Theodore (Andrew Jackson captive)

Theodore (c. 1813 – before March 1814) was a Native American baby or child who was captured by Andrew Jackson during the Indian wars of the early 1810s and sent to live at the Hermitage. He is believed to have been of Muscogee/Red Stick heritage. He was described as a "pet" or playmate for Andrew Jackson Jr., who was then about five years old. Theodore died in the spring of 1814. According to one historian, Jackson Jr. "threw a fit when his own playmate died and coveted Charley," who was another Indigenous captive and the assigned playmate of Andrew Jackson Donelson. Lyncoya Jackson, who was captured at the Battle of Tallushatchee ("all his family is destroyed") arrived at the Hermitage in May 1814.

Jackson's motives in adopting Theodore, Charley, and Lyncoya were likely complex. He repeatedly described Muscogee people as savage and barbaric "wretches" but simultaneously "Jackson's claims to Indian territories and enslaved  people of African descent revolved around the assumption that anyone who was not white and male needed the paternal oversight of Southern white men such as himself."