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.
MATERIAL PROVISIONS.
To perpetuate peace and friendship between the United States and the Cherokees and to remove all future dissensions concerning boundaries it is agreed: