HISTORICAL DATA.
Subsequent to the ratification of the treaty of September 11, 1807, with the Cherokees, no other treaty receiving the final sanction of the Senate and President was concluded with them until March 22, 1816;[174] but in the interval sundry negotiations and matters of official importance were conducted with them, which it will be proper to summarize.
COLONEL EARLE'S NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE PURCHASE OF IRON-ORE TRACT.
In the early part of the year 1807, Col. Elias Earle, of South Carolina, proposed to the Secretary of War the establishment of iron works, with suitable shops, in the Cherokee Nation, on substantially the following conditions, viz: That a suitable place should be looked out and selected where sufficient quantities of good iron ore could be found, in the vicinity of proper water privileges, for such an establishment; that the Indians should be induced to make a cession of a tract of land, not less than 6 miles square, which should embrace the ore bed and water privilege; that so much of the land so ceded as the President of the United States should deem proper should be conveyed to him (Earle), including the ore and water facilities, whereon he should be authorized to erect iron works, smith shops, and so forth. Earle, on his part, engaged to erect such iron works and shops as to enable him to furnish such quantities of iron and implements of husbandry as should be sufficient for the use of the various Indian tribes in that part of the country, including those on the west side of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers; also to deliver annually to the order of the Government of the United States such quantities of iron and implements as should be needed for the Indian service, and on such reasonable terms as should be mutually agreed upon.
The Secretary of War referred the propositions of Colonel Earle to the President of the United States, who gave them his sanction, and accordingly Agent Meigs, of the Cherokees, was instructed[175] to endeavor to procure from the Cherokees such a cession as was proposed, so soon as Colonel Earle should have explored the country and selected a suitable place for the proposed establishment. Colonel Earle made the necessary explorations, and found a place at the mouth of Chickamauga Creek which seemed to meet the requirements of the case.
Thereupon Agent Meigs convened the Indians in council at Highwassee, Tennessee, at which Colonel Earle was present, and concluded a treaty[176] with them. By its terms, in consideration of the sum of $5,000 and 1,000 bushels of corn, the Cherokees ceded a tract of country 6 miles square at the mouth of Chickamauga Creek, on the south side of Tennessee River, to be laid off in square form so as to include the creek to the best advantage for such site. The treaty also contained a proviso that in case the ore supply should fail at this point, the United States should have full liberty to procure it within the Cherokee territory at the most suitable and convenient place. Twenty-five hundred dollars of the consideration was at once paid in cash to the Indians and 1,000 bushels of corn agreed to be delivered to them the following spring. Colonel Earle carried the treaty to Washington at the next session of Congress for ratification.[177]
President Jefferson transmitted it to the Senate with a favorable message,[178] but before any action was taken by that body it was ascertained that the tract selected and ceded was within the limits of the State of Tennessee.
The matter of ratification was therefore postponed, with the hope that the State of Tennessee would consent to relinquish her claim to the land. In this the President was disappointed. No further action was taken for several years, until, it having become evident that no concession would be made in the matter by the legislature of Tennessee, the United States Senate[179] unanimously rejected the treaty. In consequence of this action, Colonel Earle made claim[180] against the Government either for the value of his time and expenses incurred in exploring the Cherokee country, selecting the site, and procuring the conclusion of the treaty, or, as an alternative, that the consent of the Cherokees should be secured to the cession of another tract of similar area and character.
The latter proposition was accepted, and Agent Meigs was advised[181] that Mr. Earle had been granted permission to select some other site suitable for his iron works, and instructed that in case he did so, negotiations should again be opened with the Cherokees for an exchange of the tract covered by the cession of 1807 for the one newly selected.
Success, however, does not seem to have attended this second attempt, and Agent Meigs was advised[182] by the Secretary of War that $985 had been paid Colonel Earle for damages sustained by him in the Cherokee country while detained there by the Indians, which amount must be deducted from the Cherokee annuity.
A third attempt of a similar character was made in 1815, when[183] Colonel Earle was appointed to negotiate, in conjunction with the Indian agent, a treaty with the Cherokees or Chickasaws for the purchase of a 6-mile square tract for the erection of his proposed iron works. Like the previous efforts, it was without results.[184]
TENNESSEE FAILS TO CONCLUDE A TREATY WITH THE CHEROKEES.
Congress on the 18th of April, 1806,[185] had passed an act entitled "An act to authorize the State of Tennessee to issue grants and perfect titles to certain lands therein described, and to settle claims to the vacant and unappropriated lands within the same."
