Mainly papers concerning Shawnee history and the career of Tecumseh, which were copied, written, or collected by Benjamin Drake during the preparation of his Life of Tecumseh (Cincinnati, 1841). Among these papers are a Shawnee vocabulary compiled by John Johnston, longtime Indian agent; recollections of a council at Springfield, Ohio, in 1806 in a letter by Joseph Vance; a description of Tecumseh's appearance in 1810 extracted from a letter by George Rogers Clark Floyd; reminiscences about Tecumseh by Stephen Ruddell, who as a young white captive had been adopted by the Shawnee and was a friend, companion, and warrior with Tecumseh during their youth; portions of Anthony Shane's statements about Tecumseh given to Daniel Drake in 1821 (see also 12 YY); Daniel Drake's manuscript on the location of Indian tribes between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River; and a large printed broadside advertising the book Sketches of the Civil and Military Services of General Harrison by Charles S. Todd and Benjamin Drake (Cincinnati, 1840).

Other letters, 1818-1822, to Benjamin Drake, by W.G. Ewing, Richard M. Johnson, Duncan McArthur, and Stephen Ruddell concern Tecumseh's participation in Ohio councils in the early 1800s, his intercession on behalf of the Americans at Dudley's defeat, and the circumstances of his death. Bound in the volume but unrelated to Tecumseh are a few letters and a biographical sketch sent to Draper relating to John Coffee (1782-1836), congressman from Georgia, and to the alleged relationship of the Coffee family to Thomas Sumter.