 1950s, her research was interrupted in the 1970s due to the publication of her book, History of Lee County (Quanah, Tex.: Nortex Press, 1974). The Cherokee book never came to fruition, but Killen continued to research and correspond with various parties about the Chief Richard Fields family.

Killen’s ancestor, Chief Richard Fields (ca. 1780-1827) was the son of English merchant Richard Fields and his quarter-Cherokee wife Susannah Emory, a native of Tennessee. Fields served as an emissary from the Cherokee to the United States in 1801 and as an interpreter at a treaty meeting between the Chickasaw and Creek Indians in 1812. During the War of 1812, Fields served in General Andrew Jackson’s army as Captain of a Cherokee unit.

In 1813, Chief Duwali, also known as John Bowles, led his tribe into Arkansas, and in 1819 they continued into Texas, north of Nacogdoches along the Sabine River. By the next year, Fields had joined the tribe and was elected to serve as diplomatic chief alongside Duwali. In 1822, Fields negotiated a Spanish land grant with Governor José Félix Trespalacios, who required the Cherokees patrol the Sabine to defend against American attacks and smuggling in exchange for the land. Next, Fields and his delegation traveled to Mexico City to petition the viceroy for his recognition of the land grant, but Agustín de Iterbide’s insurrection and self-appointment as Emperor Agustín I of Mexico interrupted Fields’ plans. After Agustin I abdicated in 1823, Fields renewed his petition for a land grant. However, the new congress refused the petition, so the delegation returned to Texas.

In 1824 Fields promoted the formation of a military and political alliance between Texas tribes and other nomadic tribes, and he encouraged them to settle the area. The Mexican government disapproved of Fields’ new schemes, which led to difficulties between the Cherokees and Mexico. In November and December of 1826, Fields and John Dunn Hunter, an American living with the tribe, joined Haden and Benjamin W. Edwards and other Americans around Nacogdoches to form the Fredonian Republic. Haden Edwards had a land grant from Mexico for a colony near Nacogdoches, which angered existing settlers. In an election for alcalde, Edwards’ son-in-law won, but the Mexican government reversed the outcome and rescinded Edwards’ land grant. Edwards reacted by establishing Fredonia, but when Mexico sent troops in January 1827 to disperse the revolutionists, they had fled, dissolving the Republic. The Cherokees never sent the Fredonians support and attempted to redeem themselves to Mexico by putting Fields and Hunter on trial. Both men fled but were captured and executed in February 1827.

Sources:

Florence Fields Killen Papers, 1800-1992 (bulk 1948-1992), Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "Fields, Richard," http://www.tshaonline.org /handbook/online/articles/FF/ffi5.html (accessed August 17, 2010).