This act, for the purpose of defining the limits of the vacant and unappropriated lands in the State of Tennessee, thereafter to be subject to the sole control and disposition of the United States, established the following described line, viz: Beginning at the place where the eastern or main branch of Elk River intersects the southern boundary of Tennessee; running thence due north until such line shall intersect the northern or main branch of Duck River; thence down the waters of Duck River to the military boundary line established by North Carolina in 1783; thence with the military line west to the place where it intersects Tennessee River; thence down the waters of Tennessee River to where it intersects the northern line of Tennessee. The act further provided that upon the execution by the State of Tennessee (through her Senators and Representatives in Congress, duly authorized thereto) of a deed of relinquishment to the United States of all the claim of that State to lands lying south and west of the described line, the United States should thereupon cede and convey to the State of Tennessee all claim to the land north and east of the line, with certain conditions and limitations therein prescribed, and with the proviso that nothing contained in the act should be construed to affect the Indian title.
Predicated upon this act of Congress, the legislature of Tennessee passed an act, on the 3d of December, 1807,[186] appropriating $20,000 for the purpose of holding a treaty or treaties with the Cherokees (when authorized so to do by the Federal Government) for the purpose of extinguishing their claim to all or any part of the lands within the territorial limits of Tennessee lying to the north and east of the line described in the act of Congress just mentioned.
Congress having assented to the request of Tennessee, the Secretary of War appointed[187] Return J. Meigs a commissioner to superintend the negotiations with the Cherokees about to be held with them by the two commissioners appointed on the part of that State. Mr. Meigs was advised that all the expenses incident to the holding of the treaty, as well as any consideration that should be agreed upon in case of a cession by the Indians, should be borne by the State of Tennessee, and that the only lands the commission were authorized to treat for was that portion of the territory described in the act of April 18, 1806, as being ceded to Tennessee which should be found to lie east of the line established by Robertson and Meigs, running from the upper part of Chickasaw Old Fields northwardly so as to include all the waters of Elk River. The jealousy with which the Cherokees regarded a proposition for the sale of more land, and their especial aversion toward the people and government of Tennessee, prevented success from attending these negotiations in any degree.
REMOVAL OF CHEROKEES TO THE WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI PROPOSED.
It had been the policy of the Federal Government, from the beginning of its official relations with the Indian tribes, to encourage and assist the individuals of those tribes in grasping and accepting the pursuits and habits of civilized life, with a view to their preparation for the condition in which the rapidly encroaching white settlements would in a few years inevitably place them.
With the disappearance of game the hunter must become a tiller of the soil or a herdsman, with the alternative of starvation. This humane policy, begun systematically in the first administration of Washington,[188] took the form of a considerable annual expenditure in the purchase for the Indians of hoes, plows, rakes, and other agricultural implements, as well as looms, cards, and spinning wheels. Among the northwestern tribes these efforts at industrial civilization were productive of trifling results. The southern tribes, however, and more especially the Creeks and Cherokees, had, in considerable numbers, manifested a partial though gradually increasing tendency toward self-support. Many of them, in addition to raising the necessaries of life, were producers in a limited degree of cotton, from which their women had learned to make a coarse article of cloth; others owned considerable herds of cattle and hogs, and altogether these tribes had made a degree of progress which was alike commendable to themselves and encouraging to the Government.
However, the persistent and unremitting demands of the border settlers for more land, backed by the thorough sympathy and influence of the State governments of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, as well as by their Senators and Representatives in Congress, acted as a powerful lever for moving the Congress and Executive of the United States to seek the complete possession of the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw lands.
As early as 1803[189] President Jefferson had suggested the desirability of the removal of these tribes beyond the Mississippi River, although the first official action taken in this direction was contained in the fifth section of an act of Congress approved March 26, 1804, erecting Louisiana into two Territories. This act appropriated $15,000 to enable the President to effect the desired object. This was supplemented in 1808,[190] when the Secretary of War, in a letter to Agent Meigs giving permission for a delegation of Cherokees to visit Washington, instructed him to improve every opportunity of securing the consent of the Cherokees to an exchange of their lands for a tract west of the Mississippi.
The delegation here spoken of (composed of what were known as Upper Cherokees) visited Washington about the 1st of May, 1808, and, in the course of a discussion of the subject with the Secretary of War, took occasion to complain of an unequal distribution of annuities between the Upper and Lower Cherokees, and advanced a proposition that a dividing line be run between the territory of these two branches of the tribe, inasmuch as the former were cultivators of the soil, and desired to divide their lands in severalty and become citizens of the United States, while the latter were addicted to the hunter life and were indisposed to adopt civilized habits.[191] This proposition met with the personal approval of the Secretary of War. He instructed the agent[192] to ascertain the sentiments of the nation upon such a proposition, to the end that, if possible, those who adhered to aboriginal habits could be induced to accept a country in the newly acquired Territory of Louisiana, in lieu of their proportionate share of the country then occupied by the Cherokee Nation. In pursuance of this plan, the agent lost no opportunity of impressing upon the Cherokees the importance of the approaching crisis in their tribal affairs, and the necessity that some practical method should be adopted to solve the problem of subsistence involved in the rapid diminution of game. Many of the Lower or "hunter" Cherokees became persuaded of the necessity of looking out a new home, and early in January, 1809,[193] President Jefferson addressed a "talk" to them, approving their project and promising facilities for the transportation of a delegation to visit the Arkansas and White River countries, where, in case they found a suitable location, the United States would assign them a sufficient area of territory for their occupation in exchange for their share of the Cherokee domain east of the Mississippi.
Based upon this proposition, a pioneer delegation of the Indians visited that country in the year 1809, and upon their report large numbers (about 2,000, as reported by Agent Meigs) of the nation signified their intention of removal as early as the autumn of that year. The United States authorities were not as yet prepared to defray the pecuniary expense of so large a migration. The agent was therefore directed to discourage for the present anything except the removal of individual families.[194] The situation remained unchanged until the spring of 1811,[195] when the Secretary of War informed Agent Meigs that time and circumstances had rendered it expedient to revive the subject of a general removal and exchange of lands. The latter was advised that it was very desirable to secure a cession of the Cherokee lands lying within the States of Tennessee and South Carolina, and that in case the whole nation could be brought to agree to the proposition of ceding these tracts, as the proportionate share of the "emigrant party," in exchange for lands to be assigned such party on White and Arkansas Rivers, he would be authorized and directed to negotiate a treaty with the Cherokee Nation for that purpose. From this time the subject remained in statu quo for several years, except that small parties of Cherokees, consisting of a few individuals or families, continued to emigrate to the "promised land." It is perhaps interesting to state, in connection with this emigration movement of the Cherokees, that it was primarily inaugurated shortly after the treaty of 1785, at Hopewell, when a few of those dissatisfied with the terms of that instrument embarked in pirogues, and, descending the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers, reached and ascended the Saint Francis, then in the Spanish province of Louisiana, where they formed a settlement, from whence in a few years they removed to a more satisfactory location on White River. Here they were joined from time to time by their dissatisfied eastern brethren, in families and small parties, until they numbered, prior to the treaty of 1817, between two and three thousand souls.
EFFORTS OF SOUTH CAROLINA TO EXTINGUISH CHEROKEE TITLE.
On the 31st of December, 1810, the governor of South Carolina transmitted to the President a resolution of the legislature of that State urging an extinguishment of the Cherokee Indian title to lands within her State limits.[196] The Secretary of War, in his letter of acknowledgment,[197] assured the governor that measures would soon be taken to bring about the desired cession if possible. Nothing of importance seems, however, to have been done until the winter of 1814, when Agent Meigs was appointed[198] a commissioner for the purpose of negotiating a treaty with this end in view. He was instructed that the State of South Carolina would have an agent present, authorized to defray the expenses of the treaty and to adjust the compensation that should be agreed upon in consideration of the proposed cession, agreeably to the provisions of the twelfth section of an act of Congress approved March 30, 1802, for regulating trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes.
These negotiations not having proved successful, the Secretary of War authorized Agent Meigs[199] to bring a delegation of the Cherokees to Washington for this and other purposes of negotiation.
This delegation arrived early in the spring of 1816, and the Hon. George Graham, being specially authorized by the President, concluded a treaty on the 22d of March of that year.[200] Therein, in consideration of the sum of $5,000, to be paid by the State of South Carolina within ninety days from the date of its ratification by the President and Senate, subject also to ratification by the Cherokee national council and by the governor of South Carolina, the Cherokees ceded to that State all claim to territory within her boundaries.
