[227] January 9, 1817.
[228] Letter of Secretary of War to General Jackson, May 14, 1817.
[229] In a letter to Return J. Meigs, under date of September 18, 1816, the Secretary of War says that "the difficulties which have arisen between the Cherokees and the Osages, on the north of the Arkansas, and with the Quapaws, on the south, cannot be finally settled until the line of the cession shall be run and the rights of the Quapaws shall be ascertained. Commissioners appointed by the President are now sitting at Saint Louis for the adjustment of those differences; but should the line of the Osage treaty prove that they are settled upon the Osage lands, nothing can be done for the Cherokees. It is known to you and to that nation that the condition upon which the emigration was permitted by the President was that a cession of Cherokee lands should be made equal to the proportion which the emigrants should bear to the whole nation. This condition has never been complied with on the part of the nation, and of course all obligation on the part of the United States to secure the emigrants in their new possessions has ceased. When the subject was mentioned to the Cherokee deputation last winter, so far were they from acknowledging its force, that they declared the emigrants should be compelled to return."
[230] May 14, 1817.
[231] On the 17th of May, 1817, these commissioners were advised that the lands proposed to be given the Cherokees on the west of the Mississippi River, in exchange for those then occupied by them, were the lands on the Arkansas and immediately adjoining the Osage boundary line.
[232] United States Statutes at Large, Vol. VII, p. 156.
[233] These tracts are designated on the accompanying map as Nos. 23 and 24.
[234] These tracts are designated on the accompanying map as Nos. 25 and 26.
[235] August 1, 1817, the Secretary of War advised the governor of North Carolina that a treaty with the Cherokees had been concluded, by which the Indian claim was relinquished to a tract of country including the whole of the land claimed by them in North Carolina.
[236] This memorial bore date of July 2, 1817.