This treaty was transmitted[201] to the Senate by President Madison, and ratified and proclaimed, as set forth in the abstract of its provisions hereinbefore given, on the 8th of April, 1816.
BOUNDARY BETWEEN CHEROKEES, CREEKS, CHOCTAWS, AND CHICKASAWS.
The lines of demarkation between the respective possessions of the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Nations had long been a subject of dispute between them. People living in a state of barbarism and principally dependent upon the chase for a livelihood, necessarily roam over a vast amount of territory within which no permanent habitations have been established by themselves. An accurate definition of the boundaries between them and their nearest neighbors pursuing a similar mode of life is unnecessary so long as no disturbing factor is brought into the case. But contact with an ever-encroaching tide of civilization renders essential an accurate definition of limits. The United States, in several of its numerous treaties for the acquisition of territory from these four tribes, had been met with conflicting claims as to its ownership. In order that future disputes and embarrassments of this character should be avoided, the authorities of the United States entertained the idea of causing a boundary line to be run and marked between the adjoining territory of these tribes. The Indian agents were advised by the Secretary of War[202] that the subject was under consideration, the plan being to constitute a commission, consisting of two representatives selected by each tribe and of the United States agents for those tribes, who should, after full examination of the country and the subject, agree upon and fix their respective boundaries. Owing, however, to the complicated state of our foreign relations and the feverish condition of mind manifested by the border tribes, soon followed by war with England and with the Creek Indians, it became necessary to drop further negotiations on the subject, and the matter was not again revived in this form.
After the treaty of 1814 with the Creeks, however, whereby General Jackson exacted from them, as indemnity for the expenses of the war, the cession of an immense tract of country in Alabama and Georgia,[203] the question of the proper limits of this cession on the north and west became a subject of controversy between the United States and the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws.
The United States authorities at Washington were anxious that nothing should occur in the adjustment of these boundaries which should cause a feeling of irritation among those tribes. Commissioners had been appointed in the summer of 1815 to survey and mark the boundaries of this Creek cession, and in August of that year we find the Secretary of War giving instructions to Agent Meigs, of the Cherokees, to meet the boundary commissioners, with a few of the principal Cherokee chiefs, at the point on Coosa River where the south boundary of the Cherokee Nation crossed the same, in order that the Cherokees should be satisfied that the commissioners began at the proper point. Several additional reminders were given the agent, during the progress of the survey, that the matter of boundary was a question of fact to be ascertained and determined from the best attainable evidence, and that care must be taken that no injustice should be done the Cherokees.[204] In the following spring[205] a delegation of Cherokees was brought to Washington, by direction of the War Department, and, pending the completion of treaty negotiations with them, the boundary commissioners were instructed not to mark the line between the Cherokees and the Creek cession until further orders.
These negotiations resulted in a second treaty of March 22, 1816[206] (the one for the cession of the tract in South Carolina bears the same date), wherein it was declared that the northern boundary line of the Creek cession of 1814 should be established by the running of a line from a point on the west bank of Coosa River opposite to the lower end of the Ten Islands, above Fort Strother, directly to the Flat Rock or Stone on Bear Creek, said Flat Rock being the southwest corner of the Cherokee possessions, as defined by the treaty with them concluded January 7, 1806.
This boundary brought forth a vigorous though unavailing protest from General Jackson, who argued that the Cherokees never had any right to territory south of the Tennessee and west of Coosa River, but that it belonged to the Creeks and was properly within the limits of their cession of 1814.[207]
All efforts were fruitless in securing any further cession of lands, either north or south of the Tennessee.[208]
Previous to the visit of the Cherokee delegation to Washington and to the instructions given, as referred to above, to the boundary commissioners to suspend the running of the boundary line between the Creek cession and the Cherokees pending negotiations with the latter, General Coffee had been engaged in surveying the line from Coosa River to the Tennessee River.[209] As a result of the negotiations with the Cherokees, additional instructions were given the boundary commissioners[210] (accompanying which was a copy of the Cherokee treaty concluded on the 22d of March preceding) to run and mark the boundary line therein agreed upon from the lower end of the Ten Islands, on Coosa River, to the Flat Rock, on Bear Creek. They were advised that the surveys already made by General Coffee might be of advantage to them, though from an examination of his report it did not appear he had taken any notice of the point at which this line was to terminate, notwithstanding he seemed to have had in view the treaty made with the Cherokees in the year 1806, which proposed Caney Creek and a line from its source to the Flat Rock as the boundary between the Cherokees and Chickasaws. Coffee's line had already excited the jealousy and opposition of the Chickasaws, and on the same day final instructions were given the commissioners to run the line from Coosa River to Flat Rock, Major Cocke, the Chickasaw agent, was directed to advise the Chickasaws that in agreeing upon this line with the Cherokees the United States had in no degree interfered with the conflicting claims of the Chickasaws south of that line and east of Coffee's line; that from an examination of the treaties with the Chickasaws and Cherokees, and especially that of 1786 with the former tribe, it appeared that a point called the Flat Rock was considered a corner of the lands belonging to them, and had since been considered as the corner to the Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw hunting grounds. It is proper to state in this connection that for many years an uncertainty had existed in the minds of both the Indians and the United States authorities as to the exact location of this Flat Rock,[211] and whether it was on Bear Creek or on the headwaters of the Long Leaf Pine, a branch of the Black Warrior River. The line as finally run by the commissioners from Flat Rock, on Bear Creek, to Ten Islands, pursued a course bearing S. 67° 56' 27" E. 118 miles and 40 perches.[212] It may be interesting also to quote from a letter[213] from William Barnett, one of the United States boundary commissioners, to his co-commissioner, General Coffee, in which, he states that he has just returned from the council at Turkeytown, at which the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Creeks were represented, and that the principal purpose of the council was to agree upon and adjust their several boundaries. He notes the fact that the Creeks and Cherokees had agreed to make a joint stock of their lands, with a privilege to each nation to settle where they pleased. The Creeks and Choctaws had fixed on the ridge dividing the waters of the Black Warrior and the Cahawba as their former boundary. The Chickasaws and Cherokees could come to no understanding as to their divisional line, the former alleging that they had no knowledge of any lands held by the latter on the south side of the Tennessee River adjoining them; that they always considered the lands so claimed by the Cherokees as belonging to the Creeks, and in support of this they had exhibited to him a number of affidavits in proof that their line ran from the mouth of a small creek emptying into the Tennessee near Ditto's Landing (opposite Chickasaw Island), up the same to its source, thence to the head of the Sipsey Fork of the Black Warrior, and down the same to the Flat Rock, where the Black Warrior is 200 yards wide; that they had no knowledge of any place on Bear Creek known as Flat Rock, and that running the line to the last mentioned place would be taking from them a considerable tract of country, to which they could by no means consent.[214]
ROADS THROUGH THE CHEROKEE COUNTRY.
In order to secure a proper system of communication between the Tennessee and the Lower Alabama and Mississippi settlements, the United States had long desired the establishment of sufficient roads through the Indian country between those points. The Indians, however, were shrewd enough to perceive that the granting of such a permission would be but an entering wedge for splitting their country in twain, and afford excuse for the encroachments of white settlers.
The establishment of new thoroughfares had therefore been regarded with extreme jealousy and had never been yielded to by them except after a persistency of urging that bordered on force.
In the spring of 1811[215] Agent Meigs was advised by the Secretary of War of the expediency of having a road opened without delay from the Tennessee to the Tombigbee, and also one from Tellico. Both these propositions would require the consent of the Creeks, and for the purpose of securing the most advantageous routes it was contemplated that Captain Gaines should make a journey of exploration and survey of the country between the Alabama and Coosa Rivers on the south and Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers on the north. The fruition of these plans was also postponed on account of the ensuing war with the Creeks, and the subject was not again broached until after their subjugation. In the spring of 1814 the legislature of Tennessee transmitted two memorials to Congress on the subject, and, by direction of the Secretary of War, Agent Meigs was again instructed[216] to ascertain the bent of the Indian mind in relation thereto. The result was the conclusion, with the approval of the President, of two agreements between the Cherokees and the agents of certain road companies for the opening of two roads through the country of the latter from Tennessee to Georgia. But when the treaty of March 22, 1816, came to be negotiated at Washington, the United States authorities, after much persuasion, procured the insertion therein of an article conceding to the United States a practically free and unrestrained permission for the construction of any and all roads through the Cherokee country necessary to convenient intercourse between the northern and southern settlements.
TREATY CONCLUDED SEPTEMBER 14, 1816; PROCLAIMED DECEMBER 30, 1816.[217]
Held at Chickasaw Council House, between Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson, General David Merriwether, and Jesse Franklin, commissioners plenipotentiary on the part of the United States, and the delegates representing the Cherokee Nation.